As for experience, a lot of AM is just regular guys, or pretty good guys, or decent guys. A lot of AM is no worse or better than any other circle. It's really the leadership core that is (very) exceptional. I DO think we can overcome a lot of the rest of it.
Alright, I'm going to start with raiding, since this is the raiding thread. Antioch has raided at least once a day basically since @Septus and I became active again. Experience matters. We went through like a week and a half of knowing it wasn't possible, trying to make it possible with literally every tool in our arsenal we could think of. At this point we know enough about it that it's no longer a try and see thing, and we plan it out and go in with a specific strategy, as with most things in life, testing, looking at results, and tweaking the method are the best ways to work, if you guys want to raid I highly suggest that.
On the subject of team combat, I have told at least three people, and at least one person many times, exactly how to deal with making Magick stronger in teamfights, and it has nothing to do with the lack of someone on @Septus/@Dyun's ability. I've even said exactly how I'd start if I were to try and Lead magick. Let's start with Runeguards, you guys have a number of runeguards and it almost always seems like when I walk into a fight against you, one of your runeguards is rolling axes, and one is rolling longs, stop that, Longswords are only optimal in teams if all of your knights (except MAYBE one and that's situational) are using them, Coordinate, say Alright, every runeguard Reavespam, and Jules flare X, Pellerin Flare Y, Theophilus flare Z. Once you're doing that, figure out what the other people are doing, Are they supporting your runeguards? are they just doing pure damage themselves? Are they trying to hinder the other teams heavy hitters? After you figure that out, roll out and fight, when you lose, do the same thing as with raiding, do a quick assessment, see what happened when it all fell apart, and tweak to try and prevent that.
Lastly, and this applies to both, Attitude is huge, if you roll into a fight against competent opposition, and just assume you're going to lose the fight, people are already looking for their way out when it all falls apart. Septus and I almost never plan a line of retreat, in my mind, I'm either going to die, or win the fight, there is no third option most of the time. Moreover, if you're outnumbered or outgunned, stop making the objective to come win the fight, Make the objective "let's see how many of them we can kill before we're dead" or "let's see if we can't goad them into doing something stupid to give us the chance to kill most of them"
E: since I forgot one thing about team combat. Have everyone but your designated target caller turn off reporting who they target to ring
On the note of attitude, I am so so sick of hearing that AM is the collective god of Imperian that can't be beat.
Words can't express how sick I am of this. It's just simply not true.
And as Cyr said: Coordination is key, as is practice. A defeatist attitude isn't going to accomplish either of those things.
Finally, I wonder if etheral chains/shackles should be disabled during a raid, both for the offense and defense? Just a thought--might not be necessary since you can kill yourself and there are a limited number floating around and only while the wheel is present.
(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."
Finally, I wonder if etheral chains/shackles should be disabled during a raid, both for the offense and defense? Just a thought--might not be necessary since you can kill yourself and there are a limited number floating around and only while the wheel is present.
Don't underestimate how many chains are floating around. With 10 charges per chain, the number is easily in the several thousands just within Antioch. You are never going to deplete that supply, and all balance decisions should be made assuming their use.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
I am one of the most artifacted people in the game AND I have level 5 mob resist in Antioch (which I bugged and is supposedly working correctly). Part of it is just that the electric damage is a good choice because people have less resists there (when that attack procs), but it can bump the overall burst into obscene territory, even on people like me.
I think a good option could be something like, leave guards as is if you're trying to actually take another org's objective (hurty as hell at times if a good mix of reliable damage plus insane occasional proc damage), but tone them down a fair bit for orgs that are trying to RECOVER an objective.
EDIT: this would of course require you to have a way of declaring that you're in "recover" mode pre-raid (and not raiding offensively, per se). However, this should be invisible to the enemy org (otherwise they do know exactly what you're going for, most likely, and any element of surprise/guesswork that you might have enjoyed would be lost).
Finally, I wonder if etheral chains/shackles should be disabled during a raid, both for the offense and defense? Just a thought--might not be necessary since you can kill yourself and there are a limited number floating around and only while the wheel is present.
Don't underestimate how many chains are floating around. With 10 charges per chain, the number is easily in the several thousands just within Antioch. You are never going to deplete that supply, and all balance decisions should be made assuming their use.
I was more concerned with the shackles. But chains can make or break a raid, too. I have lots as well. Perpetually shackling the objective pusher is tough to fight against.
(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."
I stocked up a fair bit on onyx before it nearly disappeared from market, though I doubt I am holding as much as some. There was a huge glut of it (and often is, really) recently and it's all gone, for the time being.
Imperian really is unique in how hard people can farm the honors mobs for stuff, which has some upsides and downsides, and definitely some implications, for better or worse. Onyx feels far from the only thing that matters here, but it definitely does have an impact. And whatever is out there right now already, is going to have an impact for some time to come, I think.
I don't think Gjarrus is commenting on people using onyx in the last raid, more that this isn't viable short of just throwing people into the blender endlessly (hence onyx). Demonic just raided us 8 v 3 and did basically everything right, and the raid wasn't even remotely close.
Not sure I'd agree that they did everything right, but they certainly did enough to get further than they did. I already thought that Guards hit too hard, and personally would've prefered them nerfed over healers
I'd like to see the guards nerfed for recovery missions, but not offensive missions (as I posted above).
EDIT: debuff should really just be on/off, and not weaken at all. Whatever the debuff ends up being, it should just be consistent. Or, similar to what I'd like to see with guards, leave the debuff weaken in for offensive raiding, make things consistent for Recovery missions.
We had some blunders (Mirela missing mass and getting delivered, not blocking when we hit the turn and eating a couple deaths to vortex). Losing one with that many still left us with a huge number advantage, and we were at ~12m in when the vortex SNAFU happened. That's 3m down the toughest part of the line before the debuff weakens.
The problem is if its not doable now for recovery missions it won't be doable for offensive missions. If its not doable for offensive missions, there's no point.
To put this in perspective, I didn't even starburst in that. Cyr never truedied (he burst once). The offensive team died in excess of 25 times. Noone is going to want to do this when the defence can literally curbstomp you with minimal effort.
It is doable. For Antioch. We know it's doable because Antioch does have everyone's goodies. And there is almost always a faction like that in every IRE game, which I guess is part of why raiding always tries to heavily favor Defenders (that and the fact that raiders pick the time, I think both matter quite a bit). WHICH faction that is hopefully does change at least once in awhile, yes, but I think it's safe to say that there is almost always -A- faction that dominates fairly heavily.
But we have this system that, unless people can actually get their stuff back from Antioch (and hold onto it for at least a bit), the system is just going to stall out, I think. I don't know how much I even care whether that happens or not at this point, but I do think that is the case.
I think people grasp that on some level, because we've had several people suggest buffs or debuffs that favor a recovery team already (just possibly not in quite as stark terms as I am doing). Also keep in mind, you'll never get to take objectives again unless we can take them back (and keep them for more than a day).
EDIT: I definitely do "care" in the sense that the NPC is REALLY bad as a semi-permanent debuff on a weaker org. NPC is "cool" and "neat" as a temporary "cool, now we can just walk into their city" thing, but if you can't get that one back or mitigate the effects, good god. There is technically the ransom mechanic, but it lacks a built in raid CD, meaning raiders could just come back whenever. It's also the last ditch action of an org that really has given up, which isn't a good thing.
EDIT2: think of it this way - extra bragging rights.
EDIT: I definitely do "care" in the sense that the NPC is REALLY bad as a semi-permanent debuff on a weaker org. NPC is "cool" and "neat" as a temporary "cool, now we can just walk into their city" thing, but if you can't get that one back or mitigate the effects, good god. There is technically the ransom mechanic, but it lacks a built in raid CD, meaning raiders could just come back whenever. It's also the last ditch action of an org that really has given up, which isn't a good thing.
I didn't be the one to say it but, this. One of the major draws for me in imperian is not being restricted when I want to learn. I dabbled in Achaea up to about level 60, and quit, for multiple reason, but one of the major ones was not having access to learn the skills I want to learn whenever. Having to ask a mostly afk city to learn skills is terrible and annoying. add on to the fact that certain professions aren't played as much and you have a hole where most young ones won't be able to learn their skills to even see if they want to continue in imperian. (speaking from personal experience since I just recently got a friend to play, she already is bored because of the lack of renegades to learn from when she's around.)
Aodan, I think you can still use the Caanae tutor for all your needs. Not TOTALLY sure about that, but it came up in discussion when we went "oh god, what about learning/relearning" one day, and then someone was like "well, there is Caanae guy". I am not sure if he has limitations or not (I guess we could find out).
Aodan, I think you can still use the Caanae tutor for all your needs. Not TOTALLY sure about that, but it came up in discussion when we went "oh god, what about learning/relearning" one day, and then someone was like "well, there is Caanae guy". I am not sure if he has limitations or not (I guess we could find out).
1)Caanae guy should be mentioned in a freaking helpfile somewhere cause I looked for something like that 2)Not sure if this is an issue but when I went through my newbie phase my tasks pointed me to the city tutor. I'd have to ask my friend since she was moaning about not being able to learn skills, but I'd assume the task still point to the city tutor, whether its missing or not.
As for the raid, I was surprised to learn that the miasma defence starts going away before the raid is finished, which was why we didn't even try to go back when there were 5 minutes of raid time left. I'm still not sure why that's a thing. The 20 minute raid time window in general is very tight, the times we've managed to capture the objective, we've had at most 1-2 minutes left.
At least guards work during raids if your NPC is missing?
Hurt like hell too
Health:445 Mana:407 (eb)
A massive, ethereal hammer rises out of an elite ferine lycaean knight's tattoo and smashes Laeka's translucent shield.
Snarling viciously, an elite ferine lycaean knight lunges at you, his twin broadswords slashing deep into your flesh.
Damage Taken: 58 blunt (raw damage: 138)
Brandishing his quarterstaff, an elite smoldering treant cries to the skies and a bolt of lightning strikes you, the electric shock causing your limbs to spasm.
Damage Taken: 108 electricity (raw damage: 210)
Brandishing his quarterstaff, an elite smoldering treant cries to the skies and a bolt of lightning strikes you, the electric shock causing your limbs to spasm.
Damage Taken: 100 electricity (raw damage: 195)
Brandishing his quarterstaff, an elite smoldering treant cries to the skies and a bolt of lightning strikes you, the electric shock causing your limbs to spasm.
Another thought I had was that "recovery mission" raid buffs and debuffs could scale with the following:
1) how many enemy org objectives does a particular org currently hold in total (currently Antioch has 3/3 of Khandava's, 2/3 of Kinsarmar's - so basically 5/6 objectives of the orgs that really even participate in raiding).
2) how many of YOUR objectives does that org currently hold.
3) WHICH objectives do they hold (NPC should count for quite a lot, for example).
When I suggested it on ring, someone made an analogy to the special shards, which is pretty apt. We both agreed it's of course not quite the same thing, but it's definitely a sort of analogous situation.
EDIT: tempted to throw "how long they've had your stuff" in there too, but that would be hard to do without basically encouraging people to sit on their hands. I have a few thoughts there that could maybe work without encouraging just waiting around, but going to hold onto them. I just mention it because hey, as time goes by, if orgs are making that effort, but feel like they're not making progress on something like this, I don't think that's good. I hope some other things are enough though.
I kind of don't see the point of this. Yes, yes, a locus for conflict, I do grasp that much. But speaking as someone whose health has had her popping up irregularly at best lately, I'm never around when it's going anyways, and this really isn't the context I'm speaking in here.
The context I'm speaking in here is the larger one. Allow me to expand. This feels like filler. It's a holding pattern. Something to do when there's nothing else to do. And having that is great, I guess, but where's the overarching aim for all of this? To do this systematically, you'd basically need to give it the kind of consequences that'd make the game un-fun for anyone not from Antioch right now and as is, we already have that to a degree in losing the city tutors - especially since the novice tutorials basically end up pointing you towards resources you no longer have as a result of those going missing if another city captures them.
Okay, so Antioch is basically sitting on the lion's share of the objectives ... now what? They defend them indefinitely? That's ... going to get boring after a while, I imagine.
But that's my two cents as someone who hasn't been around much anyways, so take it for the ignorant hate speech it probably is. I just don't see the appeal to this and any larger opprotunity it has seems squandered.
Just to be super clear in case admin reads the last few posts, the thing that is most concerning to players is the (possibly very long term) loss of city defenses. The loss of the tutor as a tutor is somewhat inconvenient, but not crushing in the same way that "DAY 356 of Antioch as the only city with city defenses outside of an actual raid" would probably be. And sure, Kinsarmar's and Khandava's still work against each other, but the city that has everyone's stuff is probably the city you're actually most concerned about wandering your streets at will.
The effect is totally fine for a short period from time to time, but not as some kind of semi-perma debuff.
How are non-idle defenders determined? If it's just 'member of the city who hasn't entered a command', then that could cause some "rawr come help or log u noob" moments
Could we get the whiny NPC dialogue related to having your things taken reduced from every four hours to every eight (or more)? It's nice to have a reminder that we're terrible and need to be better, but our memories aren't quite that short.
Comments
As for experience, a lot of AM is just regular guys, or pretty good guys, or decent guys. A lot of AM is no worse or better than any other circle. It's really the leadership core that is (very) exceptional. I DO think we can overcome a lot of the rest of it.
On the subject of team combat, I have told at least three people, and at least one person many times, exactly how to deal with making Magick stronger in teamfights, and it has nothing to do with the lack of someone on @Septus/@Dyun's ability. I've even said exactly how I'd start if I were to try and Lead magick. Let's start with Runeguards, you guys have a number of runeguards and it almost always seems like when I walk into a fight against you, one of your runeguards is rolling axes, and one is rolling longs, stop that, Longswords are only optimal in teams if all of your knights (except MAYBE one and that's situational) are using them, Coordinate, say Alright, every runeguard Reavespam, and Jules flare X, Pellerin Flare Y, Theophilus flare Z. Once you're doing that, figure out what the other people are doing, Are they supporting your runeguards? are they just doing pure damage themselves? Are they trying to hinder the other teams heavy hitters? After you figure that out, roll out and fight, when you lose, do the same thing as with raiding, do a quick assessment, see what happened when it all fell apart, and tweak to try and prevent that.
Lastly, and this applies to both, Attitude is huge, if you roll into a fight against competent opposition, and just assume you're going to lose the fight, people are already looking for their way out when it all falls apart. Septus and I almost never plan a line of retreat, in my mind, I'm either going to die, or win the fight, there is no third option most of the time. Moreover, if you're outnumbered or outgunned, stop making the objective to come win the fight, Make the objective "let's see how many of them we can kill before we're dead" or "let's see if we can't goad them into doing something stupid to give us the chance to kill most of them"
E: since I forgot one thing about team combat. Have everyone but your designated target caller turn off reporting who they target to ring
Words can't express how sick I am of this. It's just simply not true.
And as Cyr said: Coordination is key, as is practice. A defeatist attitude isn't going to accomplish either of those things.
Finally, I wonder if etheral chains/shackles should be disabled during a raid, both for the offense and defense? Just a thought--might not be necessary since you can kill yourself and there are a limited number floating around and only while the wheel is present.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Like a daydream.. or a fever
I am one of the most artifacted people in the game AND I have level 5 mob resist in Antioch (which I bugged and is supposedly working correctly). Part of it is just that the electric damage is a good choice because people have less resists there (when that attack procs), but it can bump the overall burst into obscene territory, even on people like me.
I think a good option could be something like, leave guards as is if you're trying to actually take another org's objective (hurty as hell at times if a good mix of reliable damage plus insane occasional proc damage), but tone them down a fair bit for orgs that are trying to RECOVER an objective.
EDIT: this would of course require you to have a way of declaring that you're in "recover" mode pre-raid (and not raiding offensively, per se). However, this should be invisible to the enemy org (otherwise they do know exactly what you're going for, most likely, and any element of surprise/guesswork that you might have enjoyed would be lost).
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Imperian really is unique in how hard people can farm the honors mobs for stuff, which has some upsides and downsides, and definitely some implications, for better or worse. Onyx feels far from the only thing that matters here, but it definitely does have an impact. And whatever is out there right now already, is going to have an impact for some time to come, I think.
EDIT: debuff should really just be on/off, and not weaken at all. Whatever the debuff ends up being, it should just be consistent. Or, similar to what I'd like to see with guards, leave the debuff weaken in for offensive raiding, make things consistent for Recovery missions.
The problem is if its not doable now for recovery missions it won't be doable for offensive missions. If its not doable for offensive missions, there's no point.
To put this in perspective, I didn't even starburst in that. Cyr never truedied (he burst once). The offensive team died in excess of 25 times. Noone is going to want to do this when the defence can literally curbstomp you with minimal effort.
But we have this system that, unless people can actually get their stuff back from Antioch (and hold onto it for at least a bit), the system is just going to stall out, I think. I don't know how much I even care whether that happens or not at this point, but I do think that is the case.
I think people grasp that on some level, because we've had several people suggest buffs or debuffs that favor a recovery team already (just possibly not in quite as stark terms as I am doing). Also keep in mind, you'll never get to take objectives again unless we can take them back (and keep them for more than a day).
EDIT: I definitely do "care" in the sense that the NPC is REALLY bad as a semi-permanent debuff on a weaker org. NPC is "cool" and "neat" as a temporary "cool, now we can just walk into their city" thing, but if you can't get that one back or mitigate the effects, good god. There is technically the ransom mechanic, but it lacks a built in raid CD, meaning raiders could just come back whenever. It's also the last ditch action of an org that really has given up, which isn't a good thing.
EDIT2: think of it this way - extra bragging rights.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
2)Not sure if this is an issue but when I went through my newbie phase my tasks pointed me to the city tutor. I'd have to ask my friend since she was moaning about not being able to learn skills, but I'd assume the task still point to the city tutor, whether its missing or not.
As for the raid, I was surprised to learn that the miasma defence starts going away before the raid is finished, which was why we didn't even try to go back when there were 5 minutes of raid time left. I'm still not sure why that's a thing. The 20 minute raid time window in general is very tight, the times we've managed to capture the objective, we've had at most 1-2 minutes left.
1) how many enemy org objectives does a particular org currently hold in total (currently Antioch has 3/3 of Khandava's, 2/3 of Kinsarmar's - so basically 5/6 objectives of the orgs that really even participate in raiding).
2) how many of YOUR objectives does that org currently hold.
3) WHICH objectives do they hold (NPC should count for quite a lot, for example).
When I suggested it on ring, someone made an analogy to the special shards, which is pretty apt. We both agreed it's of course not quite the same thing, but it's definitely a sort of analogous situation.
EDIT: tempted to throw "how long they've had your stuff" in there too, but that would be hard to do without basically encouraging people to sit on their hands. I have a few thoughts there that could maybe work without encouraging just waiting around, but going to hold onto them. I just mention it because hey, as time goes by, if orgs are making that effort, but feel like they're not making progress on something like this, I don't think that's good. I hope some other things are enough though.
The context I'm speaking in here is the larger one. Allow me to expand. This feels like filler. It's a holding pattern. Something to do when there's nothing else to do. And having that is great, I guess, but where's the overarching aim for all of this? To do this systematically, you'd basically need to give it the kind of consequences that'd make the game un-fun for anyone not from Antioch right now and as is, we already have that to a degree in losing the city tutors - especially since the novice tutorials basically end up pointing you towards resources you no longer have as a result of those going missing if another city captures them.
Okay, so Antioch is basically sitting on the lion's share of the objectives ... now what? They defend them indefinitely? That's ... going to get boring after a while, I imagine.
But that's my two cents as someone who hasn't been around much anyways, so take it for the ignorant hate speech it probably is. I just don't see the appeal to this and any larger opprotunity it has seems squandered.
The effect is totally fine for a short period from time to time, but not as some kind of semi-perma debuff.
How are non-idle defenders determined? If it's just 'member of the city who hasn't entered a command', then that could cause some "rawr come help or log u noob" moments