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Obelisks.
After some discussion with various people I realized that nobody really likes the current "Obelisk-system" and thought it would be a good idea to see what could be done about it. Basically this is the main complains I've come across about the current obelisk system:
1: 60 (even the "none opposition" timer is to long) min is to long for capturing.
2: Outposts makes it clunky and requires multiple attempts of capturing which is already taking to long.
3: Lacking energy for crafting a bomb when you finally have enough people to fight for one.
4: Something something (we completed all researches already and there is shard attunement) effort with the entire thing..
First off, the timers for capturing the obelisks could be lowered into something like 15 min. 15 min seems like a decent amount of time, long enough to allow a defence and short enough to allow people to join it without feeling bored.
Secondly, outposts does makes it boring, imo, but this is also because of the points mentioned above. One idea I've thought about is to replace outposts with protections that costs resources (I'll get back to that). I.E: Look at how long AM held the truesight obelisk.
Thirdly, hardcaps like generator-energy required to craft chargebombs are not fun. Instead we should move towards being able to use resources / gold in order to launch an obelisk attack when you gather enough people willing to do it.
Finally, almost all circles have completed all researches involving obelisks and with the amounts of shards present it became more or less pointless to really work for them.
Upkeep/Costs:
To maintain an obelisk at this point requires corpses that you put in the city generator for energy. It takes little effort (considering the amounts of PvE-people out there) and it doesn't help with draining resources. I believe that draining resources is necessary to keep the system interesting, i.e shard researches and now lately the caravans.
The biggest error with the systems brought in is that they are "learn and forget" systems. Everything is there to make it sustainable but for some reason we have permanent things without upkeep -> Cities finish their stuff and then horde resources until something new is released and finish that off in a week or two (like how its been with AM to be honest).
Obelisks should cost an upkeep in terms of resources we have available at this point. It could be shards / quartz / gold (npc corpses is not a good enough one). It could be a IG year cost or IG monthly cost.
Spending resources for buffs/debuffs:
Outposts could be deleted and replaced with different protections that you can purchase with shards/quartz/gold and instead of "complete block of capturing" be less impacting. This is brainstorming but I find it kinda awesome if it would be possible to purchase buffs/debuffs that's active on the island that is currently attacked. Ex: Gravity: Give all attackers the slow movement debuff, and so on and so forth, the idea would be that the defenders even though perhaps smaller in numbers could spend resources / gold to buff their team into defending.
Summary:
Obelisks are awesome in theory, not that awesome in practice.
1) Make obelisk-capturing way faster. 15min should be enough if no opposition.
2) Add an upkeep cost that matters and either remove or keep the current one.
3) Remove the outpost system and replace it with protections/buffs that can be purchased with resources (gold/shards/quartz).
4) Rework chargebombs into being craftable with resources rather than generator energy.
If you had the patience to read this far, awesome! Thoughts/ideas?
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Comments
Same with mercy, pity, or kumquat.
While this is correct I do believe that it is the flipside of the points I raised. Why is it the optimal way to capture the obelisk? Basically because the stopped timer / slower timer will at times be enough for some people to realize they don't have time for it. Equally you can more or less always capture an obelisk if you have X amount of players around at a decent time just because the fact that your circle is currently the largest (basically this is why I wanted some kind of buff/debuff system for funs). What I am after here is trying to move away from learn / capture and forget. Also, we need more ways of draining resources so that we somewhere get a system that is not so permanent..
It is a bit tricky with the buffs from obelisks because they are so tied up with the shard-bonuses and attunement really makes it so much easier to just spend those 10blue/1red to get the full effect for 1 hour @Jules.
"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 agree @Khizan, which is why I think that if there is no good way to solve the overlaying problem with obelisks at the moment then what harm could more obelisk-swapping do (faster capture and none outpost protections)? At best it would bring some more conflict in terms of bounties or whatnot, perhaps it could find the way to some small-scale battles. In general it wouldn't solve the mechanism but it could perhaps work as a "hotfix" to make things move a bit?