Speaking as fairly a non-pvp oriented player who does sometimes pvp. I think it would be more interested to remove the open pvp on champion status. Then it would be more of a bonus for when you are PVPing, gaining bones and taking away bones. While not leaving you open to the goon squad of 3 people chasing you around to kill you when you just want to bash or do other things.
The only point of Champion is to play into a PvP system, and the only reason there's a bashing streak is because it's a measure of how long you can bash before another Champion kills you.
You're basically saying "Please give me double experience all the time for no cost".
"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."
Champion makes you open pk and gives you double xp. If it was just double xp, it'd be a free double xp bonus on 100% of the time. If you remove the double xp and remove the open pk aspects, champion status ceases to have any purpose.
Like Sumie, I am a non pvp player, who every now and then likes to try in. I suck, I know- I can not code, I have no combat awareness. But Champion has never been something I went for. I hit level 105 about 6 months ago, and all my xp since then has gone into spirit drops. Gaining xp after 100 just never seemed a huge deal, and I am in a sect that puts up shrines in random areas. I am not a huge basher, though I get into moods where I will bash for hours. Double XP for me, is not a draw, being open PK not a draw as I cant fight myself out of a paperbag.
A toggle on Champion. If I could get champion, but know for 2 hours will be a role playing event in the Bards guild. That I could shut this off, without sacrificing what is currently going on. This is not wanting to be bashing and Septus comes find me in Demon's Pass, and wants to kill for champion and toggling it off because he arrives. This is me, having different sides to my character.
I am sure most know I sit in one place a lot of time, I do not hide, I do no mimic. This is where I work on designs, files, where I sit and RP with people. But, I do want to get into PVP slowly. I have no chance when Khizan comes in and does a gig in front me. Or Septus, Jules, Raini come in with thieving aspirations. Best I can do is get out of the way as fast as possible.
This current event stage. There is no sense of me bashing up to Champion, to get it, to know its flagged to others who know I am not one to PK and easy to kill. I am dead within 5 minutes of getting it, the XP bonus is no use to me, and all I would be doing it for is to experience the event. I understand this is a PVP game in the root, but so many of us are here 90 percent for other reasons.
I liked gathering bones, on dodging the guard, and even trying to figure out if I could be anti theft. This stage, I don't see myself participating in, which saddens me.
The plagues, as they are now, are doomed to fail, honestly. There's just not enough Champions to run it without resorting to blatant farming. Extra bashing experience isn't enough to convince people to go free PK, because, well, they're jumping into the deep end of a pool filled with sharks. If you want it to work, you're going to have to change Champion status, because right now there's just not enough Champions. Without some kind of teamfarming, how do you expect an AM champion to gather bones from 10 different Champions?
Some ideas I had:
Champion status no longer depends on bashing or has an apprentice system; when you sacrifice/enter root you become a full Champion immediately. Champion still grants an EXP bonus, though.
Champion is no longer removed when you're killed by a Champion. Instead, your Champion kill streaks are reset and your Champion status is suppressed for 60 minutes, or until you make a champion kill. While suppressed, you're not free PK and you can't use Boneyards or whatnot, and you still get the experience bonus.
Champions are only free PK for other Champions. If you want to take the kills, you need to have some skin in the game, IMO.
The idea here is that making Champion status a permanent thing should result in more Champions, because people won't just forget about picking it up after deaths and the like. Suppressing Champion status after a death while keeping the experience bonus means that you might get more non-combatant Champions, because after a death they'll get an hour of peace to bash while still getting the bashing benefits. One death an hour for a major bashing bonus is a big benefit that would still be worth taking for a lot of people. A bashing bonus for 30 seconds before Septus launches an orbital strike at you is "why bother?".
And that last part is really the big problem with the Champion system as it is now. Bashers, lowbies, and general non-combatants have no reason to even consider the Champion system because it draws a ton of fire and then you lose all the benefits immediately. If you want to make the Champion system workable, that's the problem you're going to have to rectify.
I like these ideas but perhaps the suppressed champion status should last longer than one hour.
This is a late post that i don't expect to get read but I'll try. The event was around 6 months ago or so, maybe a little longer since i can't recall the exact date it all happened, since then there was a brief surge in champions that died down quite quickly. Recently i checked the champion list because I am cheap and will hostage someone for a quick champion kill to get a bone. As of this post we have 7 champions and a handful of apprentice champions. And since the start of this event the boneyard made by septus has around 42 bones. The problem is either not enough champions and the requirements for getting a bone is just straight PK, a non PK but slightly harder PVE way to get a bone would be great, also it should have a cool down so people cant grab champion and spam bones like crazy. Thats one way to fix one of the problems. Also AM wants its pet back so it would be great to see this addressed.
Never give up, never surrender, and if you have to die, take some of them with you.
This system is for the elite PK-ers, and within the context of how it's set up I am not only okay with that, but fully support it. "Elitist" things can be very, very bad, and sometimes, they can be awesome, and I think this one has the potential to be awesome, even if, strictly speaking, it's not for "me". So I am not crazy about adding a PVE way (as much as I miss Mr. Pebbles' face).
I had sort of jokingly suggested that at contested shardfalls where sufficient inter-circle blood is spilled, a few harvestable bones could show up - but I wasn't really joking. It's the only thing I've thought of so far that meaningfully addresses the problem of bone supply in a way that feels like it honors the spirit of this whole boneyard thing, and while many of the bones might be procured (and at times defended) by a whole circle's PK-ers, the boneyards themselves would still feel like feathers in the caps of a circle's top 1-2 fighters. Plus I almost can't think of a better way to make shardfalls amazing.
You could make it so the bones can't be harvested until the last shard is gone, too, so the circle really has to control the area. As for how much inter-circle blood would need to be spilled, I think there is somewhat less "we don't ever want that circle to get a plague", and more "I would just like to see a plague and fight over it sometime" now, but I do think you'd still want to think about not encouraging people to strategically opt out of fights so that "the other side won't get bones" - so fairly low bar, but not one that is super easy to cheese with a buddy and have any sort of plausible deniability. And at that point, all sides might as well come back and fight as hard as they can, as long as they can (that's good).
This system is for the elite PK-ers, and within the context of how it's set up I am not only okay with that, but fully support it. "Elitist" things can be very, very bad, and sometimes, they can be awesome, and I think this one has the potential to be awesome, even if, strictly speaking, it's not for "me". So I am not crazy about adding a PVE way (as much as I miss Mr. Pebbles' face).
I had sort of jokingly suggested that at contested shardfalls where sufficient inter-circle blood is spilled, a few harvestable bones could show up - but I wasn't really joking. It's the only thing I've thought of so far that meaningfully addresses the problem of bone supply in a way that feels like it honors the spirit of this whole boneyard thing, and while many of the bones might be procured (and at times defended) by a whole circle's PK-ers, the boneyards themselves would still feel like feathers in the caps of a circle's top 1-2 fighters. Plus I almost can't think of a better way to make shardfalls amazing.
You could make it so the bones can't be harvested until the last shard is gone, too, so the circle really has to control the area. As for how much inter-circle blood would need to be spilled, I think there is somewhat less "we don't ever want that circle to get a plague", and more "I would just like to see a plague and fight over it sometime" now, but I do think you'd still want to think about not encouraging people to strategically opt out of fights so that "the other side won't get bones" - so fairly low bar, but not one that is super easy to cheese with a buddy and have any sort of plausible deniability. And at that point, all sides might as well come back and fight as hard as they can, as long as they can (that's good).
I'd take this even further and say that bones should appear any time there is sufficient blood spilled with all three circles involved. We could have a bone-guardian of some sort who needs to be engaged to harvest them (much like the rift event in the ToA)
I will talk this over with Dec some and see if we can make some adjustments. I would like to see more plagues popping up.
From my message box today:
t's unfortunate that they never slowed down the CD on hitting someone's vineyard. There is no way I'm going to be able to find bones faster than people can take them from my boneyard while I'm asleep or at work. I'm going to bring up that it's still a ***** system on the forums, but I expect by the time anything is changed my boneyard will probably be empty. Worst of all, I wake up to 5 messages a day about it and end up getting spammed by it the whole time I'm at work. Ugh.
This has already been brought up several times (most recently by Septus), but the fact that much of the boneyard system to date has been figuring out ways to game the system so that you can keep a boneyard intact long enough for 100 bones is currently more problematic than simply increasing the bone count.
“We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
@Sadey: I don't actually have a boneyard, I do what everyone else does and put the bones in a stockroom because the decay time on them is still really long.
@Sadey: I don't actually have a boneyard, I do what **almost** everyone else does and put the bones in a stockroom because the decay time on them is still really long.
RIP not cyclops plague that I was hoping to birth into the world. =(
Edit: On top of the numerous complaints that have been leveled against this system, per HELP BONEYARDS: "This can only be done once per hour, and enables your enemies to have PK rights on you." This line is sort of funny, since the message you get for someone removing a bone doesn't tell you who took it, and you have 0 way of figuring out if you're not there right as it's happening. That's really silly...
I will talk this over with Dec some and see if we can make some adjustments. I would like to see more plagues popping up.
Here's my big problems with it:
Boneyards are too hard to find. You have to scour the entire world to find one without iluma, and they're going to be in the most remote and unknown corners their owners can find. That is, when their owners are not outright cheating the system by, say, building their boneyard on Eldreth's private clouds(*cough*Baasche*cough*). If Boneyards are to be a conflict mechanism their primary defense shouldn't be hiding them and hoping nobody finds them, because once they're found their primary defense is down and then...
...it's far too easy to attack a boneyard. Stealing one bone per hour means that you can make huge gains against an enemy during their off hours. If your boneyard is found while it is fairly small, it can very easily disappear before you get a chance to respond. If it's large when it's found, it can lose days of work in the space of a night and a workday. This means that..
... when your boneyard is found your best course of action is to completely break down your boneyard and move it elsewhere. If you're in a position where you need to fight about your boneyard, you've already failed Boneyards 101 and you need to take your ball and go back home. This is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want in a conflict system. And all that is JUST the problems in keeping a boneyard up long enough to summon a plague. Once you actually summon the plague you run into the part where...
... even a successful boneyard culiminates in a 4 hour long "defend the plague" window, which means that plagues need to either be cheesed with token houses and the like, or they need to be off-hours attacks.
This biggest problem here, though, is that I don't know how to fix this. It's basically impossible to design a system like that that isn't crazy vulnerable to the off-hours attacks and all that jazz.
TBH, I think you should just remove champion bones and make plagues into a shard system. High shard costs would burn up excess shards and make shardfalls more relevant.
"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."
1) The cool down for stealing bones will be increased. Initial thought would be to 5-6 hours.
2) The decay time on bones outside of boneyards would be decreased significantly so they couldn't be hidden in stock rooms
3) Still no cool down for owners removing a bone from a boneyard, but there will be about a 1/3 to 1/2 chance that the bone will break in the process, so moving a boneyard will be expensive
4) Boneyards will be easier to find with a perception skill or something similar
5) Champions on a kill streak will drop more bones when killed
I think Iluv's suggestion regarding removing apprentice entirely is also a good idea.
Edit: Upon further review, I like Khizan's suggestions at http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/comment/32720/#Comment_32720 a lot. Really solid way to get more people into the system, which would generate more bones, which would fix the problem of having such ridiculous bone costs.
I like all these new implementations, or the sound of them anyway (as someone who doesn't normally utilize the Champion system), but I noticed that anyone can use the BONEYARDS command. I would suggest limiting the command to Champions to incentivize becoming a Champion to properly participate in the system.
I like them. One thing I think would be nice was if the champion list didn't include inactive players: given its way longer now, figuring out who is actually an active champion isn't trivial at a glance and that'll probably only get worse as time goes on.
It already excludes inactive players. The full list of champions including inactive champions is much much longer than what is displayed with CHAMPION LIST. The people you see have all logged on in the last month.
EDIT: I'd also point out you can set champions to have prefixes/suffixes/different colors with who colours too.
Hey, so currently your own circle taking bones out puts the boneyard on cooldown for five hours. I got Ultrix to get one out to time messages and such and now noone else can take a bone out of my boneyard for five hours (looks like around 70 seconds for those interested). I'm guessing that probably isn't intended. She's not champion either for reference, not sure if non champions being able to take bones out is by design.
Could we maybe change the Championing ritual up to not need two people? As it is, everybody just uses the 'demonic champion root because you don't need to get a second person to help you and you don't die if it messes up.
"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 like all these new implementations, or the sound of them anyway (as someone who doesn't normally utilize the Champion system), but I noticed that anyone can use the BONEYARDS command. I would suggest limiting the command to Champions to incentivize becoming a Champion to properly participate in the system.
I have a feeling "participation" was exactly the intent, and I don't like it either, but for a different reason than Caelya is pointing out. Right now the BONEYARD command forces -someone- (or someones) to basically do grunt work to find boneyards. So if Septus doesn't do all of the grunt work himself, every derp in AM is going to fan out and spam BONEYARD, and then, uh, cityfavours all around for "Jules is the best BONEYARD grunt". I am all for participation, but this feels extremely forced. If you simply take it away though, as Caelya suggests, now Septus has to do all of that crap gruntwork himself. Even if AM REALLY wanted to support him in finding the yards, we're probably not going to go Champ en masse to do it because that really would be creating a huge harvest for enemy factions. I think BONEYARDS should just give a precise location. Maybe give brand spanking new boneyards a short "grace" period (not so much of being actually graced, as perhaps not showing up on BONEYARDS) or something so they can't be immediately pinpointed and attacked. And nonchampions (still) being able to remove bones at all really surprises me in the first place, and is something I am hoping was an oversight that will be fixed either way.
Comments
The only point of Champion is to play into a PvP system, and the only reason there's a bashing streak is because it's a measure of how long you can bash before another Champion kills you.
You're basically saying "Please give me double experience all the time for no cost".
"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."
Well, that doesn't really make sense.
Champion makes you open pk and gives you double xp. If it was just double xp, it'd be a free double xp bonus on 100% of the time. If you remove the double xp and remove the open pk aspects, champion status ceases to have any purpose.
Here's my big problems with it:
This biggest problem here, though, is that I don't know how to fix this. It's basically impossible to design a system like that that isn't crazy vulnerable to the off-hours attacks and all that jazz.
TBH, I think you should just remove champion bones and make plagues into a shard system. High shard costs would burn up excess shards and make shardfalls more relevant.
"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."
Edit: Upon further review, I like Khizan's suggestions at http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/comment/32720/#Comment_32720 a lot. Really solid way to get more people into the system, which would generate more bones, which would fix the problem of having such ridiculous bone costs.
"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."