Here's a question that people are either taking for granted, or haven't really thought about: What is wrong with Obelisks?
The current 'war' system of Obelisks and Outposts is a high risk / high investment combat mechanic of a sort that does not exist anywhere else in IRE. It requires foresight, tactics, and actual 'city leadership'. The crux of the argument against obelisks is that no one does them. The reason that no one does them is that they're bad. They were balanced around being extremely powerful and unique, and now they're not even worth fighting over.
That said, here is -my- list of things with Obelisks that need changing: 1. The outpost energy system is brilliant. It rewards underdogs in a way that no other system on Imperian ever has. If you're 'winning', you are highly constrained by energy generation limitations. However, the Efficiency obelisk offsets a great deal of this weight and makes it much easier to hold multiple well protected obelisks while still generating enough to be offensive. This needs to go away, delete Efficiency and the bonus energy generation shard researches entirely.
2. The powers need to be powerful enough that average non-combatants notice when they're gone. Moradeim should be an instant non-combat pilgrimage to anyone in your circle, Sukhder should make you immune to teleportation skills on a toggle like a permanent disruptor fork, Nature should give you a second form of toadstool on a unique balance - you want people to hate the thought of choosing between them. Obelisks should be powerful enough to make people want to invest the time to learn the system and motivate their circles to contribute.
3. The actual 'power' system is slightly off from how I would balance it. The generation numbers are good, but I would increase the outpost cost from 20k to 30k. Obelisks should stay where they are, but I would increase the cost of protection to make it harder to maintain a defensive juggernaut.
4. The help file outlining how the Obelisk system functions is extremely poor. It takes a solid investment in syntax parsing just to understand how things work. The average combatant isn't going to invest the time, and you get poor coverage if only one person in a circle even knows where to begin.
Do these things and you can still have your city raiding system if you want, but people will actually care about Obelisks. The mechanics are solid, by far the best ever done in an IRE game - you just have to fix a few key balance issues and greatly increase the incentives.
i think there is a lot of selective memory going on with obelisks. sure there was lots of "let's bring out the poker table" (which i liked anyways) but some of of the most fun times i had with it was going assassin and using phase and evade to recapture nodes while my team was respawning. the enemy forces would split to try to keep all four nodes and i could "slow down" their capture rate by harassing and retaking and eliminating those who strayed from the group.
i think there is a lot of selective memory going on with obelisks. sure there was lots of "let's bring out the poker table" (which i liked anyways) but some of of the most fun times i had with it was going assassin and using phase and evade to recapture nodes while my team was respawning. the enemy forces would split to try to keep all four nodes and i could "slow down" their capture rate by harassing and retaking and eliminating those who strayed from the group.
Thinking about this for a few days, I am pretty sure any kind of system like this is going to end up being a resounding flop.
The problem here is basically that the PvP culture is basically destroyed. There's no feeling of danger. There's no way to be aggressive. There's no way to hit another city and make it hurt. The absolute best case scenario for a raiding system is that it ends up being another minigame that people might play sometimes and that absolutely will NOT change things here.
I mean, if you make raiding a minigame and reward me for doing it then I'm gonna raid all the time. The problem with that is that then it just becomes a city-versus-city minigame and we've got no real way to make actually aggressive acts against another city. Let's say you do another thing like that monolith fragment event, and Kinsarmar screws Antioch over. What can Antioch do about it? What will make Kinsarmar think twice about it?
In the past, the answer was "If you mess with Antioch like that they will destroy your gates, steal your siege, murder your guards, and cost your city millions of gold in damages. And they'll keep doing it until they're sure that you're appropriately sorry for what you did." With a raiding system like this the answer is "Uh, they will play a minigame against you every few days, but they probably do this already so nothing will actually change." It takes all the impact out of PvP.
You can't just bottle all the PvP up into minigames and expect to have any kind of life in the PvP community here. Realistically, you can't even expect to have a PvP community if you have that kind of mindset. That kind of thinking is a major part of the reason why Imperian's recently lost so many of its big-name PvPers.
Thinking about this for a few days, I am pretty sure any kind of system like this is going to end up being a resounding flop.
The problem here is basically that the PvP culture is basically destroyed. There's no feeling of danger. There's no way to be aggressive. There's no way to hit another city and make it hurt. The absolute best case scenario for a raiding system is that it ends up being another minigame that people might play sometimes and that absolutely will NOT change things here.
I think what some people don't seem to realize (or don't want to admit) is that for PVP to be viable there must be danger. There is no way to make a PVP system that is "safe". Nor are you going to have a viable system for PVP if they can just stick their head in the sand without consequence.
Not having a bonus is a consequence. A small consequence on a city scale is a consequence. Both of these things have been suggested in this system. If you don't like where those are at now, start actually naming consequence and reward changes to make the system fit what you have in mind rather than just saying "YEAH CONSEQUENCES". If your problem is no consequences in other areas in the game as it exists, then that's off the topic. At least Kyraic put a ballpark figure out there for what he thinks is a legitimate raid consequence.
Anyway.
I don't disagree with @Juran on most of his points (especially help files), but focus spread has always been a problem. If they want to fix obelisks in their current state, then fine, go for that. If they want to switch to a raiding system, then the obelisks should probably be rolled over into that.
4hill+1 super hill KOTH isn't something I personally had fun with, but that's my opinion. It could definitely be included in the possible fight schemes.
I wondered if we might get sort of where we are right now - if we managed to get past the "let's see if we can just slyly neuter this before it even gets off the ground" portion of the discussion (yay, I believe we did). Now, we're sort of wading into the "rawr, but it's no good unless the people getting raided REALLY SUFFER and the strongest side gets to REALLY beat up the other guys" and "rawr, consequences" arguments (which is probably part of why some people were pretty chilly towards this whole "bring back raiding" thing in the first place).
And when you start to see "rawr, consequences", what it usually means is plenty of shitty consequences for the side that isn't on top - although, some very anti-conflict people also tend to want pretty harsh consequences when it suits them, to be fair. When players say they want "consequences", what they almost always mean is that they want consequences for that OTHER guy, though, pretty much. So, I think the following is important to keep in mind:
There's an important distinction between the two types of raiding.
The traditional (camp their city, kill their guards, all that good stuff) is fun for the raiders. Its not fun for the defenders, because their only recourse is to suck it up until the raiders get bored.
The other type of raiding is where you give a definite win condition for defenders. This makes it (usually) fun for both sides, because the defenders can actually win in such a way that isn't "ok guys, I think they're bored now. Good job, see you tomorrow for round 476. Chin up, eventually they'll lose interest and move onto somebody else."
Raiders love the first type of raiding. Overall, its more fun for them. 99% of defenders hate it.
Both raiders and defenders will enjoy the second type (generally speaking, you can't please everyone). Clear winner, really.
Imo, you need some form of raiding system. Its too early for me to properly articulate why, but I think without one cities lose a lot of their intrinsic value to the game atmosphere. Defending something against a hostile force gives it psychological value. Cultivating that attachment changes cities from somewhere to hang out to somewhere to be invested in.
Not having a bonus is a consequence. A small consequence on a city scale is a consequence. Both of these things have been suggested in this system. If you don't like where those are at now, start actually naming consequence and reward changes to make the system fit what you have in mind rather than just saying "YEAH CONSEQUENCES". If your problem is no consequences in other areas in the game as it exists, then that's off the topic. At least Kyraic put a ballpark figure out there for what he thinks is a legitimate raid consequence.
Meaningless consequences that don't affect individual players motivate no one, it's why no one gives a care to fight over obelisks as is. If you need suggestions for meaningful consequences, I suggest you read the past two pages or so.
If there is not a clear and negative effect to refusing to defend yourself (and right now there is not), then people will just become door mats (as they have).
And when you start to see "rawr, consequences", what it usually means is plenty of shitty consequences for the side that isn't on top - although, some very anti-conflict people also tend to want pretty harsh consequences when it suits them, to be fair. When players say they want "consequences", what they almost always mean is that they want consequences for that OTHER guy, though, pretty much.
I had a long response to this typed up then realized I was basically tilting at a strawman, so eh.
This is exactly what Imperian is missing these days.
If you asked me where it exactly Imperian felt it lost its way in terms of conflict, it'd be hard to give a specific point, but there's definitely been an erosion of what is acceptable in terms of organizational conflict. Shrine conflicts last like an IRL day. It's probably been a few years since a guild had a go at another guild. Kinsarmar and Antioch's wars seem a distant memory. Because there's a high investment to go after a city now, it requires a lot of resources, manpower, and planning, and you get essentially nothing out of it. The same is true of shrine conflict in a lesser degree - and the established sects can easily just "tank" losing even a bunch of shrines. I'm pretty sure conquest could lose like 10 or 20 and not even be bothered. Obelisks are something that I've only ever heard of because no one has been willing to even consider doing them when I've been playing.
The common thread here is it's far too much that goes into affecting anyone in any sort of meaningful fashion that they might actually care about.
[edit]: To be clear about one thing, I don't think it should be a trivial matter to go after a city. Far from. It SHOULD require a measure of coordination, marshalling of assets, and getting together a solid group of soldiers. But the thing here is, there is no reason to do this right now. You literally get nothing out of it unless you're being validated by killing guards or perhaps sniping the occasional player that doesn't march right for the guard clot when you raid. There needs to be a reason to put this effort in, and there needs to be an incentive to defend. Without those two key components this will fail.
Oh gee, reading. Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, you may have mentioned some consequences. That doesn't mean continuing to go on about safe spaces and consequences being better in the good ol days isn't off-topic. And again, you even concluded with "CONSEQUENCES!"
Consequences in this context is usually a word that gets bandied about a lot by well, guys like Juran and Khizan, really. And what it usually means is "let me keep shoving these nerds in their lockers every day because it's fun for me".
There could be so many benefits to all of this though. Weaker city defenses (and hopefully some smaller map footprints) alone are a big deal, for example. It's not even just about the raids.
Consequences in this context is usually a word that gets bandied about a lot by well, guys like Juran and Khizan, really. And what it usually means is "let me keep shoving these nerds in their lockers every day because it's fun for me". .
lol, once that nerd learned karate though, khizan had to rely on bigger friends. anyways, at least in the past the top dog was subject to change. now though, i think it is very clear that the #1 position for PK in imperian and aetolia is immutable.
Sorry. I was out of town yesterday. Getting caught up on this. I do agree that losing a raid and/or pvp should feel a bit more painful. I will have to think about that a bit more.
I also noticed the bit about houses and shops being all over the place now. That conversation does not really belong here, so if you want to make a new thread for that, please do. But I will think about that some as well.
I still don't think we will bring townes into this system to begin with.
I do agree that losing a raid and/or pvp should feel a bit more painful. I will have to think about that a bit more.
Please let us know when you do. If we are talking about a pendulum swing back towards the sort of things that allow people to truly punish you for being involved in PK, I'm out. I don't really have a choice, I am just out. Losing itself is a fairly huge punishment. There is HUGE shame in losing itself.
I mean, if you make raiding a minigame and reward me for doing it then I'm gonna raid all the time. The problem with that is that then it just becomes a city-versus-city minigame and we've got no real way to make actually aggressive acts against another city. Let's say you do another thing like that monolith fragment event, and Kinsarmar screws Antioch over. What can Antioch do about it? What will make Kinsarmar think twice about it?
This is valid - that said, that kind of retribution through raiding is only ever truly an option for an org that is by FAR stronger than all of the other ones in the first place. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get to do it, and a new raiding system could allow them to - TO A POINT. That's actually one of the things that pissed me off about the monolith event in the first place, though. They allowed diplomacy to have an incredibly harsh negative impact that would NEVER have flown if it were accomplished through PK means. Both are bad, I think.
Here is what people are afraid of - and it's also how a lot of hard core PK-ers actually ARE as people, whether they are this candid about it or not. This is the very tail end of a long ring conversation, and it's very relevant this second:
(Ring): Khizan says, "Oh, god, I was way worse." (Ring): Khizan says, "Like." (Ring): Khizan says, "On my Noctusari, I'd invade Antioch like Lartus does." (Ring): Khizan says, "But I'm actually good at it." (Ring): You say, "Okay, and then what." (Ring): You say, "You are allowed to raid. It is valid to say that raiding can become obnoxious, although getting rid of it entirely is sad. I was Cyrenian in Achaea, so like... I do know what it feels like to be raided by people who are actual combatants when you and your citymates can barely do a combo, btw." (Ring): Khizan says, "Yeah but I'd do it like 3 hours at a stretch." (Ring): You say, "Hrm, that so depends. Both on how often you are doing that, and how hard you are beating them down." (Ring): You say, "Clearly huge potential for high obnoxiousness..." (Ring): Khizan says, "Yeah, no, this was straight up griefing because their RP wouldn't let them ignore me." (Ring): You say, "And they couldn't change said RP? There is such a thing as players being overly proud." (Ring): You say, "MY ARPEE WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO ADMIT I LOST." (Ring): You say, "Of course... that does depend on there being SOME upper limit to the reaches of your dickishness..." (Ring): Khizan says, "The upper limit is basically like 0.98 Ahkans." (Ring): You say, "Gross." (Ring): Khizan says, "I will grief you just as bad, but I won't be as insulting." (Ring): You say, "Okay, now that we have established how much I hate Khizan, AND how much I would hate Khizan if I were spawned in another cirlcle, I will be back in just a bit." (Ring): You say, ":3."
Please keep in mind that THIS is how a lot of people think (not just PK-ers, actually, it's just that PK griefing is so much more obvious), and who they are as people, if you're considering allowing them to "make it hurt" to any meaningful degree. If they CAN make it horrible and miserable and griefy and unfun they absolutely WILL.
Here is what people are afraid of - and it's also how a lot of hard core PK-ers actually ARE as people, whether they are this candid about it or not. This is the very tail end of a long ring conversation, and it's very relevant this second:
Please keep in mind that THIS is how a lot of people think (not just PK-ers, actually, it's just that PK griefing is so much more obvious), and who they are as people, if you're considering allowing them to "make it hurt" to any meaningful degree. If they CAN make it horrible and miserable and griefy and unfun they absolutely WILL.
If someone breaks the rules, then issue them. Otherwise this is just an implicit personal attack you keep rolling out that PVPers are apparently bad people or something and not helpful to the discussion at all.
You're not going to issue a smart griefer out of the game, ever. Ahkan lasted well over a RL decade and was leading multiple orgs when he left. The ONLY reason he finally got shrubbed permanently was because he actually dragged admin into his griefing schemes and thought he could get away with it. Khizan was never going anywhere. You have to think about WHY PK with harsher "consequences" is appealing to someone. For some people who PK, they really like the technical side, for some, it's the thrill of the momentary danger itself, or the camaraderie, if you're lucky. But PK also gives you one hell of a tool to grief people if you want to.
In fact... we've all got a bit of griefer in us, if someone pisses us off enough. But believe me, for some people, especially a lot of people who are pretty good at PK, that streak goes pretty deep. And now is definitely not the time to just unleash it.
EDIT: in short, the issue system is not going to protect you from flaws in the PK system. Ever. Because it's the PK system that sets the tone. The issue system is only really meant to deal with extremely blatant, repeated abuses of the rules. It is also MOSTLY meant to protect people who are largely not involved in PK. If you PK much at all, there is definitely an expectation that you "suck it up" quite a bit. So if you allow people to do more real damage to another char, that's exactly what they will do.
Basically, I am pretty shocked that this seems to be back on the table. I am all for making things FEEL real, but when admin says "losing should feel a bit more painful" in the context of this conversation, I do think I know that probably means, and it's definitely worrisome.
Sorry, but that little comment from Jeremy is absolutely packed with meaning, and really changes the entire conversation
And Anette... you were pissed that you almost got jumped ONCE at a shardfall where you were hunting, and didn't like the idea of shardfalls at Cinua EVER because someone MIGHT be questing there, so I just do not understand where all of this "YEAH, CONSEQUENCES" and "RAWR, PEOPLE NEED TO SUCK IT UP AND GIVE UP THEIR SAFE HAVENS" stuff is coming from with you. That said, that sort of "no unscripted anything, ever" is really prevalent, and is our actual big problem I think.
You know what Imperian needs? The ability to create a rift through space and time to invade another IRE game and raid their cities. We can call it a cross over event.
Except a fully kitted imperian player has less max health than a level 20 on any other game, I think it'd be over pretty fast.
Damn over compensating 8k hp people.
On topic: I think you need to decide if this will be a system for driving every day conflict or one for wartime/retribution/etc. You can't really scale rewards/penalties in such a way as to make it applicable to both. Probably better to make it fill one role very well than two mediocrely.
I do agree that losing a raid and/or pvp should feel a bit more painful. I will have to think about that a bit more.
From a character perspective:
PvP is an activity where you're spending more gold than you're earning. Engaging in PvP, even more so open PK, barely advances your character in the sense of actual power barring rare circumstances like the ToC. Do you expect thwacking people with a stick when there's no carrot to be effective? Make PvP generate gold, not burn it, and then you can really start talking about adding risk into a currently rewardless endeavor. Otherwise, people will continue to PvP only if they really want to fight. With regards to raiding, personal objective scores that payout a salary every so often (7-12 days?) would be a way to reward participants and open up the ability to harshly punish people who selectively participate in raids (while not really impacting people who won't be PvPing anyway) with a % objective point loss.
From the city perspective:
Obelisks are stealable buffs, so losing a fight for one would have built-in downsides.
You can maybe pull a variation of the objective point salary on a city scale. Once the raid is over, add My Side Points - Enemy Side Points to the city OP pool. The payout would need to be stuck inside a non-withdrawable account to prevent it from funneling out to players, but it could be used to pay for city expenditures.
You can also thwack lightly here to encourage participation by reducing OP gain as the force equalization use is strained past expectations, e.g. 4 possible defenders are on, but only 2 show up which triggers force equalization and an OP loss.
Then just tweak the reward for non-obelisk objectives to things like:
Generator - Raiders burn through generator energy and shard power (reducing frequency of target city's raiding). Stealing instead of destroying could be an option, but it would have to be low enough that the strong cities don't just cycle through other cities and pilfer the generator for a constant OP gain.
Vanity Item - Tougher fight, but doubles the final OP exchange.
Guard Barracks - Reduces effective force equalization in future raids by X or Y% rounded up for a duration of Z. So, 5 raiders, 3 defenders join in, equalization acts like it's 4 defenders. Z should be lengthy enough that it stacks a couple times.
Shield/Gates - Reduces raid initiation cost versus city (for all other cities) for a time.
Housing District - Increases fear throughout the city's holding, with aforementioned bits on comm production woes kept in mind. It'd be nifty if the objective was completed by slaughtering through waves of poor NPC civilians.
Library - Steal sekrit book of knowledge with 7 month decay, adding a buff to the next raid on that city based on objective type. It takes a library (two) months to fully decipher the text, so a counter-raid on the library can potentially steal the knowledge before then. Raiders could choose between a book belonging to their own city or a random book in storage. Once the book was deciphered, it could be exchanged or held onto until the book is activated for the buff.
Weapons Locker - Increased city raid mob attack damage for raider city, decreased for defenders.
------ With these changes, raids would give an option to do damage to both enemy players and factions while improving your own faction, and it improves the rewards of PvP enough on the character level to get more people motivated to participate and learn how to be successful.
PvP is an activity where you're spending more gold than you're earning. Engaging in PvP, even more so open PK, barely advances your character in the sense of actual power barring rare circumstances like the ToC.
Mechanically speaking, PvP is a good way to level, especially with no PvP experience loss.
That aside, PvP is also an excellent way to advance your character in non-mechanical ways. There are many players who advanced to positions of power and influence primarily because they were good at killing people. Jagara, Juganothion, Dregaur. Juran, Septus, Khizan. Iluv, Risca, Eldreth. Lots of people have made their name in PvP and translated that success into significant personal and political power. Honestly, getting good at PvP is probably the most reliable way to get yourself into power, pretty much anywhere.
That's fairly true? I think it's MOST true for people who are genuinely top tier, but anyone who's willing to fight and isn't totally terrible can benefit - to a point.
The huge problem is that PK-ers (and by that I mean people who rank PK as "very important" to them, and who have enough skill and/or arties to make a real impact) tend to have to shuffle themselves around every so often just so they have to have someone to fight, while literally any other playstyle can entrench itself in the same org for a RL decade or more with no real downside. It also just means their population is more dispersed (along with their political clout) - and if they try to pool in a single org, they pretty much break the game for themselves.
That aside, PvP is also an excellent way to advance your character in non-mechanical ways. There are many players who advanced to positions of power and influence primarily because they were good at killing people. Jagara, Juganothion, Dregaur. Juran, Septus, Khizan. Iluv, Risca, Eldreth. Lots of people have made their name in PvP and translated that success into significant personal and political power. Honestly, getting good at PvP is probably the most reliable way to get yourself into power, pretty much anywhere.
To mirror that, this isn't specific to Imperian. Being good at combat is a strong avenue for political success in every IRE game I've played.
i'd like to say that usually the way i got "in" with an org and had influence was that i would join the "combat path/way". usually there was a very wide dichotomy between those in the "combat path" and "knowledge path". one favored more OOC talk and the other favored more IC talk but in the end we all were talking about OOC mechanics. i tried to stay away from only talking in OOC when in the combat paths by breaking the ice with a little IC tidbit and then diving into the mechanics with the person who wanted to learn from me. i've been an aide or head to many combat paths and have written quite a few scrolls (that are probably now lost or forgotten or so outdated they may as well be deleted). over time, the motivation for writing scrolls dwindled as population decreased and the sharing of ideas diminished. in the last days of imperian, essray did work with me to write two new scrolls for runeguard and mage, so if you hold those professions, you can still learn about them from there.
On an individual level you often have a really great level of personal mobility and open doors. You can probably get a RC seat at some point if you really want it, for sure. I think the big downsides are sort of at the "macro" level, for lack of a better word, for the reasons I mention.
Comments
The current 'war' system of Obelisks and Outposts is a high risk / high investment combat mechanic of a sort that does not exist anywhere else in IRE. It requires foresight, tactics, and actual 'city leadership'. The crux of the argument against obelisks is that no one does them. The reason that no one does them is that they're bad. They were balanced around being extremely powerful and unique, and now they're not even worth fighting over.
That said, here is -my- list of things with Obelisks that need changing:
1. The outpost energy system is brilliant. It rewards underdogs in a way that no other system on Imperian ever has. If you're 'winning', you are highly constrained by energy generation limitations. However, the Efficiency obelisk offsets a great deal of this weight and makes it much easier to hold multiple well protected obelisks while still generating enough to be offensive. This needs to go away, delete Efficiency and the bonus energy generation shard researches entirely.
2. The powers need to be powerful enough that average non-combatants notice when they're gone. Moradeim should be an instant non-combat pilgrimage to anyone in your circle, Sukhder should make you immune to teleportation skills on a toggle like a permanent disruptor fork, Nature should give you a second form of toadstool on a unique balance - you want people to hate the thought of choosing between them. Obelisks should be powerful enough to make people want to invest the time to learn the system and motivate their circles to contribute.
3. The actual 'power' system is slightly off from how I would balance it. The generation numbers are good, but I would increase the outpost cost from 20k to 30k. Obelisks should stay where they are, but I would increase the cost of protection to make it harder to maintain a defensive juggernaut.
4. The help file outlining how the Obelisk system functions is extremely poor. It takes a solid investment in syntax parsing just to understand how things work. The average combatant isn't going to invest the time, and you get poor coverage if only one person in a circle even knows where to begin.
Do these things and you can still have your city raiding system if you want, but people will actually care about Obelisks. The mechanics are solid, by far the best ever done in an IRE game - you just have to fix a few key balance issues and greatly increase the incentives.
good fun.
The problem here is basically that the PvP culture is basically destroyed. There's no feeling of danger. There's no way to be aggressive. There's no way to hit another city and make it hurt. The absolute best case scenario for a raiding system is that it ends up being another minigame that people might play sometimes and that absolutely will NOT change things here.
I mean, if you make raiding a minigame and reward me for doing it then I'm gonna raid all the time. The problem with that is that then it just becomes a city-versus-city minigame and we've got no real way to make actually aggressive acts against another city. Let's say you do another thing like that monolith fragment event, and Kinsarmar screws Antioch over. What can Antioch do about it? What will make Kinsarmar think twice about it?
In the past, the answer was "If you mess with Antioch like that they will destroy your gates, steal your siege, murder your guards, and cost your city millions of gold in damages. And they'll keep doing it until they're sure that you're appropriately sorry for what you did." With a raiding system like this the answer is "Uh, they will play a minigame against you every few days, but they probably do this already so nothing will actually change." It takes all the impact out of PvP.
You can't just bottle all the PvP up into minigames and expect to have any kind of life in the PvP community here. Realistically, you can't even expect to have a PvP community if you have that kind of mindset. That kind of thinking is a major part of the reason why Imperian's recently lost so many of its big-name PvPers.
Anyway.
I don't disagree with @Juran on most of his points (especially help files), but focus spread has always been a problem. If they want to fix obelisks in their current state, then fine, go for that. If they want to switch to a raiding system, then the obelisks should probably be rolled over into that.
4hill+1 super hill KOTH isn't something I personally had fun with, but that's my opinion. It could definitely be included in the possible fight schemes.
And when you start to see "rawr, consequences", what it usually means is plenty of shitty consequences for the side that isn't on top - although, some very anti-conflict people also tend to want pretty harsh consequences when it suits them, to be fair. When players say they want "consequences", what they almost always mean is that they want consequences for that OTHER guy, though, pretty much. So, I think the following is important to keep in mind:
If there is not a clear and negative effect to refusing to defend yourself (and right now there is not), then people will just become door mats (as they have). I had a long response to this typed up then realized I was basically tilting at a strawman, so eh. If you asked me where it exactly Imperian felt it lost its way in terms of conflict, it'd be hard to give a specific point, but there's definitely been an erosion of what is acceptable in terms of organizational conflict. Shrine conflicts last like an IRL day. It's probably been a few years since a guild had a go at another guild. Kinsarmar and Antioch's wars seem a distant memory. Because there's a high investment to go after a city now, it requires a lot of resources, manpower, and planning, and you get essentially nothing out of it. The same is true of shrine conflict in a lesser degree - and the established sects can easily just "tank" losing even a bunch of shrines. I'm pretty sure conquest could lose like 10 or 20 and not even be bothered. Obelisks are something that I've only ever heard of because no one has been willing to even consider doing them when I've been playing.
The common thread here is it's far too much that goes into affecting anyone in any sort of meaningful fashion that they might actually care about.
[edit]: To be clear about one thing, I don't think it should be a trivial matter to go after a city. Far from. It SHOULD require a measure of coordination, marshalling of assets, and getting together a solid group of soldiers. But the thing here is, there is no reason to do this right now. You literally get nothing out of it unless you're being validated by killing guards or perhaps sniping the occasional player that doesn't march right for the guard clot when you raid. There needs to be a reason to put this effort in, and there needs to be an incentive to defend. Without those two key components this will fail.
There could be so many benefits to all of this though. Weaker city defenses (and hopefully some smaller map footprints) alone are a big deal, for example. It's not even just about the raids.
good game, septus.
I also noticed the bit about houses and shops being all over the place now. That conversation does not really belong here, so if you want to make a new thread for that, please do. But I will think about that some as well.
I still don't think we will bring townes into this system to begin with.
Here is what people are afraid of - and it's also how a lot of hard core PK-ers actually ARE as people, whether they are this candid about it or not. This is the very tail end of a long ring conversation, and it's very relevant this second:
(Ring): Khizan says, "Oh, god, I was way worse."
(Ring): Khizan says, "Like."
(Ring): Khizan says, "On my Noctusari, I'd invade Antioch like Lartus does."
(Ring): Khizan says, "But I'm actually good at it."
(Ring): You say, "Okay, and then what."
(Ring): You say, "You are allowed to raid. It is valid to say that raiding can become obnoxious,
although getting rid of it entirely is sad. I was Cyrenian in Achaea, so like... I do know what it
feels like to be raided by people who are actual combatants when you and your citymates can barely
do a combo, btw."
(Ring): Khizan says, "Yeah but I'd do it like 3 hours at a stretch."
(Ring): You say, "Hrm, that so depends. Both on how often you are doing that, and how hard you are
beating them down."
(Ring): You say, "Clearly huge potential for high obnoxiousness..."
(Ring): Khizan says, "Yeah, no, this was straight up griefing because their RP wouldn't let them
ignore me."
(Ring): You say, "And they couldn't change said RP? There is such a thing as players being overly
proud."
(Ring): You say, "MY ARPEE WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO ADMIT I LOST."
(Ring): You say, "Of course... that does depend on there being SOME upper limit to the reaches of
your dickishness..."
(Ring): Khizan says, "The upper limit is basically like 0.98 Ahkans."
(Ring): You say, "Gross."
(Ring): Khizan says, "I will grief you just as bad, but I won't be as insulting."
(Ring): You say, "Okay, now that we have established how much I hate Khizan, AND how much I would
hate Khizan if I were spawned in another cirlcle, I will be back in just a bit."
(Ring): You say, ":3."
Please keep in mind that THIS is how a lot of people think (not just PK-ers, actually, it's just that PK griefing is so much more obvious), and who they are as people, if you're considering allowing them to "make it hurt" to any meaningful degree. If they CAN make it horrible and miserable and griefy and unfun they absolutely WILL.
In fact... we've all got a bit of griefer in us, if someone pisses us off enough. But believe me, for some people, especially a lot of people who are pretty good at PK, that streak goes pretty deep. And now is definitely not the time to just unleash it.
EDIT: in short, the issue system is not going to protect you from flaws in the PK system. Ever. Because it's the PK system that sets the tone. The issue system is only really meant to deal with extremely blatant, repeated abuses of the rules. It is also MOSTLY meant to protect people who are largely not involved in PK. If you PK much at all, there is definitely an expectation that you "suck it up" quite a bit. So if you allow people to do more real damage to another char, that's exactly what they will do.
Basically, I am pretty shocked that this seems to be back on the table. I am all for making things FEEL real, but when admin says "losing should feel a bit more painful" in the context of this conversation, I do think I know that probably means, and it's definitely worrisome.
And Anette... you were pissed that you almost got jumped ONCE at a shardfall where you were hunting, and didn't like the idea of shardfalls at Cinua EVER because someone MIGHT be questing there, so I just do not understand where all of this "YEAH, CONSEQUENCES" and "RAWR, PEOPLE NEED TO SUCK IT UP AND GIVE UP THEIR SAFE HAVENS" stuff is coming from with you. That said, that sort of "no unscripted anything, ever" is really prevalent, and is our actual big problem I think.
Damn over compensating 8k hp people.
On topic: I think you need to decide if this will be a system for driving every day conflict or one for wartime/retribution/etc. You can't really scale rewards/penalties in such a way as to make it applicable to both. Probably better to make it fill one role very well than two mediocrely.
PvP is an activity where you're spending more gold than you're earning. Engaging in PvP, even more so open PK, barely advances your character in the sense of actual power barring rare circumstances like the ToC. Do you expect thwacking people with a stick when there's no carrot to be effective? Make PvP generate gold, not burn it, and then you can really start talking about adding risk into a currently rewardless endeavor. Otherwise, people will continue to PvP only if they really want to fight.
With regards to raiding, personal objective scores that payout a salary every so often (7-12 days?) would be a way to reward participants and open up the ability to harshly punish people who selectively participate in raids (while not really impacting people who won't be PvPing anyway) with a % objective point loss.
From the city perspective:
Obelisks are stealable buffs, so losing a fight for one would have built-in downsides.
You can maybe pull a variation of the objective point salary on a city scale. Once the raid is over, add My Side Points - Enemy Side Points to the city OP pool. The payout would need to be stuck inside a non-withdrawable account to prevent it from funneling out to players, but it could be used to pay for city expenditures.
You can also thwack lightly here to encourage participation by reducing OP gain as the force equalization use is strained past expectations, e.g. 4 possible defenders are on, but only 2 show up which triggers force equalization and an OP loss.
Then just tweak the reward for non-obelisk objectives to things like:
-
Generator - Raiders burn through generator energy and shard power (reducing frequency of target city's raiding). Stealing instead of destroying could be an option, but it would have to be low enough that the strong cities don't just cycle through other cities and pilfer the generator for a constant OP gain.-
Vanity Item - Tougher fight, but doubles the final OP exchange.-
Guard Barracks - Reduces effective force equalization in future raids by X or Y% rounded up for a duration of Z. So, 5 raiders, 3 defenders join in, equalization acts like it's 4 defenders. Z should be lengthy enough that it stacks a couple times.-
Shield/Gates - Reduces raid initiation cost versus city (for all other cities) for a time.-
Housing District - Increases fear throughout the city's holding, with aforementioned bits on comm production woes kept in mind. It'd be nifty if the objective was completed by slaughtering through waves of poor NPC civilians.-
Library - Steal sekrit book of knowledge with 7 month decay, adding a buff to the next raid on that city based on objective type. It takes a library (two) months to fully decipher the text, so a counter-raid on the library can potentially steal the knowledge before then. Raiders could choose between a book belonging to their own city or a random book in storage. Once the book was deciphered, it could be exchanged or held onto until the book is activated for the buff.-
Weapons Locker - Increased city raid mob attack damage for raider city, decreased for defenders.------
With these changes, raids would give an option to do damage to both enemy players and factions while improving your own faction, and it improves the rewards of PvP enough on the character level to get more people motivated to participate and learn how to be successful.
That aside, PvP is also an excellent way to advance your character in non-mechanical ways. There are many players who advanced to positions of power and influence primarily because they were good at killing people. Jagara, Juganothion, Dregaur. Juran, Septus, Khizan. Iluv, Risca, Eldreth. Lots of people have made their name in PvP and translated that success into significant personal and political power. Honestly, getting good at PvP is probably the most reliable way to get yourself into power, pretty much anywhere.
The huge problem is that PK-ers (and by that I mean people who rank PK as "very important" to them, and who have enough skill and/or arties to make a real impact) tend to have to shuffle themselves around every so often just so they have to have someone to fight, while literally any other playstyle can entrench itself in the same org for a RL decade or more with no real downside. It also just means their population is more dispersed (along with their political clout) - and if they try to pool in a single org, they pretty much break the game for themselves.