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Champions/Boneyards

SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭

So now that we've had the system for a while and the big issue about being able to guard boneyards with siege is resolved, I figured I'd post some feedback. I think there are a few big issues, but nothing too problematic with the underlying mechanics.

Firstly, could we make bones decay outside of a boneyard? Currently people are just stashing their bones in shops and stuff (presumably until they can amass enough for building/pushing to 100 all at once). This seems pretty counter to the intent of the system. I assume this is to allow people to work towards a boneyard over time, and not have half their bones decay on them when they're just getting near. Maybe a better thing to do here would be to drop the bones to build a boneyard to 5, and set the decay time to 15 rl days or something. Bones in a boneyard could just not decay. A lower buy in is probably a good thing in general, which leads me onto my second concern.

A hundred bones is a pretty crazy amount. I get that its meant to be very difficult, but given that these are contestable pk objectives, we're probably talking months before we see one come to fruition, best case. There just aren't enough champions for a hundred bones to be a reallistic target. You could cut this down to 50 and it'd still be very, very hard if someone had a mind to stop you reaching that goal. I get the impression from most people that they don't really like making a push to finish a boneyard, because its kind of unreallistic even if you're absolutely dead set on it currently.

The only way this is actually reallistically doable is actually one of my biggest issues with the system. You can just farm allied champions back and forth endlessly to produce  90% of your bones. This is kind of lame and is probably going to become the go to long term; could we make it so a single person's corpse can only produce a bone every hour? (Or barring that, make it so you can't remove bones from people in your circle, which might help mitigate slightly.)

Finally, I assume this is a design decision, but I'm just wondering if this could get revisited: could we have some way to locate all boneyards? Even if it is something that burns like 100 shards/a champion bone from our boneyard/whatever, searching threw every room in the game to find the most obscure location someone can find to build their boneyard in is kind of bleh.

But overall, I really like the system and think it should be awesome once people start getting more invested in it.

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Comments

  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Here's my big thing: Could incendiary arrow kills against champions result in a bone being salvagable from the pieces or something? Ranger is perhaps unique in that it's the only class in the game designed around a primary kill that doesn't leave an intact body and so collecting bones as a ranger is stupidly difficult.

    "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."

  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Septus said:

    A hundred bones is a pretty crazy amount. I get that its meant to be very difficult, but given that these are contestable pk objectives, we're probably talking months before we see one come to fruition, best case. There just aren't enough champions for a hundred bones to be a reallistic target. You could cut this down to 50 and it'd still be very, very hard if someone had a mind to stop you reaching that goal. I get the impression from most people that they don't really like making a push to finish a boneyard, because its kind of unreallistic even if you're absolutely dead set on it currently.

    IMO the big reason the cost needs to be lowered is that right now the cost is so high that nobody's going to be willing to take any risks with this. It's a conflict system that's so costly to engage in that people are going to go out of their way to minimize the role that conflict plays in it. As a prime example of that, we have Eldreth and Septus, two of the least conflict-averse players in the game, both were putting their boneyards on their siegelines simply because boneyards cost so much that it's not worthwhile to build them in a more strategic location.

    It's sort of like player obelisks in that you have a conflict system where the smart play is to minimize the amount of conflict involved.

    "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."

  • EldrethEldreth Member Posts: 430 ✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2016
    Khizan said:
     As a prime example of that, we have Eldreth and Septus, two of the least conflict-averse players in the game, both were putting their boneyards on their siegelines simply because boneyards cost so much that it's not worthwhile to build them in a more strategic location.

    And let me tell you what a nice surprise it was to find out last night that indeed, cannons still will crush your face if you look at them wrong from outside city limits :(


    edit: There are probably other boneyards, but the current boneyard lanscape is something like:
    - Septus has a boneyard at the end of a siegeline, full of fellow AM bones
    - Eldreth has a boneyard at the end of a siegeline, with no bones, because demonic moved them to non-decay rooms rather than have Iniar pull a Sani and just waste siege for hours on end.
    - Other bones across three circles probably residing in non-decay rooms

    Pretty sure this wasn't the intended effect.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • JulesJules Member Posts: 1,080 ✭✭✭
    Septus' boneyard looks the way it does because boneyards were completely new and no one knew even basic mechanics like, "do I get a notification when Jules tries to steal one of my bones and I am offline, and does it give me a name?".  The fact that it hasn't grown much (or almost any), and that Eldreth also has few/no bones either means we might never get to see Mr. Pebbles again unless something changes.  
  • TheophilusTheophilus Member Posts: 784 ✭✭✭✭
    The fact that I can't harvest bones because my kill route obliterates people is kind of dumb..

    Especially since becoming a Champion only gives double exp, which is useless for me as an Aspect.
    (Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people."
    (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."

    (Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Another thing that I've noticed is that the boneyard owner can remove bones at no cooldown (no one per hour thing). This is problematic because I can just empty my boneyard and stash the bones somewhere more secure (which I've done). You probably shouldn't be able to do that, makes dodging attackers super easy since I can just clean out my yard when its on cooldown from their harvest.
  • EldrethEldreth Member Posts: 430 ✭✭✭✭
    While it is good to highlight these sorts of things, it is also disingenuous to do so only after you've personally exploited it to remove 15-20 bones if there is belief it is a bug.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm pretty sure its a design decision, not a bug. That's the kind of thing I'm pretty sure would've had to be made an exception since it works for nonowner getting of bones just fine.

    Its just one that probably should not work that way.


  • EldrethEldreth Member Posts: 430 ✭✭✭✭
    Then changing the word bug to problem in my statement keeps its original intent intact.
    “We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
    image
  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Sure. I freely admit I have no interest in setting a timer to ensure I only get a bone every hour if the system does not enforce that, in a case where it seems almost certainly that its intended that you're meant to be able to chain get the bones as the boneyard owner.
  • DecDec Member, Immortal Posts: 216 mod
    A few points --

    Owners were supposed to bypass the cool down.  Their boneyards were supposed to be destroyed if they took too many bones out, however.  This should now be fixed.  

    Bones also now decay outside of boneyards.  They should decay anywhere else.  
  • KabaalKabaal Member Posts: 303 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2016
    Can Champion be made a toggle thing? Put me back on apprentice on death, sure, but there's often no time to go to the root or altar (safely) when the fight is real.
    E: Also, people (read: me) are lazy and will be more likely to participate in it! Win!
  • KabaalKabaal Member Posts: 303 ✭✭✭
    Also! It's a bit odd that there's no way for PK to result in a champion unless an actual Champion is involved. An apprentice who does something like go on an n (3-5?) apprentice kill streak should pop a champion.
  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2016
    The current champion system does not work because it has a two tiered opt-in system.

    Currently, the buy-in begins with the player choosing to become an apprentice champion. From there the player can opt to stagnate permanently unless by accident they cross the bashing threshold or kill another champion (usually by accident).

    This creates an inadequate supply of champions.

    The buy-in should happen once; the choice of becoming an apprentice champion should lead towards inexorable crowning as a champion; likewise, delays towards champion-hood should result in degradation of progress to remove stagnation. Sadly, this would be open to the similar abuse of permanent stagnation. This means the creation of a one-tailed progression tree; that is to say, a unidirectional linearity is accepted towards progression of champion-hood but a dichotomy accepted for loss of apprentice-hood.

    Here is my proposal;
     - any Aspect will be allowed to become a Champion of their Aspect type
     - any apprentice Champion be allowed to relax their apprentice-hood; they will lose all progress towards Champion-hood
     - apprentice Champions experience a minor bonus for their increased risk of progression towards Champion-hood:
    + 50% exp gains
    + 10% reserve regeneration rate
     - apprentice Champions inexorably progress towards full Champion-hood after 14 days
     - apprentice Champions can accelerate their progress towards full Champion-hood by the following measures:
    slaying undead (current)
    slaying demons (current)
    killing a Champion (current)
    killing other apprentice Champions, +20% progress to full Champion-hood (proposed)
    generic player killing, +5% progress to full Champion-hood (proposed)
    harvesting shards (proposed)
    generic bashing, 0.4 x current rate of progress for Undead/Demons

    Champions who lose full Champion-hood should revert automatically to apprentice Champions; should they decide they have had enough for a while, they may then opt to relax their apprenticeship.

    More importantly, there needs to a greater incentive to hold Champion-hood. This incentive needs to have a u-shaped curve. On the left hand side, a perceivably greater PvE bonus, to entice non-PvPers to generate a base rate of Champion-hood; on the right hand side, a perceivably greater PvP bragging rights to generate a greater incentive to hold on to Champion-hood against other PvPers. This system would offer benefits to both types of players, with greater enticement for PvE-rs at lower ranks, and enticement for PvP-ers at higher ranks.

    Proposal:
     - a seven-tiered Champion system
     - proposed benefits that follow a u-shaped pattern:
    Champion Level 1: once gained, this rank reduces the number of blueshards required to transmute a redshard by 2, for at least the next 24 hours regardless of whether the person continues to hold Champion status
    Champion Level 2: once gained, this rank increases the longevity of smithing items by a further +20%, for at least the next 24 hours regardless of whether the person continues to hold Champion status
    Champion Level 3: once gained, this rank increases the rate of reserve regeneration by a further +10%, for at least the next 4 hours regardless of whether the person continues to hold Champion status
    Champion Level 4: once gained, this rank increases sacrificed faith by a further +50%, for at least the next 12 hours regardless of whether the person continues to hold Champion status
    Champion Level 5: only while held, this rank grants a -15% reduction in faith cost for rituals
    Champion Level 6: only while held, this rank grants an additional 2 shouts per hour, with a custom Champion shout
    Champion Level 7: only while held, this rank grants a QHONOR that ranks both the number of times this status is held, and the longest duration
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2017
    Septus said:

    A hundred bones is a pretty crazy amount. I get that its meant to be very difficult, but given that these are contestable pk objectives, we're probably talking months before we see one come to fruition, best case. There just aren't enough champions for a hundred bones to be a reallistic target. You could cut this down to 50 and it'd still be very, very hard if someone had a mind to stop you reaching that goal. I get the impression from most people that they don't really like making a push to finish a boneyard, because its kind of unreallistic even if you're absolutely dead set on it currently.

    Can we please get a look at this sooner rather than later? Feeling this now with the lower population combined with people opting out of the system.

    Raiding champ yards has been the way I expand my boneyard for the past 72hrs.. not a single Champion kill to speak of. It makes collecting 100 bones a very onerous process.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • AodanAodan Member Posts: 192 ✭✭✭
    Sarrius said:
    Septus said:

    A hundred bones is a pretty crazy amount. I get that its meant to be very difficult, but given that these are contestable pk objectives, we're probably talking months before we see one come to fruition, best case. There just aren't enough champions for a hundred bones to be a reallistic target. You could cut this down to 50 and it'd still be very, very hard if someone had a mind to stop you reaching that goal. I get the impression from most people that they don't really like making a push to finish a boneyard, because its kind of unreallistic even if you're absolutely dead set on it currently.

    Can we please get a look at this sooner rather than later? Feeling this now with the lower population combined with people opting out of the system.

    Raiding champ yards has been the way I expand my boneyard for the past 72hrs.. not a single Champion kill to speak of. It makes collecting 100 bones a very onerous process.
    lol and then you have people who raid boneyards while you sleep. 8 hours of sleep == a possibility of at least 2 bones being taken. its why I just gave up on having one and had my own team get my bones. too much of a hassle. rather just give them away honestly.

    but I also remember there was supposed to be a champion update -- after engineer(bleh) so maybe something is getting changed, etc when that comes around.
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Aodan said:
    Sarrius said:
    Septus said:

    A hundred bones is a pretty crazy amount. I get that its meant to be very difficult, but given that these are contestable pk objectives, we're probably talking months before we see one come to fruition, best case. There just aren't enough champions for a hundred bones to be a reallistic target. You could cut this down to 50 and it'd still be very, very hard if someone had a mind to stop you reaching that goal. I get the impression from most people that they don't really like making a push to finish a boneyard, because its kind of unreallistic even if you're absolutely dead set on it currently.

    Can we please get a look at this sooner rather than later? Feeling this now with the lower population combined with people opting out of the system.

    Raiding champ yards has been the way I expand my boneyard for the past 72hrs.. not a single Champion kill to speak of. It makes collecting 100 bones a very onerous process.
    lol and then you have people who raid boneyards while you sleep. 8 hours of sleep == a possibility of at least 2 bones being taken. its why I just gave up on having one and had my own team get my bones. too much of a hassle. rather just give them away honestly.

    but I also remember there was supposed to be a champion update -- after engineer(bleh) so maybe something is getting changed, etc when that comes around.
    feel like there's no reason they can't make a call on this sooner rather than after Engineer. It's a very simple numbers adjustment. 
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • AodanAodan Member Posts: 192 ✭✭✭
    edited October 2017
    I wasn't saying that they couldn't just stating that it does kinda need an overhaul/update all together
  • DecDec Member, Immortal Posts: 216 mod
    Champion boneyards have been changed to only require 50 bones to summon a plague.
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I love you @Dec
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2017

    'I have separate concerns about 'failing' something with such a high time investment, but they don't belong here.'


    I cut this out of my bug report and figured I'd just post it here instead. I think the idea of failing a summoning or a binding is steeeeeep; there's a lot of time investment in gathering bones. It should be a momentous event that isn't prone to someone's excited F-up. Here's some input on ideas I had to look at for adjustments:

    1. Pay the check at the end of the meal: I think the bones should not vanish until you successfully reach the end of a SUMMON PLAGUE channel. At the very least, I'd settle for the bones steadily depleting out of the boneyard per summoning message. There's a bunch of them and there's a significant window where I was impressed nobody interfered with me. I'm sure the world is alerted to my summoning.

    2. Put a timer on the Plague in question in PLAGUES. I'd like to know how long until I can conclude I failed.

    3. Add a message if you flunk out of your binding. I'm kind of sitting here wondering if I failed my binding - I was channeling to bind it to the Heartlands when, suddenly, it plopped down in Western Celidon and attached to the area. Perhaps I grew trigger happy and it would have kept on walking out to the Heartlands? If so, the help file needs more detail. Also, 'failing' a binding is kind of ****. If you 'fail' your binding, the plague should opt to immediately bind to your area in your favor, not in nobody's favor

    After that, I'd like to review how binding works in general. That's more complicated; I think rival champions should have reasons to interfere/ways to turn the tide to claim the plague/something. Controlled areas needs more elaboration on why I want it.. maybe we haven't discovered the benefit yet?

    Also can we elaborate on plagues in the lore? Tired of Celidon thinking I'm demonic plzkthx
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • AodanAodan Member Posts: 192 ✭✭✭
    Sarrius said:

    Also can we elaborate on plagues in the lore? Tired of Celidon thinking I'm demonic plzkthx
    What you mean you haven't been working for demonic the whole time? :p
  • DecDec Member, Immortal Posts: 216 mod
    1. The cost was put up front because we wanted to avoid (1) repeated summoning attempts if interrupted and (2) someone stopping the summoning by stealing a bone rather than attacking the champion.

    2. Summoning a plague takes less than a minute.  It should give you a continuation message every 10 seconds or so.  If it doesn't please bug.  

    3. The idea of binding is that the plague is not happy to be summoned to you. It just wants to create chaos, not bend to your will.  If you fail binding it will be aggressive to you and try to kill you.  You should get messages whether the binding succeeds or fails.  If you don't please let me know.  

    Plague binding can succeed with only one champion, but the odds are better than if you bring along friends.  The longer you attempt to bind for the higher the likelihood it will succeed. The binding window right now is about 5 minutes.  
  • LaekaLaeka Member Posts: 28 ✭✭✭
    The loss of my 100 bones upfront for messing up the channeled summoning is one of the main reasons I have opt'd out of the champion/boneyard system. A simple look destroyed literal months of gathering. Needless to say, I was pissed.

    @Sarrius idea of bones disappearing a few at a time through the summoning process would be a better option imo as well.

    @Sarrius , from when Septus grabbed his 3 plagues, there is ZERO benefit to summoning a plague except for bragging rights on PLAGUES.  The cost of time and effort to get 100 (now 50) bones has no end game benefit of any real consequence. 

    I would like to see some detail about the plagues in lore somewhere also. They have some neat attacks, etc and it would be cool to know more about them.

  • DimitriDimitri Member Posts: 338 ✭✭✭
    Hang on lemme get this straight

    You build a giant macabre trophy pile of your fallen enemies bones, and use this bone pile in a ritualistic manner to summon an angry chaotic and nigh on untameable malignant force into the world to wreak havoc on a section of the world for your own bragging rights

    How is this not demonic? It has the typical 'Badguy McNecromancer' MO written all over it.


  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2017
    Dec said:
    1. The cost was put up front because we wanted to avoid (1) repeated summoning attempts if interrupted and (2) someone stopping the summoning by stealing a bone rather than attacking the champion.

    2. Summoning a plague takes less than a minute.  It should give you a continuation message every 10 seconds or so.  If it doesn't please bug.  

    3. The idea of binding is that the plague is not happy to be summoned to you. It just wants to create chaos, not bend to your will.  If you fail binding it will be aggressive to you and try to kill you.  You should get messages whether the binding succeeds or fails.  If you don't please let me know.  

    Plague binding can succeed with only one champion, but the odds are better than if you bring along friends.  The longer you attempt to bind for the higher the likelihood it will succeed. The binding window right now is about 5 minutes.  
    1.) I'm cool with the lore making this a badass thing. That said, I find the idea of risking what took me a month to stir up very stomach-churning. With low activity and low opt in, combined with the semi-necessary gating on raiding other yards and the need to have 10! separate Champions in your yard (there aren't even 10 players that regularly become champions now..), 50 bones is a fine number but still a long grind.

    Any knucklehead with a ranged attack could stop me from my summon and then I'm out 50 bones. No thanks. Make me immune to interference during the summoning or something. I don't want my long fought PK grind dashed because of 'lore implications'.

    That last sentence is pretty much the rest of my argument, just FYI.

    2.) When I refer to a timer, I mean once the Plague has been summoned and is camping in an area. There's no indication how long it has left before a successful resolution. By this, I mean PLAGUES should have a timer that tells the world how long they have before o successfully cap an area. It should also have an indicator for 'successfully bound' and, if not, the listed summoner should not still read SARRIUS. It should read (nobody) or something.

    3.) There are no messages for failure. If you refer to my Quotes posts, I received no indication I had failed. Mid binding channel, the plague decided to plop down in Celidon. It would also have been nice to know that a plague has a 5 minute patience timer before doing whatever it likes. This goes back to my, 'i just spent an IRL month doing things the right way, why are you punishing me so heavily for lack of documentation?'. I think that even if correctly documented, the force of a Summoning Champion should linger and a plague that binds anywhere should be for the champion. 

    I'm sorry if I sound sour grapes, but I feel like my called shot on, '**** like this will keep happening' was very accurate. I do not think it was necessarily my fault that I lost my plague's potential area claim last night. Nothing about it indicated to me that I had failed until I killed my plague 5 hours later. My only indication of failure was not getting the area at the end.

    In the end, I think this is one of those places that gameplay trumps lore. Please don't litter your conflict systems with pitfalls if the buy in to that conflict system is like a month IRL of grinding.

    EDIT: to get my one plague, I had to poison the well utterly; the remaining Champion list is much smaller than Champion List would imply. The current populace is very sour on the concept. There's no encouragement to accept the risk of me jumping you. Bone diversity and bone supply are both plummetting. Plagues are going to be rare because nobody wants to play this system. :/

    Edit2: other places we lack proper documentation.. why can't I plague Necropolis? Part of me loves this figure it out yourself game for plagues, but part of me thinks we should have put more knowledge behind the starting line, not the finish line.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • GjarrusGjarrus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 705 ✭✭✭✭
    I don't like it as the endcap to the system anyway. *I* like the nightmares, but I get why magickers or basics would have reservations. It's bad enough that they're all Leechwood champions. We have tons of group conflict stuff that would benefit from Would make more sense to make it sect-based and fueled by shrine conflict somehow (change 'bone' to shrine fragments earned by defiling). Give sects the choice between a few circle-based nightmares that does area-wide shrine damage every day it lives (like 1% an hour not reduced by aegis).

    Instead of binding to an area, I would say that the boneyard (anti-shrine?) should have to be in the area (increasing vulnerability), and summoning should start a 24h timer until it binds. For claiming, I'd just say that the existence of the nightmare should claim it, so if multiple sects summon their kaijuu then it becomes a race to kill while defending. Claiming could give a defile bonus, prevent other sects from putting up shrines, or some sort of shrine warfare benefit (sects don't really need any more PvE buffs). 

    As for the mechanical stuff, I have not heard one person who did plague summoning say that it was intuitive, even if Sarrius is a noob for not toggling a channel despite it not explicitly saying CHANNEL HERE (which I think everything that requires a soft or hard channel should in some way). I'm not sure if that happened to my Nihilim from one of my assistants or if the timer ran out on the binding process, so the fear of someone failing this and somehow ruining the binding process is why I tried to bind alone on my 2nd attempt (I've done four of these stupid frickin things). That backfired because I didn't successfully bind (it mentions being level-based, and I was at least L140 at the time). The 'unbinding' to the local area made me think that I had maybe just failed to send it away, so I guarded it any frickin way for no reason then put it down. The next time, I made sure I had 3 assistants who I trusted to channel, and voila.

    Once it gets to the actual nightmare part without hiccups, it's fairly fun.
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2017
    I think the nature of the system, if it remains Champion, should not require me to assemble a team of people to ensure my 50 bone time investment isn't squandered. That's the part I'm sour about. I don't care about the rest, but nowhere in this system, unless my plague dies to somebody else between hr 0 and hr 4, should I experience the loss of 50 bones with absolutely nothing to show for it. This includes channels to summon, channels to bind, the plague picking an area I didn't tell it to, etc. I did the work to collect 50 bones, why do I suddenly need a team of minions to bind the plague and get my payoff? Why, if it fails to bind somewhere, does it completely forget that I am the summoner and I get nothing out of it whatsoever? This is the kind of decisionmaking that breeds frustration for the user. Please think about that. EDIT: When I ask why, I need a 'design' explanation, not a lore explanation. Gameplay>Lore when it comes to time investments.

    These are problems I have with any gameplay system in any game. If your goal is to get me to spend my time on something, you had best ensure I feel like I got something out of it. I feel like I got nothing out the 5hrs I wasted posturing to and threatening my own council IC (lol) and nothing out of the IRL month I spent thinning the herd of champions, raiding every boneyard (including the yards of semi-inactive friends, lol) and tearing my hair out over escape skills. To include a ton of pitfalls that could squander the entirety of my time investment just seems like poor design and I'm not afraid to call a hat a hat.

    I like the idea of Plagues as a champion thing. I just think the target and the penalties are both pretty off scale. Champion Plagues being a 1v1 thing that happens at the frequency of one a week and once again on a weekend. I think that in an ideal world, we'd see that, but we have to hammer out the kinks and make it worth it for the bone supply to stabilize and that to happen.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 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>
  • EoghanEoghan Member, Immortal Posts: 1,073 mod
    edited October 2017
    Quick note (I'm not caught up with the thread yet, so there may be more to say): The number of different champions' bones required was reduced to 5 when the number of bones was reduced to 50.
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  • DecDec Member, Immortal Posts: 216 mod
    ANNOUNCE NEWS #3679
    Date: 11/3/2017 at 10:13
    From: Dec
    To  : Everyone
    Subj: Champion Changes
      
    A few updates on champions:
      
      - Summoning a plague will now use 10 bones on start and the remaining bones upon completion. Note that if the number of bones falls below 40 (50 - 10) the summoning will fail.
      
      - Plagues will no longer wander off while you're attempting to bind them.
      
      - Binding success/fail messages will now be to the entire area the boneyard was in.
      
      - The binding message for the summoning champion will now identify the area he or she is trying to bind to and the probability of success. Champions and high level players increase the chances of success faster.
      
      - The PLAGUES command will now show plagues that are in the process of being bound along with how long remains in the binding process.
      
      - Some areas *cough* necropolis *cough* that previously couldn't have plagues bound to them are now available for binding.
      
      - Dec

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