I guess at this point can we just have the caps laid out for us in plain english? So we can at least know if we should approach this as an issue of "the caps are too low" or "maybe past shrine level X it just means gains become factors of 25 rather than 5" or something.
I guess part of me just would feel better about the bashing I do if I knew the end result was worth it? I like seeing numbers go up, but I like knowing those numbers have a reward of some sort attached too.
Also it has been a while, are there any thoughts on doing something to relics? The ability to combine 2 or 3 of the same ones to change its type to another kind of relic? Three shoes turn into a cloak for example? Or even the ability to do like we do with beans, gather up 5 unwanted relics, shake 'em up take your shot at getting something good with random?
Are there certain relics that are only available certain places? Like only if I bash X area will I get Y relic, some only available from certain boss mobs, etc..?
I want to keep on participating in the system, I'd just like some reassurance my participation beyond a certain point isn't a waste.
I looked at the numbers right now. The sect with by far the most shrines is Leechwood, but even they have not maxed out all of the PvE benefits for any area. There are meant to be certain benefits that are easier to obtain, but max out faster, and other benefits that are slower to obtain and take longer to max out. There may be some rebalancing needed, but like many things it's hard to say with limited data.
Relics depend highly on who you're bashing, for not only the type of relic power, but for the type of relic. For each relic power there are three types of the relic that are obtainable. And for each power, the type you get depends on who you are bashing. For example, to get all three relic types for a single power, you will have to find one mob that gives out one type, another the second type, and a third for the third. The third type is generally harder to find than the second, which is harder than the first. Note, however, that there is no "type" that is rare. It's type-power combinations that are rare. So one mob may give each type of relic, but only certain type-power combinations.
Relics drops are also weighted. The probabilities for the rarest relics is much smaller than the common ones. You have a better chance at getting rare relics from powerful mobs (e.g. Legion to take an extreme), but there is still a chance that you get a more common one even from the hardest mobs. Getting a rare relic from a common mob is possible, but much less likely and only for certain type-power combinations.
This list I posted a few days ago are the main things we are working on. I think these deal with a lot of the problems that have been brought up.
I am not sure how I want to deal with the problem Khizan brought up about PvP belief gains cancelling each other out in drawn out battles, but that is something I am thinking about as well. I am semi considering removing the loss, but the problem is people will farm it.
As far as timeline, I want to get this and the city/guild stuff done this month.
I am going to wait on adding new relics and adjusting effect and cooldowns for at least another month.
So, it's been two months now, and relics have still largely gone unused. The system is just plain not working. The means for obtaining the useful relics are cryptic at best, and I totally understand the rationale behind limiting information, but I'm worried it's going to fade into the background because the amount of work that has to go into obtaining relics does not line up with the results.
I've already whined to death about why tying relics to specific shrines at specific locations is not working, so I won't beat that dead horse any further, but I think something dramatic needs to change with how relics function if you intend on having players use them. The issue isn't adding more powers, it's the context of the powers and what the expectation of the system is. The fact that shrines really can't be defiled down and the PvP applications are so tightly controlled suggests that the major benefit is on the PvE side, but now we've hit a very real wall (whether or not it's the hard cap is kind of irrelevant when we're placing multiple level 4 shrines and seeing absolutely no change).
So really, my question is, how are sects and shrines intended to interact in the game at large? It's not really spurring any conflict, and despite the endless bash train courtesy of @Selthis, we've kind of reached the point where it's only going to be roleplay driving us. And I love my sect's roleplay, but I won't kid myself into thinking that's going to be a driving factor for everyone in the game.
Really, I would just like a real discussion about this, or maybe some more information/teasers about the plans, because I'm starting to feel like this was the end of this project and now it's going to gather dust, ala mercenaries.
In order to even "play" with relics, you have to build a shrine, and irrevocably stick relics in that shrine, first to see what "fits", and then to "play" with the relics. Screw that. Not doing it again unless someone makes me.
So really, my question is, how are sects and shrines intended to interact in the game at large? It's not really spurring any conflict, and despite the endless bash train courtesy of @Selthis, we've kind of reached the point where it's only going to be roleplay driving us
IMO, you are not really going to see any serious conflict, for much the same reason that you don't see any 'serious' org-to-org conflict between any other orgs: Most of the playerbase doesn't want org-based conflicts. This is why city raiding has taken brutal nerfing after brutal nerfing and why there's no serious War system.
There are just too many non-combatants in most organizations, and the non-combatant quality of life goes down the crapper pretty quickly when you give people like me/Septus/Rasca/Mathiaus/Kryss/Menoch reasons to attack their org. I'm pretty sure that Conquest smashing Battle Mind flat isn't going to make the game more fun for anybody involved on their side of the fight, but I'm also pretty sure that any kind of serious conflict system is going to see it happen almost immediately.
"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."
In line with what Khizan says, the problem I have with potential shrine warfare, is I'm pretty sure it would mean even more endless bashing for someone (and very possibly me). No thanks. If not for that, it could be great?
Also, with favours changed now, it might be time to at least consider some consolidation, probably not immediately, because a lot of people are likely very emotionally invested in their sects, but as time goes on, maybe just two sects per circle would be good, just from an efficiency/workload point of view, because, even if admin changes some of the belief penalties, it's still probably going to make the most sense to consolidate somewhat. One sect would be even more efficient, but having just one sect would probably really exacerbate internal power struggles when they happen.
Oh, and a question. It's come up a few times I think about altars being in weird places for any sort of conflict to work. Would admin consider moving them around so that they'd make sense in a shrine conflict system?
The altar problem was already addressed with the introduction of idol stones.
I also wouldn't consider sect numbers to be an issue. You do know demonic has never had more than two sects, and until yesterday, spent half a year with only one?
So really, my question is, how are sects and shrines intended to interact in the game at large? It's not really spurring any conflict, and despite the endless bash train courtesy of @Selthis, we've kind of reached the point where it's only going to be roleplay driving us
IMO, you are not really going to see any serious conflict, for much the same reason that you don't see any 'serious' org-to-org conflict between any other orgs: Most of the playerbase doesn't want org-based conflicts. This is why city raiding has taken brutal nerfing after brutal nerfing and why there's no serious War system.
There are just too many non-combatants in most organizations, and the non-combatant quality of life goes down the crapper pretty quickly when you give people like me/Septus/Rasca/Mathiaus/Kryss/Menoch reasons to attack their org. I'm pretty sure that Conquest smashing Battle Mind flat isn't going to make the game more fun for anybody involved on their side of the fight, but I'm also pretty sure that any kind of serious conflict system is going to see it happen almost immediately.
And not having org-based conflict is completely fine. I understand why organizations don't like it and why players opt out. Sects, however, are accessory to main organizations, and presumably the benefits of shrines are designed to be completely opt-in on the sect's behalf.
That begs the question - what is the point of this shrine system, and all of these entirely PvP relics? Why bother having defiling be a thing at all when it requires a sect to go 20+ hours without sanctifying any shrines to even have a chance of defiling one down? Why cap the PvE benefits so low that there are negligible returns after only two months? Why is it considered a potentially bad thing to have players actively interested in working towards benefits? It isn't as if Leechwood's shrines sprung up overnight. This has been a concentrated effort on our side for weeks and weeks now, and it feels like we're pulling teeth in order to have a discussion about where this is heading.
Realistically, it's not our decision, and there's no real power we have here. But I'm just trying to point out that, as a group of players trying to play the game, we feel like we're hitting nothing but obstacles and all of our questions are getting deflected or half-answered. If it's intentionally obscure and vague, fine, but that's going to cause people to lose interest when they become frustrated over the lack of a real point or direction. It feels like a missed opportunity to engage what could potentially be the last bastion of player-driven roleplay because of a lack of clarity.
So, I've not really wanted to comment up to this point, as I've not really had much opportunity to do the dropping a shrine from start to finish thing. Now that I have, here are my thoughts:
It is both too hard and too easy to drop shrines. It is essentially "will person x log in every hour to defile my shrine, and can I do the same to negate his/her progress". This gets tiring very quickly and basically means if you don't have a schedule (work/school/whatever) that permits for hopping on for a couple minutes out of every hour, you will not be able to win a protracted shrine battle if the aggressor is willing to stretch it out over days, and if you do have a schedule that permits it stretching it out over days is basically trivial. Once people figure this out, shrines are going to become a massive drag very quickly. After dropping the one from yesterday, it is pretty evident that the main gating factor is tedium once people reach burnout, and that's not really a gating factor when you have people determined enough.
On the flip side, its not that fun for the aggressor either for basically the same reasons. Log in, defile shrine, set your alarm for 60 minutes, essentially. (This is exactly the process I used yesterday.)
The system can definitely be fun though. Last night we got some really big fights over the shrines when defiling started, but people burned out quickly after a while (just the nature of the beast - most people do not want to fight for hours on end nonstop). Additionally, people kind of realised that we'd defiled already, and even if they beat us the best they could hope was to undo our damage (and then we'd just defile again). That kind of promotes a "why bother" attitude after defiling or sanctifying, I think.
Some thoughts about how it could be made more engaging for all parties (because I definitely think it could be great fun):
- You can only defile or sanctify once every 3 (this could even go up to 5 reallistically) hours. One hour is too short and people hit burnout capacity super quickly. Would obviously need to scale the defiling/sanctifying values to account for the increase.
- After a defile or sanctify, the shrine could be vulnerable for 15 minutes to the opposite (so if I defile unspeakables shrine, they get x minutes in which they can sanctify it, and if they sanctify it, I get x minutes to redefile). By having the cd just reset after a defile or sanctify, its basically who can out-attrition the other person (an hour is a long time to have to camp a shrine to stop a resanctify/defile, and then it just starts all over again). There is no reward for winning an engagement, because the aggressor/defender will just throw themselves at you until you get bored or their team logs off out of frustration. Ideally, the 15 minutes would scale down after each successive defile/sanctify (so if I defiled the shrine and it got sanctified in the next 15 minutes, you'd only get ten to redefile again, etc). Some form of limit on the window of opportunity would go a long way though for both sides.
- There probably needs to be a cap on how many shrines you can drop in x amount of time. Faith/belief isn't really a limiting factor when we have people like Shou/Karyn/Selthis upkeeping the sect by themselves. Otherwise sooner or later I figure we'll see a situation where the big kid on the block just goes around smashing every shrine they can because why not.
- Lastly, I think there is room to make people want to fight in shrine rooms (without feeling like they're just opening themselves to the relic hammer of doom). It could be neat if you killed someone in the shrine room from the sect who last defiled it, the shrine regained some integrity (like 1% or something), and if a sect member died in the shrine room, it'd decrease by the same amount. Currently you'll never see anyone actually fight on an enemy shrine if they see decent relics in it, because you're opening yourself up to massive risk with no potential reward. I think this'd work better than straight up buffing relics to work outside of the shrine room.
It was really easy to bash up belief during the great hunt. It is painstakingly slow to bash up belief now. Even in the power bashing sects. (And really, it's not fair to expect 2 or 3 people in a sect to keep up all the belief, even assuming your sect/cult has the benefit of those power bashers).
I am wondering if there is a way to decouple personal "faith" from overall "belief" when it comes to offering corpses/gold, so that generating overall belief for the sect/cult is easier, while still keeping the personal faith bit (i.e., cap on access to rituals) in check.
Like right now, I bash out Area X and get 50 corpses. Those 50 corpses are worth a base 15,000 belief (22,500 if I have a favour). That offering replenishes 15% of my personal faith, but gives my sect/cult a measly .15% belief. Maybe make it so my offering gives more to the overall belief but doesn't necessarily change the rate at which I regenerate/replenish personal faith.
Or maybe come up with some other way we can generate belief, rather than through gold/corpses. At the end of the day, however, one of the big problems with any sort of system that has a gating cost to it is that there is only a small subset of the population willing to do the work to get past that hurdle. If you are in an org that is lucky enough to have those people who are willing to put in the work/time/effort to do it, great. If you're not, then you are kind of out of luck. I don't know how you adequately address this problem though, of trying to "engage" people to do things, but I think we all know at this point that "bashing" is not a very exciting gating mechanism for the majority of the population.
What I hate about shrines (and what I am absolutely positive Wysrias has addressed previously in this thread) is that they require BASHING at every phase of their existence and usage (like pretty much everything else sect-related). I play Imperian because it is the least "grindy" IRE game. It still is, mostly, but everything about sects seems to be a step back into "grind" mode. Also, interestingly, the more shrines you have, the more vulnerable you become to this whole reverting to a cult thing, too. If a few key power bashers go inactive for any reason, for any appreciable amount of time, and you have an extensive shrine network, it seems like you're pretty screwed from what Eoghan mentioned yesterday.
The only fun part is the actual shrine skirmishes, which could be even better, yes. I almost wish shrines just "existed" and were something you could capture and use, rather than yet another thing that requires enormous piles of dead bodies to build or destroy. I also wish you could swap out relics, at least occasionally (I understand that it would be bad to allow this to be done on the fly). But really, I just don't care about shrines right now, at all, and being in a small sect, I certainly hope we don't build any more (we have a whole two, and I don't care at all if we lose them).
I wouldn't say screwed if you have an extensive shrine network. Our upkeep isn't that high, and I haven't been on lately. I don't think it is even a full 1% per month. Which is trivial for the most part. You're screwed if everyone goes inactive including the leader obviously, but that's the risk you take with the sect.
I've included below some ideas that we've been passing around with regard to belief gains and shrine battles. These are just ideas at this stage, and we're really interested in your feedback to help separate the good ideas from the bad. Once we get a feel for where people stand we will look at these further to figure out what to change.
In addition, please let us know any specific thoughts on relics (both the new and the old) that you may have. This includes any problems with specific relics or the relic system in general. We'll address relics and their powers after these changes.
Defile/Sanctify Shrine Changes:
- Immunity for 5 hours from further defile or sanctify attempts (Timer in VIEWSHRINE)
- Effect and cost of sanctify/defile each increased 3x.
- 15 minute window to undo the last effect with your own. Window repeats for each side, but gets shorter each back and forth.
Crowd Control:
- Opposing sect defined by last sect to defile shrine.
- Opposing sect gets notice for sanctify attempts on opposed shrines.
- Opposing sect clears after 25 hours of no defiles.
- Sect can declare war on 3 shrines concurrently.
- Cannot defile a fourth shrine until:
1. Victory on one of the original shrines
2. 25 hour clear period has passed.
Belief and Faith Gain:
- No belief/faith loss on death.
- All XP gains from quests, bashings, and PvP generates belief.
- PvP belief gains are scaled based on how much you kill that player. Similar to normal XP gains in PvP.
- Multiplier on faith/belief gain when participating in PvP in a shrine room.
- Multiplier on faith/belief gain based on time spentsay in a shrine room.
Relic Effects
- We will address relics powers after these changes.
While we're on the topic of improving shrines/sects/cults, can we please add the ability for sects/cults to (1) hold referendums (if this has not already been implemented, i think Arakis was asking for this); and (2) for sects/cults to be able to bounty (I believe Theophilus was asking for this).
If we are going to encourage sect conflict as another form of org based conflict, there needs to be a mechanism in place to make it like the other org-based offenses where it's one death per offense.
In case you've missed the announce posts, the shrine, belief, and sect changes discussed above (including those mentioned by Ultrix) have been implemented. We'll be working on the amount of belief gained through the XP mechanism, and potentially tweaking it. So if your numbers suddenly change you know why.
As promised earlier, we'll be looking towards relics. Just as part of the shrine changes, we noticed that winter and summer were not properly working (ie not working at all) and we hopefully fixed that now. RESISTS CHECK should identify them as separate entries if you test it out.
I'll also point out that we added three PvE relics that apply area wide. Please be sure to let us know if those are things that are generally of interest or not. It's a bit hard making true PvE relics as a lot of things that I wanted to change for PvE purposes would have had unintentional PvP changes as well.
Finally if you have thoughts on the frequency and type of relic drops it'd be good to hear your thoughts on those as well.
Been meaning to say, dropping the belief loss (as in, dropping it like a dirty diaper) was huge for me. Pretty much gave me the game I'd enjoyed playing back.
So now that it seems that people are using shrines a bit more with the changes to the shrine fights, I'd like to look a bit more closely at relics. To that end, can people let me know (either in game or here) what they see as the biggest problems with the current relics are. Here are a few you can choose from to get the conversation started (feel free to add your own)
My sect doesn't have enough shrines to make relics useful
Having relic effects be room-wide is not useful (e.g. they should be _____-wide)
The relic powers aren't useful for what I want (e.g. I want _______)
Relics are too hard to get (e.g. all I get are wayfaring)
Cool downs make the relics not useful
I don't like the relic concept (I'd prefer _______)
They take too much work for their worth
They disrupt combat balance too much, I'd never fight in a room with relics/there's no reason to fight in a room with relics
2. Having relic effects be room-wide is not useful, some should have an effect for, at most, adjacent rooms. There are a million escape skills, and a large amount of them bypass walls. It's too easy to just flip out of a room if you see someone activate anything remotely useful.
4. Rare relics are too too hard to get, we've killed major named bosses a plethora of times, and I think conquest altogether only has <10 rare relics that we won't even use because "it might not be useful in this room and we won't get another one". Not to mention, the majority of those have been gained because of the high number rule: lots of minor bosses and powerful area mobs killed.
8. Some disrupt combat balance too much, and I don't think I've ever been in a situation where we've had to fight on a shrine with combat relics in it. Ranged combat is pretty useful, and it's also easy to pull the enemies into an adjacent room and just fight there instead.
edit: also, I wanted the consumption relic to be a fun thing, but it just works too slowly to even matter.
A point that's not been brought up yet (as far as I know) is that the passive relics are just way, way better. It kind of plays into the cooldown issue. I know that's been a major point that's come up whenever we've discussed what relics to use in our shrines; do we want something that's always on, or something that someone can burn 3+ seconds of equilibrium plus has a cooldown. Its just more practical to have the thing that will always be doing work for you, even if its not as flashy as the infinite redemption or damage magnifiers, etc.
The major problem with the relic system is that any relic powerful enough to be worth using is going to be powerful enough that I will refuse to fight against it. This even applies to the relics that apply to the entire room; if the relic puts me at a disadvantage I just won't fight against it because I generally don't have to fight against it.
Other problems:
Too difficult to get useful relics with any reliability, and the one-shot nature of relics means that we're very wary of 'wasting' a relic on miscellaneous bashing area shrine #6.
It is frustrating to have the only relic access be through EVEN MORE BASHING.
Shrines are really only primary conflict sites every 5 hours and only for a short window, which can makes potent cooldown relics REALLY potent. Who cares if I can only use it once every six hours? That's every other defile period, and that's pretty huge.
"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."
Perhaps this is a horrible idea, because I am not familiar with relics, their pros and cons, etc., but I figured I'd throw it out there anyway.
If relics in rooms are too powerful to the point where nobody will ever fight in a room with them (which makes them kinda useless), what if instead you were able to interact with them to get a weak-ish buff for a short amount of time? That way we want people in the relic room to interact with them once at least, but then they are able to move away and still benefit from their buff, so enemies don't really get the option of "I won't fight in the relic room because OP". In fact, enemies might even be encouraged to fight in the relic room, to interfere with people interacting with the relic to get the buff, which thematically might make sense too.
What would be the best way to get the "good" relics? Drops are currently weighted random, so they appear sometimes. Would you buy relics? For how much? Combine a few into a new mystery relic? Combine a lot into a specific relic?
What do you want to do with relics you don't want? Sell them? Turn them in for belief? Combine them into new relics?
Would allowing you to use a relic as a consumable (i.e. one-shot) for the effect outside of a shrine (like a ritual) be a good or bad idea?
Which would people prefer more -- area effect (e.g. X rooms outside of the shrine) or passive effects (always on in the shrine room)?
Should I change consumption to always make Shou really drunk?
1) I think having 'good' relics be relatively rare is fine. The problem is that there are so many relics that dip into 'why would anyone ever use this' territory. The list can definitely be pruned down.
2) I think being able to use relics for other purposes would be great. "Re-rolling" relic pieces at a rate of like, 3-5 pieces for 1 random roll, would at least allow people to have a shot at the pieces they need at no expense other than using the stockpiles they have.
3) It would probably be "OK" but relics tend to range between obscene and useless, without much middle ground. Also, there's very few ways to make someone fight in a room they don't want to, so consuming the relic is basically just a flashing sign to your opponent to move one room away.
4) Passive effects will always be superior because of the nature of when relics are used. Having the always-on bonuses without having to think about them is a benefit everyone can enjoy.
Personally, if I had my druthers, I would delete the vast majority of the cooldowns and replace them with minor passive bonuses that extend to areas or a radius of the shrine. This puts more importance on arranging a shrine network to be most beneficial to the area at large, rather than securing relics in important rooms (boss fights, etc.) and the rest going to waste. The new PvE relics are a great example of this and probably have tons of room for expansion.
2) I think being able to use relics for other purposes would be great. "Re-rolling" relic pieces at a rate of like, 3-5 pieces for 1 random roll, would at least allow people to have a shot at the pieces they need at no expense other than using the stockpiles they have. 4) Passive effects will always be superior because of the nature of when relics are used. Having the always-on bonuses without having to think about them is a benefit everyone can enjoy.
2: yes. So much, yes. I have around... 350 relics, and the majority of them are sitting in my stockroom because I'll never use them. 4: Passive effects are definitely superior. I've put pvp in shrines that were being fought at, and I don't think anyone ever used the active ones because they'd always forget.
What would be the best way to get the "good" relics? Drops are currently weighted random, so they appear sometimes. Would you buy relics? For how much? Combine a few into a new mystery relic? Combine a lot into a specific relic?
What do you want to do with relics you don't want? Sell them? Turn them in for belief? Combine them into new relics?
Would allowing you to use a relic as a consumable (i.e. one-shot) for the effect outside of a shrine (like a ritual) be a good or bad idea?
Which would people prefer more -- area effect (e.g. X rooms outside of the shrine) or passive effects (always on in the shrine room)?
1: I think having good relics be rare is a good thing, but it seems... TOO rare almost? For sure, I shouldn't be loaded out on all the prime relics by now, but I feel like out of 350+ drops, I should have more than 7 of the relics I consider 'rare', especially with the 'will this be useful here' situation relics/shrines currently have. 2: like wysrias said earlier, converting them to new relics would really lower our stockpiles and make getting 'useless' relics like consumption still useful in the end. 3: This would be hard to balance, and if this was implemented, drop rates would have to be looked at or else relic consumption would increase for a short while, and then just die out because nobody has any relics. 4: I would personally like an area effect type of thing, but there are definitely types of relics that this can't be applied to, like shrinking for example. Same goes for if 'all passive' is chosen instead. A lot of things will need to be changed to make either of them reasonable
Comments
I've already whined to death about why tying relics to specific shrines at specific locations is not working, so I won't beat that dead horse any further, but I think something dramatic needs to change with how relics function if you intend on having players use them. The issue isn't adding more powers, it's the context of the powers and what the expectation of the system is. The fact that shrines really can't be defiled down and the PvP applications are so tightly controlled suggests that the major benefit is on the PvE side, but now we've hit a very real wall (whether or not it's the hard cap is kind of irrelevant when we're placing multiple level 4 shrines and seeing absolutely no change).
So really, my question is, how are sects and shrines intended to interact in the game at large? It's not really spurring any conflict, and despite the endless bash train courtesy of @Selthis, we've kind of reached the point where it's only going to be roleplay driving us. And I love my sect's roleplay, but I won't kid myself into thinking that's going to be a driving factor for everyone in the game.
Really, I would just like a real discussion about this, or maybe some more information/teasers about the plans, because I'm starting to feel like this was the end of this project and now it's going to gather dust, ala mercenaries.
IMO, you are not really going to see any serious conflict, for much the same reason that you don't see any 'serious' org-to-org conflict between any other orgs: Most of the playerbase doesn't want org-based conflicts. This is why city raiding has taken brutal nerfing after brutal nerfing and why there's no serious War system.
There are just too many non-combatants in most organizations, and the non-combatant quality of life goes down the crapper pretty quickly when you give people like me/Septus/Rasca/Mathiaus/Kryss/Menoch reasons to attack their org. I'm pretty sure that Conquest smashing Battle Mind flat isn't going to make the game more fun for anybody involved on their side of the fight, but I'm also pretty sure that any kind of serious conflict system is going to see it happen almost immediately.
"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 also wouldn't consider sect numbers to be an issue. You do know demonic has never had more than two sects, and until yesterday, spent half a year with only one? And not having org-based conflict is completely fine. I understand why organizations don't like it and why players opt out. Sects, however, are accessory to main organizations, and presumably the benefits of shrines are designed to be completely opt-in on the sect's behalf.
That begs the question - what is the point of this shrine system, and all of these entirely PvP relics? Why bother having defiling be a thing at all when it requires a sect to go 20+ hours without sanctifying any shrines to even have a chance of defiling one down? Why cap the PvE benefits so low that there are negligible returns after only two months? Why is it considered a potentially bad thing to have players actively interested in working towards benefits? It isn't as if Leechwood's shrines sprung up overnight. This has been a concentrated effort on our side for weeks and weeks now, and it feels like we're pulling teeth in order to have a discussion about where this is heading.
Realistically, it's not our decision, and there's no real power we have here. But I'm just trying to point out that, as a group of players trying to play the game, we feel like we're hitting nothing but obstacles and all of our questions are getting deflected or half-answered. If it's intentionally obscure and vague, fine, but that's going to cause people to lose interest when they become frustrated over the lack of a real point or direction. It feels like a missed opportunity to engage what could potentially be the last bastion of player-driven roleplay because of a lack of clarity.
Warning: pretty long post ahead.
So, I've not really wanted to comment up to this point, as I've not really had much opportunity to do the dropping a shrine from start to finish thing. Now that I have, here are my thoughts:
It is both too hard and too easy to drop shrines. It is essentially "will person x log in every hour to defile my shrine, and can I do the same to negate his/her progress". This gets tiring very quickly and basically means if you don't have a schedule (work/school/whatever) that permits for hopping on for a couple minutes out of every hour, you will not be able to win a protracted shrine battle if the aggressor is willing to stretch it out over days, and if you do have a schedule that permits it stretching it out over days is basically trivial. Once people figure this out, shrines are going to become a massive drag very quickly. After dropping the one from yesterday, it is pretty evident that the main gating factor is tedium once people reach burnout, and that's not really a gating factor when you have people determined enough.
On the flip side, its not that fun for the aggressor either for basically the same reasons. Log in, defile shrine, set your alarm for 60 minutes, essentially. (This is exactly the process I used yesterday.)
The system can definitely be fun though. Last night we got some really big fights over the shrines when defiling started, but people burned out quickly after a while (just the nature of the beast - most people do not want to fight for hours on end nonstop). Additionally, people kind of realised that we'd defiled already, and even if they beat us the best they could hope was to undo our damage (and then we'd just defile again). That kind of promotes a "why bother" attitude after defiling or sanctifying, I think.
Some thoughts about how it could be made more engaging for all parties (because I definitely think it could be great fun):
- You can only defile or sanctify once every 3 (this could even go up to 5 reallistically) hours. One hour is too short and people hit burnout capacity super quickly. Would obviously need to scale the defiling/sanctifying values to account for the increase.
- After a defile or sanctify, the shrine could be vulnerable for 15 minutes to the opposite (so if I defile unspeakables shrine, they get x minutes in which they can sanctify it, and if they sanctify it, I get x minutes to redefile). By having the cd just reset after a defile or sanctify, its basically who can out-attrition the other person (an hour is a long time to have to camp a shrine to stop a resanctify/defile, and then it just starts all over again). There is no reward for winning an engagement, because the aggressor/defender will just throw themselves at you until you get bored or their team logs off out of frustration. Ideally, the 15 minutes would scale down after each successive defile/sanctify (so if I defiled the shrine and it got sanctified in the next 15 minutes, you'd only get ten to redefile again, etc). Some form of limit on the window of opportunity would go a long way though for both sides.
- There probably needs to be a cap on how many shrines you can drop in x amount of time. Faith/belief isn't really a limiting factor when we have people like Shou/Karyn/Selthis upkeeping the sect by themselves. Otherwise sooner or later I figure we'll see a situation where the big kid on the block just goes around smashing every shrine they can because why not.
- Lastly, I think there is room to make people want to fight in shrine rooms (without feeling like they're just opening themselves to the relic hammer of doom). It could be neat if you killed someone in the shrine room from the sect who last defiled it, the shrine regained some integrity (like 1% or something), and if a sect member died in the shrine room, it'd decrease by the same amount. Currently you'll never see anyone actually fight on an enemy shrine if they see decent relics in it, because you're opening yourself up to massive risk with no potential reward. I think this'd work better than straight up buffing relics to work outside of the shrine room.
Defile/Sanctify Shrine Changes: - Immunity for 5 hours from further defile or sanctify attempts (Timer in VIEWSHRINE) - Effect and cost of sanctify/defile each increased 3x. - 15 minute window to undo the last effect with your own. Window repeats for each side, but gets shorter each back and forth. Crowd Control: - Opposing sect defined by last sect to defile shrine. - Opposing sect gets notice for sanctify attempts on opposed shrines. - Opposing sect clears after 25 hours of no defiles. - Sect can declare war on 3 shrines concurrently. - Cannot defile a fourth shrine until: 1. Victory on one of the original shrines 2. 25 hour clear period has passed. Belief and Faith Gain: - No belief/faith loss on death. - All XP gains from quests, bashings, and PvP generates belief. - PvP belief gains are scaled based on how much you kill that player. Similar to normal XP gains in PvP. - Multiplier on faith/belief gain when participating in PvP in a shrine room. - Multiplier on faith/belief gain based on time spentsay in a shrine room. Relic Effects - We will address relics powers after these changes.4. Rare relics are too too hard to get, we've killed major named bosses a plethora of times, and I think conquest altogether only has <10 rare relics that we won't even use because "it might not be useful in this room and we won't get another one". Not to mention, the majority of those have been gained because of the high number rule: lots of minor bosses and powerful area mobs killed.
8. Some disrupt combat balance too much, and I don't think I've ever been in a situation where we've had to fight on a shrine with combat relics in it. Ranged combat is pretty useful, and it's also easy to pull the enemies into an adjacent room and just fight there instead.
edit: also, I wanted the consumption relic to be a fun thing, but it just works too slowly to even matter.
The major problem with the relic system is that any relic powerful enough to be worth using is going to be powerful enough that I will refuse to fight against it. This even applies to the relics that apply to the entire room; if the relic puts me at a disadvantage I just won't fight against it because I generally don't have to fight against it.
Other problems:
"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."
2) I think being able to use relics for other purposes would be great. "Re-rolling" relic pieces at a rate of like, 3-5 pieces for 1 random roll, would at least allow people to have a shot at the pieces they need at no expense other than using the stockpiles they have.
3) It would probably be "OK" but relics tend to range between obscene and useless, without much middle ground. Also, there's very few ways to make someone fight in a room they don't want to, so consuming the relic is basically just a flashing sign to your opponent to move one room away.
4) Passive effects will always be superior because of the nature of when relics are used. Having the always-on bonuses without having to think about them is a benefit everyone can enjoy.
Personally, if I had my druthers, I would delete the vast majority of the cooldowns and replace them with minor passive bonuses that extend to areas or a radius of the shrine. This puts more importance on arranging a shrine network to be most beneficial to the area at large, rather than securing relics in important rooms (boss fights, etc.) and the rest going to waste. The new PvE relics are a great example of this and probably have tons of room for expansion.
Yes.
2: yes. So much, yes. I have around... 350 relics, and the majority of them are sitting in my stockroom because I'll never use them.
4: Passive effects are definitely superior. I've put pvp in shrines that were being fought at, and I don't think anyone ever used the active ones because they'd always forget.
1: I think having good relics be rare is a good thing, but it seems... TOO rare almost? For sure, I shouldn't be loaded out on all the prime relics by now, but I feel like out of 350+ drops, I should have more than 7 of the relics I consider 'rare', especially with the 'will this be useful here' situation relics/shrines currently have.
2: like wysrias said earlier, converting them to new relics would really lower our stockpiles and make getting 'useless' relics like consumption still useful in the end.
3: This would be hard to balance, and if this was implemented, drop rates would have to be looked at or else relic consumption would increase for a short while, and then just die out because nobody has any relics.
4: I would personally like an area effect type of thing, but there are definitely types of relics that this can't be applied to, like shrinking for example. Same goes for if 'all passive' is chosen instead. A lot of things will need to be changed to make either of them reasonable