Unnecessary personal attacks about my mental state aside, I still don't understand why we need a 'raiding' system.
Raiding is the one thing left in the game that is not entirely theme parked already. The only reward for successfully raiding an opposing city is the feeling of satisfaction that comes from achieving a goal. I don't see a compelling reason to switch that over to an 'instant gratification, pull this lever and get a prize' style mechanic - especially in place of an already existing, far better system. The rarity of raiding is what makes it impactful, and if you try to organize it too much you'll kill that mystique. Allow us to keep Obelisks and Outposts, just fix them.
Back to the most recent string of posts: If you want Imperian to have risk, add PvP XP loss back into the game. We had a conversation last night on Bellatores, and it was generally agreed that it's impossible to feel invested into combat anymore when the results are entirely meaningless. The hours that I used to happily spend tracking and learning someone's movements to prepare a proper ambush would now be entirely wasted when the net result only costs them 90 seconds of no bashing time during a quick trip to Dis.
To clarify, Juran, you mean "XP loss", not "PK XP loss" (which already exists), correct?
Because that is an absolutely horrible idea and I really, really hope it does not happen. It will split the population even more rigidly into "PK-er" and "non-com" (and I, for example, will be forced to be a non-com - which will mean I will also become a "person who no longer plays Imperian").
To clarify, Juran, you mean "XP loss", not "PK XP loss" (which already exists), correct?
Because that is an absolutely horrible idea and I really, really hope it does not happen. It will split the population even more rigidly into "PK-er" and "non-com" (and I, for example, will be forced to be a non-com - which will mean I will also become a "person who no longer plays Imperian".
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
If you want people to care about combat in the game, you have to add an element of risk. If someone is so entirely risk adverse that the thought of losing -anything- drives them from the game, I would just link them to Bejeweled.
obelisks encouraged different types of members of an organization to cooperate to achieve a certain goal. perhaps the obelisks powers should share different benefits so as the minimize the risk of one majority group deciding on getting a PK benefit obelisk over an Harvesting benefit and making the minority group less motivated to participate. You do need PK and Harvesting to matter though if such a thing would work. Need Caanaemart post.
PvP success has definitely translated into political power, no argument from me there. As has been said, it's non-mechanical and comes with responsibilities (theoretically) with a limited pool of positions (not so much a problem with current population), so it's difficult to factor that into the risk/reward system for PvP.
Since PK experience doesn't come with the same expected gold income as hunting/questing, characters have to grind out gold to get aspect perks (thus getting the experience anyway), turn it into blood drops, or be content seeing how high they can get in RANKINGS PK. More reserves are nice, and I guess you can also consider it income if you have time in between every bout to drop 10 transmutes? All that said, this is less a problem with PK experience values and more a problem with the value of experience post-Aspect.
Conversely, I can make a few creds worth of gold or more an hour while hunting, gaining more experience overall due to manageable risk and not having to wait on targets to show up. I can spread the gold or drag people along to gain influence. If I'm not trying to build belief or turning in corpses for quests, hunting through the adrenaline/anatomy/wildlife timers and staggering sacrifices is enough to transmute a ridiculous amount. If I have enough people for boss fights, that's even more value from rarer relics, temp artis, and the crushables.
How is a raiding system 'instant gratification' but Obelisk fights aren't? Assuming the energy system is carried over, the only difference is in how the fights play out.
How is theme parking it in a more important in-game area with similar mechanics worse than instancing it to 'islands'? People overwhelmingly voted for option B over option A for that reason.
PvP XP loss is fine with me, even if there are still times when doing said stalking is rewarding in the current game when you play it.
That's **** (to Juran's post). Here's why it's ****. Some people are going to win most of the time, possibly almost all of the time. If it's a guy like Khizan and Iluv got better than him, he's going to bring friends. In short, it's very, very low risk for a select group of people, and ACTUAL risk for anyone else foolish enough to get goaded into taking part.
You mean risk for people who aren't YOU (less you, per se, and more a small group of people who would, at least in the short term, benefit from a setup like this).
How is a raiding system 'instant gratification' but Obelisk fights aren't? Assuming the energy system is carried over, the only difference is in how the fights play out.
How is theme parking it in a more important in-game area with similar mechanics worse than instancing it to 'islands'? People overwhelmingly voted for option B over option A for that reason.
The islands only exist to keep other people from interfering. It can only be a true circle vs. circle competition if the third actor is forbidden entry. I would love outposts and obelisks to be moved onto Aetherius proper, but it isn't viable.
Also, the argument isn't that a raiding system is different than obelisks. Rather, a raiding system is different than traditional raiding. We already have a viable and dynamic system in place to allow for all of the goals expected from a 'raiding system', if people would only be properly incentivized to use it.
obelisks encouraged different types of members of an organization to cooperate to achieve a certain goal. perhaps the obelisks powers should share different benefits so as the minimize the risk of one majority group deciding on getting a PK benefit obelisk over an Harvesting benefit and making the minority group less motivated to participate. You do need PK and Harvesting to matter though if such a thing would work. Need Caanaemart post.
I can't really comment specifically on obelisks because I've literally never been able to participate in them. Whether they're great, undiscovered gems or complete tripe on a bike I can't say ... but what I can say, is that there isn't anyone who is willing to venture them right now that I've talked to so I gave up pursuing it. At the very least we need to incentivize people into participating in the existing system, which although @Juran defends it I don't think it's too presumptious to assume he'd likely agree with that. It can be the best system in the world, if no one participates it's still kind of pointless.
We already have a viable and dynamic system in place to allow for all of the goals expected from a 'raiding system', if people would only be properly incentivized to use it.
See, you talked about this camaraderie that AM had yet it feels to me that you did not have a nice experience. Demogick on the other hand, for the most part got along and very rarely did anyone take out their frustrations on teammates from going against an unbeatable superpower.
PvP success has definitely translated into political power, no argument from me there. As has been said, it's non-mechanical and comes with responsibilities (theoretically) with a limited pool of positions (not so much a problem with current population), so it's difficult to factor that into the risk/reward system for PvP.
Since PK experience doesn't come with the same expected gold income as hunting/questing, characters have to grind out gold to get aspect perks (thus getting the experience anyway), turn it into blood drops, or be content seeing how high they can get in RANKINGS PK. More reserves are nice, and I guess you can also consider it income if you have time in between every bout to drop 10 transmutes? All that said, this is less a problem with PK experience values and more a problem with the value of experience post-Aspect.
Conversely, I can make a few creds worth of gold or more an hour while hunting, gaining more experience overall due to manageable risk and not having to wait on targets to show up. I can spread the gold or drag people along to gain influence. If I'm not trying to build belief or turning in corpses for quests, hunting through the adrenaline/anatomy/wildlife timers and staggering sacrifices is enough to transmute a ridiculous amount. If I have enough people for boss fights, that's even more value from rarer relics, temp artis, and the crushables.
How is a raiding system 'instant gratification' but Obelisk fights aren't? Assuming the energy system is carried over, the only difference is in how the fights play out.
How is theme parking it in a more important in-game area with similar mechanics worse than instancing it to 'islands'? People overwhelmingly voted for option B over option A for that reason.
PvP XP loss is fine with me, even if there are still times when doing said stalking is rewarding in the current game when you play it.
Not going to address the first part, but as for the latter half: half the battle of playing the obelisk system well is in the prep. The fight obviously matters, but a lot of work goes into the obelisk planning if you have people who understand the system on both sides. If its instant gratification, the other side are either (1) bad at obelisks or (2) just not participating.
PvP used to generate gold when people dropped gold upon death. For better or worse, that got changed.
But I don't think PvP should be a source of "income" more than what it already is - you can get paid via bounties or by doing hired kills. (Pay is pretty awful though.). Bashing generating so much gold already, having another source of income isn't really a good idea for the long run.
Not going to address the first part, but as for the latter half: half the battle of playing the obelisk system well is in the prep. The fight obviously matters, but a lot of work goes into the obelisk planning if you have people who understand the system on both sides. If its instant gratification, the other side are either (1) bad at obelisks or (2) just not participating.
For every 1-2 hours my combatants spent sitting on an island fighting or playing poker, I probably spent 8 scouting timers and log in patterns to predict reinforcements.
Not going to address the first part, but as for the latter half: half the battle of playing the obelisk system well is in the prep. The fight obviously matters, but a lot of work goes into the obelisk planning if you have people who understand the system on both sides. If its instant gratification, the other side are either (1) bad at obelisks or (2) just not participating.
For every 1-2 hours my combatants spent sitting on an island fighting or playing poker, I probably spent 8 scouting timers and log in patterns to predict reinforcements.
yeah which was why i was always excited to see your name on qwho
Obelisk fights are amazing. Juran is on point with his description of how AM was able to lock the one that currently matters (Truesight) so hard. That said, overlapping outposts (outposts protecting other outposts) might be problematic period. You can make an incredibly strong defense by overlapping like that, I think.
But basically, Truesight is the obelisk that matters, and even right now you can only hold so much stuff (or we would have had it all). Even if they fix some of the energy reqs I have a feeling the whole system would still tend to stabilize itself (that's not what you want, either), but it would just be more even (more people might actually have outposts).
No one fights obelisks mostly because no one can gain any traction. If they steal an outpost, AM will just steal it back, especially since you don't have another outpost to defend it, and they do, and you will be low on energy, yay - and I have a feeling people haven't built their OWN outposts because they feel they can't afford to energy wise without Efficiency (not totally certain on that part though). There are still nodes available, though.
See, you talked about this camaraderie that AM had yet it feels to me that you did not have a nice experience. Demogick on the other hand, for the most part got along and very rarely did anyone take out their frustrations on teammates from going against an unbeatable superpower.
Very mixed bag at the end of the day. Lots of really, really wonderful people in AM.
No one fights obelisks mostly because no one can gain any traction. If they steal an outpost, AM will just steal it back, especially since you don't have another outpost to defend it, and they do, and you will be low on energy, yay - and I have a feeling people haven't built their OWN outposts because they feel they can't afford to energy wise without Efficiency (not totally certain on that part though). There are still nodes available, though.
Removing Efficiency is one of the absolutely critical things that -have- to change to make Obelisks viable as a conflict mechanic again. This one isn't negotiable, you can't balance energy generation around one side being able to pre-load the deck.
I would like to see exp loss on PK death come back, but I would like for that experience loss to be suspended during active shardfalls and obelisks/outposts. Those events can continue to be giant zergy no-risks PvP where you smash yourself into the enemy repeatedly, but the rest of PK really does need a cost, I think.
I mean, right now if you gank somebody while they're bashing they might as well just sit down and let you finish them. Then they'll be back to bashing in 90 seconds with no losses whatsoever. And that becomes a big, "So what? Why do I care if they kill me?" Insult people, talk trash about people and organizations, who cares? There's no consequence for it. There's nothing they can do about it. They kill you and it costs you 90 seconds.
I feel like what we are finding now is that the lack of PvP experience loss was working when shardfalls were contested enough to keep the PvP environment feeling vibrant. But now that nobody cares about shardfalls we are finding that nobody cares about any of the intermittent non-event PvP anymore either. Raiding and ganking and all of that stuff have been rendered irrelevant, largely by the lack of consequences. Why bother learning to defend yourself? You don't lose anything when you lose.
One thing that might help is, for each Outpost that protects another Outpost (rather than an Obelisk proper), the costs start to rise - and now I am out because math (okay, I could probably do THIS one, but I don't want to >.>), but I do think the costs for extra "overlapping" defenses in particular, should be very, er, discouraging (in addition to what Juran had said about a flat increase).
EDIT: I might be able to live with what Kyraic says. Maybe. I'd be a different PK-er in some ways, but not THAT much different, maybe. I'd have to think about it. Actually, a lot of it would hinge on how much I trust the admin to uphold a valid issue - even "just" a single death, which is something we normally let slide for sure right now, and which the current rules actually specify as something you should not issue for (and right now, I am mostly totally fine with that). Because if someone is killing me without a valid reason now, they're definitely doing it to be extra griefy, and to take XP.
You'd need super clear messages for when shardfalls "start" and "end" too, and no more chasing people outside the shardfall areas, etc... like we sometimes do now. Basically, things would need to be very clearly defined.
Then again, my gut says I should just stop working on my system right now.
One thing that might help is, for each Outpost that protects another Outpost (rather than an Obelisk proper), the costs start to rise - and now I am out because math (okay, I could probably do THIS one, but I don't want to >.>), but I do think the costs for extra "overlapping" defenses in particular, should be very, er, discouraging (in addition to what Juran had said about a flat increase).
I would combat this by expanding the opportunity cost of tightly keeping a lock on one obelisk over more loosely holding multiple. The admin will have to be willing to step in and adjust the obelisks for a while to ensure that all of them are viable alternatives and similarly compelling.
Giving up five really good powers to keep one power of your choice should be a bad trade. And even then, the system is designed that holding that many outposts in a death grip is going to very quickly handicap your energy production.
Not going to address the first part, but as for the latter half: half the battle of playing the obelisk system well is in the prep. The fight obviously matters, but a lot of work goes into the obelisk planning if you have people who understand the system on both sides. If its instant gratification, the other side are either (1) bad at obelisks or (2) just not participating.
You missed the point: Neither are instant gratification unless you're assuming that they'll just stick a "start raid" button with a timer on the outside of every city for the replacement. There is ample evidence in the thread that people generally like the energy generation mechanic, so I would expect that they're looking at porting that over, especially with the generator's renewed importance via the shard update. Everyone also seemed to overwhelmingly support option B (city based) over option A (instanced) with reasons cited like 'instanced battlegrounds feel disconnected' and people want to attack cities, so I can't imagine why they'd just tweak outposts and obelisk powers then call it a day, even if that probably means less work and a faster launch.
Not going to address the first part, but as for the latter half: half the battle of playing the obelisk system well is in the prep. The fight obviously matters, but a lot of work goes into the obelisk planning if you have people who understand the system on both sides. If its instant gratification, the other side are either (1) bad at obelisks or (2) just not participating.
You missed the point: Neither are instant gratification unless you're assuming that they'll just stick a "start raid" button with a timer on the outside of every city for the replacement. There is ample evidence in the thread that people generally like the energy generation mechanic, so I would expect that they're looking at porting that over, especially with the generator's renewed importance via the shard update. Everyone also seemed to overwhelmingly support option B (city based) over option A (instanced) with reasons cited like 'instanced battlegrounds feel disconnected' and people want to attack cities, so I can't imagine why they'd just tweak outposts and obelisk powers then call it a day, even if that probably means less work and a faster launch.
hrm maybe move "guards" to just townes so people who don't want deal with raids can go visit one. have some sort of bubble effect when one faction starts a raid against a city/council so 2 factions can't team up on one. also how do you determine which city has which obelisk? perhaps at the start of a "season" the obelisks appear in the islands, then each org tries to focus their energy on teleporting it to their city/council. to keep from things from becoming stagnant or one org just winning with no hope of any opposition, at the end of the "season" the obelisks blast away space odyssey 2010 style and new obelisks with different benefits appear on the islands.
On our end, the issue is that the system is not used much, if at all. I would definitely prefer to keep them, and am in favor of trying some changes to see if they will help.
Insult people, talk trash about people and organizations, who cares? There's no consequence for it. There's nothing they can do about it. They kill you and it costs you 90 seconds.
I brought up solutions for this before. That said, I don't think a solution of any kind even really matters, because the response from the top tier was overwhelmingly "I don't care if they insult me, I will just kill them again". Some people even said that they were glad that people insulted them repeatedly (because then they could kill them again).
You just want to gank and have it REALLY hurt someone, whether the person is insulting or not (and also have them not be able to issue, likely, because it is a single death - for NOW, and you will expertly rinse repeat as able). And we both know that PLENTY of situations arise where you can get away with ganking someone without them so much as saying a word, or emoting, or telling, or even interacting with you directly - much less insulting you. A prime time (but not the only time) would be immediately after shard falls.
I will also reiterate what I said there - which is that if someone is insulting you, you already won. Like, really, really, really won - because it means they're so mad they can't even properly filter themselves, even though they know they should.
worse case in point was what happened with aymee if anyone remembers that. i didn't like being a tattletale but now reflecting back on the experience it was for the best.
Comments
Raiding is the one thing left in the game that is not entirely theme parked already. The only reward for successfully raiding an opposing city is the feeling of satisfaction that comes from achieving a goal. I don't see a compelling reason to switch that over to an 'instant gratification, pull this lever and get a prize' style mechanic - especially in place of an already existing, far better system. The rarity of raiding is what makes it impactful, and if you try to organize it too much you'll kill that mystique. Allow us to keep Obelisks and Outposts, just fix them.
Back to the most recent string of posts: If you want Imperian to have risk, add PvP XP loss back into the game. We had a conversation last night on Bellatores, and it was generally agreed that it's impossible to feel invested into combat anymore when the results are entirely meaningless. The hours that I used to happily spend tracking and learning someone's movements to prepare a proper ambush would now be entirely wasted when the net result only costs them 90 seconds of no bashing time during a quick trip to Dis.
Because that is an absolutely horrible idea and I really, really hope it does not happen. It will split the population even more rigidly into "PK-er" and "non-com" (and I, for example, will be forced to be a non-com - which will mean I will also become a "person who no longer plays Imperian").
If you want people to care about combat in the game, you have to add an element of risk. If someone is so entirely risk adverse that the thought of losing -anything- drives them from the game, I would just link them to Bejeweled.
PvP success has definitely translated into political power, no argument from me there. As has been said, it's non-mechanical and comes with responsibilities (theoretically) with a limited pool of positions (not so much a problem with current population), so it's difficult to factor that into the risk/reward system for PvP.
Since PK experience doesn't come with the same expected gold income as hunting/questing, characters have to grind out gold to get aspect perks (thus getting the experience anyway), turn it into blood drops, or be content seeing how high they can get in RANKINGS PK. More reserves are nice, and I guess you can also consider it income if you have time in between every bout to drop 10 transmutes? All that said, this is less a problem with PK experience values and more a problem with the value of experience post-Aspect.
Conversely, I can make a few creds worth of gold or more an hour while hunting, gaining more experience overall due to manageable risk and not having to wait on targets to show up. I can spread the gold or drag people along to gain influence. If I'm not trying to build belief or turning in corpses for quests, hunting through the adrenaline/anatomy/wildlife timers and staggering sacrifices is enough to transmute a ridiculous amount. If I have enough people for boss fights, that's even more value from rarer relics, temp artis, and the crushables.
@Juran
How is a raiding system 'instant gratification' but Obelisk fights aren't? Assuming the energy system is carried over, the only difference is in how the fights play out.
How is theme parking it in a more important in-game area with similar mechanics worse than instancing it to 'islands'? People overwhelmingly voted for option B over option A for that reason.
PvP XP loss is fine with me, even if there are still times when doing said stalking is rewarding in the current game when you play it.
You mean risk for people who aren't YOU (less you, per se, and more a small group of people who would, at least in the short term, benefit from a setup like this).
Also, the argument isn't that a raiding system is different than obelisks. Rather, a raiding system is different than traditional raiding. We already have a viable and dynamic system in place to allow for all of the goals expected from a 'raiding system', if people would only be properly incentivized to use it.
Not going to address the first part, but as for the latter half: half the battle of playing the obelisk system well is in the prep. The fight obviously matters, but a lot of work goes into the obelisk planning if you have people who understand the system on both sides. If its instant gratification, the other side are either (1) bad at obelisks or (2) just not participating.
But I don't think PvP should be a source of "income" more than what it already is - you can get paid via bounties or by doing hired kills. (Pay is pretty awful though.). Bashing generating so much gold already, having another source of income isn't really a good idea for the long run.
But basically, Truesight is the obelisk that matters, and even right now you can only hold so much stuff (or we would have had it all). Even if they fix some of the energy reqs I have a feeling the whole system would still tend to stabilize itself (that's not what you want, either), but it would just be more even (more people might actually have outposts).
No one fights obelisks mostly because no one can gain any traction. If they steal an outpost, AM will just steal it back, especially since you don't have another outpost to defend it, and they do, and you will be low on energy, yay - and I have a feeling people haven't built their OWN outposts because they feel they can't afford to energy wise without Efficiency (not totally certain on that part though). There are still nodes available, though.
Very mixed bag at the end of the day. Lots of really, really wonderful people in AM.
I mean, right now if you gank somebody while they're bashing they might as well just sit down and let you finish them. Then they'll be back to bashing in 90 seconds with no losses whatsoever. And that becomes a big, "So what? Why do I care if they kill me?" Insult people, talk trash about people and organizations, who cares? There's no consequence for it. There's nothing they can do about it. They kill you and it costs you 90 seconds.
I feel like what we are finding now is that the lack of PvP experience loss was working when shardfalls were contested enough to keep the PvP environment feeling vibrant. But now that nobody cares about shardfalls we are finding that nobody cares about any of the intermittent non-event PvP anymore either. Raiding and ganking and all of that stuff have been rendered irrelevant, largely by the lack of consequences. Why bother learning to defend yourself? You don't lose anything when you lose.
EDIT: I might be able to live with what Kyraic says. Maybe. I'd be a different PK-er in some ways, but not THAT much different, maybe. I'd have to think about it. Actually, a lot of it would hinge on how much I trust the admin to uphold a valid issue - even "just" a single death, which is something we normally let slide for sure right now, and which the current rules actually specify as something you should not issue for (and right now, I am mostly totally fine with that). Because if someone is killing me without a valid reason now, they're definitely doing it to be extra griefy, and to take XP.
You'd need super clear messages for when shardfalls "start" and "end" too, and no more chasing people outside the shardfall areas, etc... like we sometimes do now. Basically, things would need to be very clearly defined.
Then again, my gut says I should just stop working on my system right now.
Giving up five really good powers to keep one power of your choice should be a bad trade. And even then, the system is designed that holding that many outposts in a death grip is going to very quickly handicap your energy production.
You just want to gank and have it REALLY hurt someone, whether the person is insulting or not (and also have them not be able to issue, likely, because it is a single death - for NOW, and you will expertly rinse repeat as able). And we both know that PLENTY of situations arise where you can get away with ganking someone without them so much as saying a word, or emoting, or telling, or even interacting with you directly - much less insulting you. A prime time (but not the only time) would be immediately after shard falls.
I will also reiterate what I said there - which is that if someone is insulting you, you already won. Like, really, really, really won - because it means they're so mad they can't even properly filter themselves, even though they know they should.