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The issue with the state of raids, and raid objectives
Medivh
Member Posts: 3 ✭
As it stands right now, there is no negative reason when it comes to organization credits, to let all your raid objectives be captured. while there are negative effects of having them captured, they are all things that can be lived with, if you want to win the almighty credit more than you care about a little whining from NPCs.
As most of the negative effects are mitigated in other ways (see: tutor being in caanae for everyone to use), the biggest, and most recent raids were performed for the sake of getting points towards winning the orgcredit race. considering how big of a deal credits are in IRE games in general, this has lead to cities letting all their stuff go, so that they cannot be raided, and lets them raid on off hours to win orgcredits.
Part of this issue is that raids are worth way too many orgcredit points, but not having your own objectives also has no downside, effectively allowing a magick who refuses to fight and still win credits solely on being able to raid an easy objective over and over, while controlling caravan vision (which is another problem that really needs to be addressed soon).
To make matters worse, raiding an organization gives the defender points for failing, which really doesn't make sense, but could be mitigated. I propose that not having your own raiding objectives starts having a negative drain on orgcredit points, or if that is not feasible for some reason, it should give the city who has the objective captured enough orgcredit points that the city missing the objectives would have no way of winning orgcredits without getting their objectives back.
This is something that needs to be done soon, because it was very meta/gamey what has happened in the past couple of weeks. either way it should not be possible to sow up orgcredits this way, as the way it is going now completely takes the competition out of orgcredits, and makes it both unfun to look at and a sure way to make sure an organization gets plenty of power creep.
I would mention the RP issues with Celidon raiding Kinsarmar and viceversa as the same group but RP nowadays does not seem to be worth of any consideration when it comes to the implementation of changes/penalties/powers.
As most of the negative effects are mitigated in other ways (see: tutor being in caanae for everyone to use), the biggest, and most recent raids were performed for the sake of getting points towards winning the orgcredit race. considering how big of a deal credits are in IRE games in general, this has lead to cities letting all their stuff go, so that they cannot be raided, and lets them raid on off hours to win orgcredits.
Part of this issue is that raids are worth way too many orgcredit points, but not having your own objectives also has no downside, effectively allowing a magick who refuses to fight and still win credits solely on being able to raid an easy objective over and over, while controlling caravan vision (which is another problem that really needs to be addressed soon).
To make matters worse, raiding an organization gives the defender points for failing, which really doesn't make sense, but could be mitigated. I propose that not having your own raiding objectives starts having a negative drain on orgcredit points, or if that is not feasible for some reason, it should give the city who has the objective captured enough orgcredit points that the city missing the objectives would have no way of winning orgcredits without getting their objectives back.
This is something that needs to be done soon, because it was very meta/gamey what has happened in the past couple of weeks. either way it should not be possible to sow up orgcredits this way, as the way it is going now completely takes the competition out of orgcredits, and makes it both unfun to look at and a sure way to make sure an organization gets plenty of power creep.
I would mention the RP issues with Celidon raiding Kinsarmar and viceversa as the same group but RP nowadays does not seem to be worth of any consideration when it comes to the implementation of changes/penalties/powers.
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Obviously, caravans are a substantial issue - and one that likely needs some looking at - but I agree that there should be orgcredit related negatives for not having control of your own objectives - regardless of which city/circle has them.
As for cities just not reclaiming their objectives - That's fine. It's important in these things to give an org a way to opt out of a system for a while if being part of it is detrimental to the enjoyment of the players, and opting out of raiding, which is just one conflict system amongst many, shouldn't preclude an organisation competing and doing well on orgcredits.
EDIT: Also a caravan fully plundered for an org is worth 5 orgcredit points. A successful raid is worth 250. There are maybe 15 caravans in a day and the total point value of those is not far different to collecting shards, holding multiple obelisks, etc. It does bug me a little that when magick dominated raiding, people wanted limits and rules to make sure that wouldn't lead to magick winning org credits by default - Yet now the table turned, and it seems many of the same people want raiding to be the main decider for orgcredits. Not cool.
TL:DR - "Magick is winning at X system! Nerf the rewards!!!" "We're now winning at X system! Buff the rewards!!!" lol
(Ring): Asmund says, "So, being very generous with the numbers you provided, plus numbers I gathered
In a nutshell, Magick has no objectives, will not repair their monument, but is still raiding others.
They are not opting out of raiding. They are gaming the system to stop being raided, while defacing others for easy orgcredits.
This should be a valid tactic, I believe... but not to the extent that they can remain number one in orgcredits. A losing side should still having a fighting chance, to avoid power creep to the victors, and keep the game balanced.
- You can only form a shard miasma if you're part of the circle doing the raiding.
- During a raid, the leyline in the org being hit fluctuates wildly, and causes the 2-3 rooms immediately outside the city or council to randomly launch people in different directions, including into the city/council. This would be to stop people who couldn't miasma from just blockading anyway.
- Monument defacement gives less points than capping an objective, either 1/4 or 1/5 what capping an objective gives because it's so much easier.
- An org cannot be raided for an hour after it's been raided, to stop chained raids from multiple orgs.
Alternately:
- No shard walls during raids, as they make it too easy.
- Buff siege, reverting some of the nerfs made to things like cannons during raids.
Alternately alternately:
- Accept that people can largely opt out of raiding, and that by not repairing your monuments you could deprive magick entirely of the ability to easily raid whilst having no objectives. This is the preferable solution, as it would mean magick would need to actually get objectives to get points, opening them up to raiding too.
Larger scale meta point of view:
- This is why we have a 3-circle conflict system, so that if one side becomes tired, has low population etc and refuses to engage in a given conflict, then the other two sides can still get their points, kills, etc by fighting each other. This fails when demonic and AM stay allied for such a long time.
- The reason magick is winning orgcredits isn't any kind of abuse, or exploit - it's because magick still dominates other systems and puts effort in to keeping a steady flow of points from sources besides raiding.
- Raiding is just one part of the orgcredits system, which is designed to reward overall combat activity and ability. On that front, it's still working just fine.
The problem isn't what magick is doing. The problem is that two sides of the game that should be in conflict have decided to become nigh permanent allies, turning what was designed to be a three way conflict into a two sided one.
- The monument gains an actual purpose: this objective must be repaired in order to sound the drums of war.
Why not?
(I'm not opposed to other changes in raiding or other conflict systems but I believe it needs to be handled via the classlead system if so.)
I think there are many possible ways to handle it.
- You could use points in one way or another to punish or reward holding or not holding objectives.
- You could make the penalties for not holding objectives harsher. Maybe something like you lose your ability to capture monument if you don't have a certain objective.
- I'm sure there are other ways smarter people than me can think of
@Galt I understand you are presenting changes for your frustrations but they largely have nothing to do with the mechanics being discussed here, which is orgs being able to not fix or recapture their objectives but still participate in offensive raids.
I'm not exactly sure what that would look like yet but that's where I could see it going.
Imperian mechanics reward people for gaming the system. See caravans, beacons, avalanche, etc.
The only reason Galt wants mechanical enforcement of circle stuff is because magick can't game politics.
The only raids I've ever seen Gli and co do, there were defenders awake and aware. Several times they suddenly became much more numerous when the raid was sounded. Not to take away or demean Gli and co, but many of the successful raids happened not because Gli and co are some super proficient raiders who were just that much better, but because the people who were able to defend made no attempt to do so. There was one raid where I literally just followed Gli as she pushed the thing out of Khandava. There were five potential defenders in the realms at the time, but no one did anything.
There is no mechanical cure for lack of participation in the system, and something like obelisks and raid objectives both heavily favour people willing to invest heavily in the off-hour times, something that some people are simply unable to do. You can try to entice people more, but I doubt that would be successful without offering such an enticement as it would become problematic to other elements of the game design, and that isn't going to change the fact that any smart strategican is going to wait until their enemy is unable to present a proper defense to strike.
Personally, I no longer engage in the raid system because I didn't really feel there was any point sticking my neck out for a side that happily let me get jumped and die for some stretch after, and the orgcredits mostly all go to the same handful of people no matter what circle you're talking about. Not being one of those people, I have no impetus nor desire to participate beyond mostly-non-existent peer pressures.
While admitting I'm not the target audience for these systems, whereas I'm one of those weird strange people who prefers to just bash in peace, I find none of our mechanical systems beyond just duelling someone appealing as a means of PVP.
The circles used to be the central locus of conflict in the game, and without it being a three-sided affair, both current sides are losing any interest in engaging in these conflict systems. Magick would complain a lot about the serious amount of metagaming that goes on in the AM/Demonic circle, and to my knowledge and to be fair to the admin, at least some of that has been actioned. Meanwhile AM/demonic seem to complain largely that they cannot seem to present a unified front to Magick that seems effective. To the metagaming concerns, I leave that in the hands of the administration where appropriate. To the concerns about not being overcome Magick ... you guys would be steamrolling magick if you put forth the effort into a concerted offense, but to be blunt and probably bring all manner of disagreement upon me ... it looks to me like you'd rather sit and complain about not having an easy method forward which doesn't require that coordination, than actually put the time and effort into doing it.
Raiding has essentially ceased in the game, as all sides sorta opted out of the system at this point. With the ailing population, I think this is fair and understandable. I know the city leaders have attempted a few things to motivate their population, and in some instances it worked! At one point I put a bounty on Magick heads, paying 5cr per legit limb turned in, and for a few weeks Demonic had a rather impressive turnout!
I’m sure Alvetta, Infin, Rei, and Kamaylie do similar.
Unfortunately, incentives for hunting, writing, designing, and non combat endeavors suffer from two very serious hindrances.
1. Imperian is a self advertised PvP focused environment. People come here to fight.
2. Non combat endeavors do not grant orgcredits, so we have to ration out rewards.
I would say that a lot of Imperian's problem here is a *lack* of focus. We have several half-baked systems, none of which seem to fully attract people. The last obelisk battle I participated in fizzled out when the power nodes didn't spawn properly. The raid system is something people don't want to participate in for a variety of reasons.
Speaking to orgcredits, of the 800 odd Celidon was getting, the lion's share went to a variety of council administration, some of which aren't even active in the game these days. I don't think that's unique to Celidon, but it is what it is.
At the end of the day, no one really has a given motivation or direction, because the game itself doesn't, and hasn't for a long time now. You can forment "conflict", but at the end of the day, especially in such an ailing conflict system, that's only going to fill in the gap so long, and the vast majority of people who were combatants have lost interest and gone elsewhere.
I miss Elokia
I don't know if Ithaqua is still doing it, but when I was Wildgraf, we revamped the merit system to reward points that could only be exchanged for favours unless CR6, in which case the points could only be used for credits. There were regular gifts of credits too based on total points earned regardless of council rank.
The system's goal was to reward -anything- that was beneficial to the org. I regularly would change values or add new options for earning points, and there was still the ability to recognize people for things not listed.
I gave up on the raiding system when avalanche started to be used. Single ability to stop a raid that we couldn't bypass, and then when I dropped it to stop a deface, it ejected me from the room but not the raiders, so that the defenders couldn't even get in.
I know it's since been changed, but that was one of the final straws for me caring about pvp. It seemed like it was intentional bug abuse, but "apparently not" despite no one actually saying how it wasn't or how avalanche could be circumvented.
The one caveat is you gotta make sure we know who you are. I try to gather all the noobs and encourage activity, but it’s harder for me to recognize activities if you don’t advocate for it.
We desperately need folks interested in design, lore, culture, and helping to define the theme and “look/feel” of Khandava. Come on over, the evil Cthulhu tree welcomes all!
Celidon is literally giving out what are basically free credits for any sort of participation for anything I could think of, and for anything anyone ever approached me that they would like to see on the list.
The 'Activity point' system Celidon has going was made up so active people could have an option to get their hands on credits the Council gets but it also, admittedly, requires actual participation in things.
It's a one for one trade in as well, mind you. Go to a shardfall, earn a credit. Make 100 cannonballs, get a credit. Walk around the forest, get a credit. Go pvp, get a credit. Write a scroll, get a credit. Participate in a quiz, get credits. Do a thing, get rewarded.
I'm uncertain what the "ridiculous amount of work to get any appreciable amount of points" is, since you can easily earn at least a couple of credits a day for just literally showing up on things that are to some consequence to the Council, one way or the other. Dis, literally walking around a Celidon forest earns you credits. Let me repeat that: Walking. Around. Earns. You. Credits.
I'm not even going into having continuous credit sales in which you can buy credits for 1/3 of the market price, and lower, as I do tend to believe the orgcredits should be actually used by people. Yes, the price of the credits tends to fall if the market fluctuates, while they are also never sold at a ridiculously high price either.
Furthermore, credits don't get awarded for multiple positions. I'm not giving credits to people that hold positions and aren't active either - yes, there is that issue since Emeris can't fire anyone and despite repeatedly asking, no one seems interested in stepping up and replacing the inactives. Showing up on HELP CELIDON doesn't automatically get person credits, actively doing something for the Council (or even magick as a whole) does.
Even though I honestly think the whole orgcredit thing should just get deleted, while I have any say in what happens with Celidonian credits, they will keep going to people that show some sort of activity. Being active and earning AP isn't that hard, since the list encompasses a lot of things that include PVE and PVP both (with a possibility to have added whatever people want on it, of course), but it's generally a lot easier to whine and complain than to get off your **** and do something.