...The majority of the players who have participated in raids from the beginning are frustrated to the point of apathy. In this thread alone you've had three individuals, who are all people to leap on PvP opportunities, express their frustration to the point of wanting to opt out of the system entirely. All of these people are in Demonic/Magick...
...Maybe things are to a functional point right now. That's an exciting prospect in theory, but the means to that ends has been wearing down the patience and enthusiasm of the people who were eager to pick up this system from the start and play with it...
...I can easily see how our frustration sounds like losers crying and expecting fairness and winsies where fairness and winsies are frankly not possible...
...I think Antioch and admin should keep that in mind. Especially when addressing individuals.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
@Oystir's points (but universally applicable): No circle is more mechanically disadvantaged than anyone else. Everyone is working with the same tools. I like pretty much everyone in the other circles, but I'm not going to avoid hurting your feelings because you feel Antioch is mean for stealing your toys. Neither is anyone else in Antioch. Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear, but I imagine noone is surprised so moving on!
I uh, don't hate the player... but, you know.
The biggest problem with this system as is is that it assumes near parity between the circles, and long term, sustained parity at that.
@Septus - You're having fun. I'm genuinely glad you are. I was having fun too, along with a lot of frustration about bugs and being forced into combat (and yelled at for opting out exactly once), until I wasn't having fun anymore. I'll have fun again. I had fun the last few raid defenses, I'll have fun when we raid again. It's not a big deal. If I cared about winning I'd go to Antioch or start fishing around for new professions to play with. If winning were inherently linked to my enjoyment of the game I would've stopped playing MUDs when I was 13.
As I said before, I really don't care if you have our objectives or not. Neither does @Swale, which, again, is why we decided to let you take our objective while we sat in ring and continued talking about raiding bugs. I want to enjoy this system. You can keep our toys if there's minimal pleasure or satisfaction to be gained from even trying to get it back, which is why you've kept them without much bother from us. And yes, the fact that you guys can easily undo that effort does factor into it, but if it were just fun to try for the lulz then we'd just go for it repeatedly. 100% of my own combat engagement is for the amusement. But with raids, thusfar, it's not.
Whether or not you have experienced our level of aggravation on your end, there have been real problems that we have not been able to deal with on our end or do-over as aptly as you guys can, and the enthusiasm for it has waned very rapidly. It's not me crying about it. It's a fact. If you perceive it, and other various points as pouting, then you misunderstood my entire essay, which is to say exactly the opposite. These experiences matter very much. The morale of the system is just as, if not more important than the mechanical efficacy, and people are down on it. See the new incarnation of caravans for details. I'm truly glad you're not and I am envious of the fun you've clearly had with this. I would love to feel the same and I hope to in the future, but tones like that are really unhelpful.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
And please note that I said I don't believe a reset wouldn't fix anything because it's not exactly about where the objectives are and who has which perks. That's not what this is about. I'm not wanting to imply the entire system is inherently flawed and we can't fix it and we all hate it and won't play anymore. I'm just saying it's been lousy for the losing teams from the start and at this point we're not really appetized by the solutions we've been offered at a point where things seem to be in a functional and workable place.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I'm not sure what you mean. This is a completely optional system. You do not have to participate and you lose nothing if you stay out of it. You do not have to do any PvP.
The problem is that if you don't want to participate in this right now, Imperian offers you nothing else, except bashing, which even for someone like me that enjoys it, gets repetitive after a while. Crafting is a high investment (and with the guild a huge amount of frustration, frankly) for almost no reward, running shops if you don't buy a token one and put it in Caanae is a good way to lose money, and you can't even do caravans anymore since those got tossed into a group activity I have never seen anyone do in all of my time playing Anette. I don't have an easy answer to "fixing" that, but ... that is pretty much the problem, right there.
Moreover, as someone who was looking into getting into PVP, this doesn't offer me much impetus to get into it. I don't really get any reward personally for participating, so why would I? Colour me selfish, but I don't like to spend time doing something that doesn't advance Anette as a character. It's why I can stomach a whole bunch of tedious bashing, but I don't do ... most other things, really.
[edit] This is probably a bit OT. I'll think on this some more and put non-raid related thoughts elsewhere, later. But for what it's worth and in the interests of not being down on everything, I liked@elokia's events last year.
Someone should also try raiding with more people online. I hadn't actually thought about this until the last page, but the guard debuff might actually be substantial enough to make raiding vs a small defence group less optimal. Hard to say (and it probably depends on who the defenders are in said larger group). Time FOR SCIENCE.
This probably benefits Antioch more than any circle, although sure, we will watch for opportunities where it could work for us. I do think that now is a good time to plan another raid. There have been enough fixes/changes to make it worthwhile.
I did see that Dec looked at the "how many objectives do they have" thing I posted, or just had the same idea. I definitely appreciate that, and hope he eventually decides to go even further there, and do some more scaling based on things like WHICH objectives they have (like the NPC).
Cross circle isn't really something that interests me personally, but there's definite pressident if two sides are two outmatched. There was a good six month period of it last year, and at least one major instance the year before. Probably more during events, but those tend to operate under slightly different social rules than normal day to day, so can probably exclude those. I don't honestly think the other two circles are outmatched to that degree though - we've mostly been very lucky with raids (sorry Demonic, my dog woke me up for the 8 AM gmt one and I heard the wardrums as I walked passed the computer to go back to bed).
Cross circle keeps coming up from... pretty much everyone who isn't magick or demonic. I think most of the players in magick and demonic have realized it's not all that great for our factions over the long haul, which is why we aren't too warm to the idea.
I think cross circling would mostly benefit Antioch, actually, and would be fairly harmful for the orgs that form the coalition. I think it's better for magick and demonic to mostly remain focused on building our own factions if at all possible.
Cross circle should be something we do fairly rarely. And if/when we do team up against the strongest org, it frankly needs to mean we absolutely crush that org in those fights. Those fights need to be decisive, in our favor. If you're going to do it, it should actually be pretty demoralizing for the org that gets teamed that day (especially since they're pretty used to winning), not "oh cool, now we can get more of our guys off the bench". On that note, those fights should be somewhat... "one and done" situations. We need to be able to hit you hard, and it needs to be a situation where you have little recourse to bring the full Antioch army and hit us individually later, which is unlikely in the current raid system. Maybe in any raid system, really. In fact, we need to make sure that if you raid us in retaliation for teaming in general, outside of the raid system (totally fine, and expected), the results won't be overly devastating. So we need to be ready for your counter-raids individually, and feel pretty confident about our prospects there, too.
That's going to tend to upset people, too, especially since we actually are "teaming", which no one really likes, especially if they lose. It's hard on the "civility" factor in the game, which I value highly (although I realize many do not).
That said, I am not against the occasional concurrent raid (maybe), and I think Gjarrus is receptive to the idea. To me, it is a lot less "I don't ever want to work with Khandava on anything", and a lot more "this isn't actually good for either of us unless it's done carefully".
Cross circle keeps coming up from... pretty much everyone who isn't magick or demonic. I think most of the players in magick and demonic have realized it's not all that great for our factions over the long haul, which is why we aren't too warm to the idea.
I think cross circling would mostly benefit Antioch, actually, and would be fairly harmful for the orgs that form the coalition. I think it's better for magick and demonic to mostly remain focused on building our own factions if at all possible.
Cross circle should be something we do fairly rarely. And if/when we do team up against the strongest org, it frankly needs to mean we absolutely crush that org in those fights. Those fights need to be decisive, in our favor. If you're going to do it, it should actually be pretty demoralizing for the org that gets teamed that day (especially since they're pretty used to winning), not "oh cool, now we can get more of our guys off the bench". On that note, those fights should be somewhat... "one and done" situations. We need to be able to hit you hard, and it needs to be a situation where you have little recourse to bring the full Antioch army and hit us individually later, which is unlikely in the current raid system. Maybe in any raid system, really.
That's going to tend to upset people, too, especially since we actually are "teaming", which no one really likes, especially if they lose. It's hard on the "civility" factor in the game, which I value highly (although I realize many do not).
That said, I am not against the occasional concurrent raid (maybe), and I think Gjarrus is receptive to the idea. To me, it is a lot less "I don't ever want to work with Khandava on anything", and a lot more "this isn't actually good for either of us unless it's done carefully".
I see your points but I'm going to go ahead and be the first magick person to say I fully support teaming to crush the opposition. Everyone plays to win, even those who say they don't. this constant struggle of not ever winning ends up getting to people and kills their will to try. 'Oh they are beating us? lets bring more people.' happens whether we team or not. I've tried multiple times to get permission to help demonic, acting of my own accord only to be told I shouldn't because so and so will interfere with our city. I don't care about interference, I want to win, and this restricting factor is killing me more than losing the occasional shardfall/raid. Its also caused me to consider more than once to go rogue so I can help whoever the heck I want.
Teaming up is a natural human psychological response to an overwhelming opponent. Expecting people to not do so when it's the only way they can overcome an opponent is silly, because you're expecting someone to harm themselves intentionally for ideological purity. Most people don't care about that. They care about winning.
[edit]: Historically, trying to tie people down to a side that loses all the time is how you end up with people defecting to the "winning" side. No one likes to be constantly losing.
Oh I hear you, Aodan. I just mean, I want us to win more too, and I think if you're not really, really careful, teaming can actually work against you. I mean, this would all be super easy if this was a two faction game, but it's not.
In short though, I don't think the past iterations of "demogick" did either faction any favors when I think back on it. Instead, it did real harm, while benefiting Antioch, actually. But it is also very tempting (and also the first thing people suggest).
Oh I hear you, Aodan. I just mean, I want us to win more too, and I think if you're not really, really careful, teaming can actually work against you. I mean, this would all be super easy if this was a two faction game, but it's not.
In short though, I don't think the past iterations of "demogick" did either faction any favors when I think back on it. Instead, it did real harm, while benefiting Antioch, actually. But it is also very tempting (and also the first thing people suggest).
not sure a 2 faction system would really help. it will still depend on the players to not be those people who jump to whoever is winning, which won't happen, because who doesn't want to win? I've seen this happen in other games so that's not really the solution either. And again, it never hurts to try solutions that may have not fully worked in the past. Learn from the mistakes of those and forge a better alliance.
So, I know I haven't said "you can't do that", personally, but I bet you're hearing that from someone who was around for one or more iterations of demogick. That said, I am definitely not categorically against "teaming" on the fly at say, shard falls, for example.
Part of the problem is actually the label itself. If "demogick" wins, we're "just dirty teamers" to a certain extent, and if it loses, well, Antioch bravely put up a fight against the whole world and won. In a sense, we will always, always have more to lose, and less to gain.
I was mostly Antiochan for all of that (although I did have a well-kitted magicker), and believe me, it benefited us greatly (and harmed the other factions). It meant we got to bring more people, get them involved, it meant we were "taking on the world" and winning, which was great for our morale, but also completely at the cost of the other two factions, who I would guess, maybe felt like they were in a sort of hodgepodge of a semi-merged faction, and still mostly not winning. Then everyone retired... and er, yeah. These were not dumb or incompetent people, or people who quit easily. I want to learn from their mistakes by uh, not starting a land war in asia
@Swale has made that very clear in her posts that she thinks they are very important.
Swale thinks -everything- is important.. literally everything. Js.
Welp. Like a lot of people who "used to play", I guess I will continue to care about "everything". Until I don't.
That wasn't intended to be a jab at you... geez. It was me joking about you getting worked up. Granted, it's with good reason, but you do tend to get overly worked up. But I digress lest I dig a bigger hole.
I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I was truly only kidding with that. You know I love you.
(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."
Okay, so I have spent today going through all of the relics and changing if they work during a raid.
I have excluded Aegis, Citadel, Creed, and Perspicacity. I will be looking at the skills a bit more before loading it up later today, so if you have any other comments on this, let me know.
A 1m fullsense definitely wasn't what I was thinking of for OP relics. It'd be personally somewhat aggravating on setup, but it's one of the more balanced relics.
We're changing raiding so that the time that it takes to capture an objective will be influenced by the number of objectives the attacking and defending teams have respectively. If each side has only their own objectives, then the time will be as it has been. The more objectives the raider has, the longer the raid takes. Likewise, the more objectives the defender has, the shorter the raid takes.
We're introducing a new raiding objective today: Monuments.
Monuments are different from the other three raiding objectives in several ways. First, to raid a monument you don't take it out of the city. Instead you deface the monument where it is with the DEFACE MONUMENT command. Defacing is a channelled action and only one person can deface at a time. The time it takes to deface a monument varies depending on the relative number of objectives between the attacker and defender, but it's designed to be faster than other objectives. Currently the time can range from 1 to 10 minutes based on the number of objectives the attackers and defenders have, but this may change.
A successfully defaced monument doesn't move, but rather room messages appear tailored to the winning circle. Every 24 hours those messages spread another room away from the monument. The longer the host city or council leaves their monument defaced, the more the messages appear. In addition, city guards will do about 10 percent less damage (including during a raid) due to the loss of morale from having the monument defaced.
Monuments are also unique in that they don't require a raid to get back. Instead, the defaced rooms can be cleaned by the Minister of Development with the commands CITY CLEAN ROOM <comms> and the monument can be repaired with CITY REPAIR MONUMENT <comms>. Only when all the rooms have been cleaned can the monument be repaired. We are open to changing the room assignments for the monuments, but I'm not promising anything.
As you may have guessed, cleaning rooms and repairing the monument is not free. Each room costs 5,000 gold, 1% generator, and 2 wood, stone OR iron. The monument itself costs 50,000 gold, 10% generator, and 25 wood, stone OR iron. Also, because the winning city does not keep the monument, they cannot ransom it back.
Monuments are incorporated into TOPCITIES with a value of 5.
We're changing raiding so that the time that it takes to capture an objective will be influenced by the number of objectives the attacking and defending teams have respectively. If each side has only their own objectives, then the time will be as it has been. The more objectives the raider has, the longer the raid takes. Likewise, the more objectives the defender has, the shorter the raid takes.
Please let us know your thoughts!
- Dec
This should make it MUCH easier for cities with less objectives to attack cities with more objectives and more difficult for dominating cities to keep getting them.
We're changing raiding so that the time that it takes to capture an objective will be influenced by the number of objectives the attacking and defending teams have respectively. If each side has only their own objectives, then the time will be as it has been. The more objectives the raider has, the longer the raid takes. Likewise, the more objectives the defender has, the shorter the raid takes.
Please let us know your thoughts!
- Dec
Thank you! The only thing I'd (still) like to ask for is for the NPC to count for... a hell of a lot. Because right now, the new smart thing to do is going to be to actually try to unload the statue and standard, and hold onto the NPC (so that you can waltz into town whenever, but not give would be recovery raiders any serious advantage), then endlessly deface monuments as your new "bread and butter" of raiding.
EDIT: and probably lock in a semi-perma 10% guard debuff in the process. Not super liking that part... just because as we've discussed, there is almost always a really, really big power differential in IRE games, and someone is almost always the big dog, by about a mile.
We will be monitoring the raiding situation and how things play out over the next few weeks. I would like to get a couple more raiding objective types in as well.
Is the 10% debuff from defacing indiscriminate? If Kinsarmar defaces can Khandava initiate a raid shortly after (before the damage can be fixed) and benefit from it?
Also is there a minimum time (like 20-30 minutes), that the damage is irreparable? I get the impression it might be instant (for purpose of restoring guard effectivity) if right people are around. If that is the case, would only be useful against orgs that have given up (at least temporarily) on fixing the monument. Could try to do before main objective in one raid but that sounds dicey (despite it being theoretically pretty quick).
EDIT: even if it does, that's sort of an issue too. Antioch is better positioned than anyone to raid in two phases until/unless Ithaqua goes away, by using same teams with Ithaqua/Antioch miasma for the two phases (Ithaqua also handiest spot to stash an unwanted objective or two). Khandava doesn't have that option at all and we don't have it realistically (we can't guarantee defense to a non-com city like Celidon like Antioch can with Ithaqua).
The 10% debuff is meant as incentive to repair the damage. the actual reason for the objective existing is to function vaguely like raiding was previously, to provide a lasting reason why you don't want to screw someone with military might, because if you do it's going to cost you far more in the long run.
Yeah, that was my hunch too. The overall intent of this is (probably) frankly to give Antioch a resetting raid button that doesn't break (as easily). Still, I thought I'd ask about the details there.
The bad thing about that, is if you do repair the monument, you're just resetting the raid button for Antioch, which people will wise up to pretty quickly, I think. I think we're going to come to a point where people might just leave it, at least for a good bit, much as they have their objectives - especially as people are a bit wise to the system already and unless they've got a good feeling about the whole thing they're just going to stop engaging pretty quickly. Slightly different than held objectives, but similar idea. They will repair it strategically - when it's worth doing, so when they are ready to attempt a counterraid most likely (so that if they succeed in recapturing an objective, they will be in the strongest possible position to hold onto it) - yes, even though this room repair thing could certainly cover the entire city. But in the meantime, it's an additional, probably semi long term debuff (although it sort of doesn't matter, either, because we don't have our NPCs back yet).
The timing aspect is pretty important too. It can be really key to have your whole defense team, and people very, very quickly tired of waiting for raids to happen (I only did it out of courtesy to my teammates, and we all knew it had an expiration date).
EDIT: oh, sort of... with the military might thing. But like, it doesn't matter anyway, because Antioch is going to raid no matter what (like any dominant org will).
Heh, you could have a friendly (or at least not Antioch) org deface your monument and let the damage pile up endlessly, then repair it someday when it mattered. That is actually probably the best option.
EDIT2: one of the biggest things I am seeing for the foreseeable future, is that while I definitely wouldn't say orgs have totally given up on EVER getting objectives back, they have realized it might be a fairly long timeline, and that might be true each and every time they lose one. If/When they do get them back, they of course don't want to immediately lose them either. I think these are both huge considerations. This system was originally built with the thought that objectives would change hands very, very quickly (I think that might have even been stated outright, but it definitely shows). You take my objective, and I take it back fairly quickly (that isn't happening).
One. An easier objective for cities to complete. Combined with the new raiding times, Khandava could raid Antioch and deface it's monument and it would only take a couple of minutes to complete. Even though Antioch can fix it right away, it still costs them something and the raiders get to win.
Two. A different mechanic to add variety to the raiding system. Everything revolved around moving something to the gates previously. This will mean cities may have to rethink guards, and defense strategy a bit.
Three. One city could raid, let's say Antioch, and deface the monument reducing guard damage by 10%. Another city could then raid immediately after and have that debuff running while they work to get a different objective.
At any rate, we will see how it plays out for a few raids and adjust again. We are brainstorming a new mechanic for the next objective as well. Hopefully something that will add another layer of complexity to the system in order to make it more entertaining.
Three. One city could raid, let's say Antioch, and deface the monument reducing guard damage by 10%. Another city could then raid immediately after and have that debuff running while they work to get a different objective.
I was hoping against hope that that might be the case. Okay, this might change things a lot. Great.
Comments
The biggest problem with this system as is is that it assumes near parity between the circles, and long term, sustained parity at that.
As I said before, I really don't care if you have our objectives or not. Neither does @Swale, which, again, is why we decided to let you take our objective while we sat in ring and continued talking about raiding bugs. I want to enjoy this system. You can keep our toys if there's minimal pleasure or satisfaction to be gained from even trying to get it back, which is why you've kept them without much bother from us. And yes, the fact that you guys can easily undo that effort does factor into it, but if it were just fun to try for the lulz then we'd just go for it repeatedly. 100% of my own combat engagement is for the amusement. But with raids, thusfar, it's not.
Whether or not you have experienced our level of aggravation on your end, there have been real problems that we have not been able to deal with on our end or do-over as aptly as you guys can, and the enthusiasm for it has waned very rapidly. It's not me crying about it. It's a fact. If you perceive it, and other various points as pouting, then you misunderstood my entire essay, which is to say exactly the opposite. These experiences matter very much. The morale of the system is just as, if not more important than the mechanical efficacy, and people are down on it. See the new incarnation of caravans for details. I'm truly glad you're not and I am envious of the fun you've clearly had with this. I would love to feel the same and I hope to in the future, but tones like that are really unhelpful.
The problem is that if you don't want to participate in this right now, Imperian offers you nothing else, except bashing, which even for someone like me that enjoys it, gets repetitive after a while. Crafting is a high investment (and with the guild a huge amount of frustration, frankly) for almost no reward, running shops if you don't buy a token one and put it in Caanae is a good way to lose money, and you can't even do caravans anymore since those got tossed into a group activity I have never seen anyone do in all of my time playing Anette. I don't have an easy answer to "fixing" that, but ... that is pretty much the problem, right there.
Moreover, as someone who was looking into getting into PVP, this doesn't offer me much impetus to get into it. I don't really get any reward personally for participating, so why would I? Colour me selfish, but I don't like to spend time doing something that doesn't advance Anette as a character. It's why I can stomach a whole bunch of tedious bashing, but I don't do ... most other things, really.
[edit] This is probably a bit OT. I'll think on this some more and put non-raid related thoughts elsewhere, later. But for what it's worth and in the interests of not being down on everything, I liked @elokia's events last year.
This probably benefits Antioch more than any circle, although sure, we will watch for opportunities where it could work for us. I do think that now is a good time to plan another raid. There have been enough fixes/changes to make it worthwhile.
I did see that Dec looked at the "how many objectives do they have" thing I posted, or just had the same idea. I definitely appreciate that, and hope he eventually decides to go even further there, and do some more scaling based on things like WHICH objectives they have (like the NPC).
Cross circle keeps coming up from... pretty much everyone who isn't magick or demonic. I think most of the players in magick and demonic have realized it's not all that great for our factions over the long haul, which is why we aren't too warm to the idea.
I think cross circling would mostly benefit Antioch, actually, and would be fairly harmful for the orgs that form the coalition. I think it's better for magick and demonic to mostly remain focused on building our own factions if at all possible.
Cross circle should be something we do fairly rarely. And if/when we do team up against the strongest org, it frankly needs to mean we absolutely crush that org in those fights. Those fights need to be decisive, in our favor. If you're going to do it, it should actually be pretty demoralizing for the org that gets teamed that day (especially since they're pretty used to winning), not "oh cool, now we can get more of our guys off the bench". On that note, those fights should be somewhat... "one and done" situations. We need to be able to hit you hard, and it needs to be a situation where you have little recourse to bring the full Antioch army and hit us individually later, which is unlikely in the current raid system. Maybe in any raid system, really. In fact, we need to make sure that if you raid us in retaliation for teaming in general, outside of the raid system (totally fine, and expected), the results won't be overly devastating. So we need to be ready for your counter-raids individually, and feel pretty confident about our prospects there, too.
That's going to tend to upset people, too, especially since we actually are "teaming", which no one really likes, especially if they lose. It's hard on the "civility" factor in the game, which I value highly (although I realize many do not).
That said, I am not against the occasional concurrent raid (maybe), and I think Gjarrus is receptive to the idea. To me, it is a lot less "I don't ever want to work with Khandava on anything", and a lot more "this isn't actually good for either of us unless it's done carefully".
E: Winning good, losing bad. me want win.
[edit]: Historically, trying to tie people down to a side that loses all the time is how you end up with people defecting to the "winning" side. No one likes to be constantly losing.
In short though, I don't think the past iterations of "demogick" did either faction any favors when I think back on it. Instead, it did real harm, while benefiting Antioch, actually. But it is also very tempting (and also the first thing people suggest).
Part of the problem is actually the label itself. If "demogick" wins, we're "just dirty teamers" to a certain extent, and if it loses, well, Antioch bravely put up a fight against the whole world and won. In a sense, we will always, always have more to lose, and less to gain.
I was mostly Antiochan for all of that (although I did have a well-kitted magicker), and believe me, it benefited us greatly (and harmed the other factions). It meant we got to bring more people, get them involved, it meant we were "taking on the world" and winning, which was great for our morale, but also completely at the cost of the other two factions, who I would guess, maybe felt like they were in a sort of hodgepodge of a semi-merged faction, and still mostly not winning. Then everyone retired... and er, yeah. These were not dumb or incompetent people, or people who quit easily. I want to learn from their mistakes by uh, not starting a land war in asia
I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I was truly only kidding with that. You know I love you.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
My money is on Jeremy :O
I have excluded Aegis, Citadel, Creed, and Perspicacity. I will be looking at the skills a bit more before loading it up later today, so if you have any other comments on this, let me know.
Thoughts?
Thank you! The only thing I'd (still) like to ask for is for the NPC to count for... a hell of a lot. Because right now, the new smart thing to do is going to be to actually try to unload the statue and standard, and hold onto the NPC (so that you can waltz into town whenever, but not give would be recovery raiders any serious advantage), then endlessly deface monuments as your new "bread and butter" of raiding.
EDIT: and probably lock in a semi-perma 10% guard debuff in the process. Not super liking that part... just because as we've discussed, there is almost always a really, really big power differential in IRE games, and someone is almost always the big dog, by about a mile.
Also is there a minimum time (like 20-30 minutes), that the damage is irreparable? I get the impression it might be instant (for purpose of restoring guard effectivity) if right people are around. If that is the case, would only be useful against orgs that have given up (at least temporarily) on fixing the monument. Could try to do before main objective in one raid but that sounds dicey (despite it being theoretically pretty quick).
EDIT: even if it does, that's sort of an issue too. Antioch is better positioned than anyone to raid in two phases until/unless Ithaqua goes away, by using same teams with Ithaqua/Antioch miasma for the two phases (Ithaqua also handiest spot to stash an unwanted objective or two). Khandava doesn't have that option at all and we don't have it realistically (we can't guarantee defense to a non-com city like Celidon like Antioch can with Ithaqua).
The bad thing about that, is if you do repair the monument, you're just resetting the raid button for Antioch, which people will wise up to pretty quickly, I think. I think we're going to come to a point where people might just leave it, at least for a good bit, much as they have their objectives - especially as people are a bit wise to the system already and unless they've got a good feeling about the whole thing they're just going to stop engaging pretty quickly. Slightly different than held objectives, but similar idea. They will repair it strategically - when it's worth doing, so when they are ready to attempt a counterraid most likely (so that if they succeed in recapturing an objective, they will be in the strongest possible position to hold onto it) - yes, even though this room repair thing could certainly cover the entire city. But in the meantime, it's an additional, probably semi long term debuff (although it sort of doesn't matter, either, because we don't have our NPCs back yet).
The timing aspect is pretty important too. It can be really key to have your whole defense team, and people very, very quickly tired of waiting for raids to happen (I only did it out of courtesy to my teammates, and we all knew it had an expiration date).
EDIT: oh, sort of... with the military might thing. But like, it doesn't matter anyway, because Antioch is going to raid no matter what (like any dominant org will).
Heh, you could have a friendly (or at least not Antioch) org deface your monument and let the damage pile up endlessly, then repair it someday when it mattered. That is actually probably the best option.
EDIT2: one of the biggest things I am seeing for the foreseeable future, is that while I definitely wouldn't say orgs have totally given up on EVER getting objectives back, they have realized it might be a fairly long timeline, and that might be true each and every time they lose one. If/When they do get them back, they of course don't want to immediately lose them either. I think these are both huge considerations. This system was originally built with the thought that objectives would change hands very, very quickly (I think that might have even been stated outright, but it definitely shows). You take my objective, and I take it back fairly quickly (that isn't happening).
One. An easier objective for cities to complete. Combined with the new raiding times, Khandava could raid Antioch and deface it's monument and it would only take a couple of minutes to complete. Even though Antioch can fix it right away, it still costs them something and the raiders get to win.
Two. A different mechanic to add variety to the raiding system. Everything revolved around moving something to the gates previously. This will mean cities may have to rethink guards, and defense strategy a bit.
Three. One city could raid, let's say Antioch, and deface the monument reducing guard damage by 10%. Another city could then raid immediately after and have that debuff running while they work to get a different objective.
At any rate, we will see how it plays out for a few raids and adjust again. We are brainstorming a new mechanic for the next objective as well. Hopefully something that will add another layer of complexity to the system in order to make it more entertaining.