Ascension: Shaking Things Up

Xiran

During the Q&A following the announced roadmap, the suggestion of stating a chance for a second (to engage people) and shaking up the trials came up. Please supply any ideas here.

Xenthos —
One of the big problems with the game is the winner-takes-all of most of the game mechanisms. Ascension is that, just taken to extremes. There was one year where the administration team decided to change that - which is not necessarily a bad thing (I'm not going to get into the specifics here of how that turned out because it's irrelevant at this point). I think if you were to state in advance that there will be a winner, but a chance for a second, it would create more interest in competing amongst people who know they're not going to get 3600 points first - the outcome would no longer feel "pre-ordained".

That, tied with Malarious' suggestion of shaking things up minimally on the preceding events, would seem to give more of a window for a chance at competing / trying. Obviously this isn't something that would be a guarantee - a chance only- but is this something you would be open to?

Uilani —
I think it might be too early to answer this specific question. We do not have a decision yet for the reasons outlined (we do not know what coding resources we will be working with, and we are still brainstorming), but we would definitely appreciate ideas from players on what sort of things might help them feel like the final event, and the lead up trials, are worth participating in beyond the rewards already involved.

Uilani

Please do post your thoughts!

Freja

I hope the Admin continues to do the wargames before the big major show of Ascension. Even though I think it was mainly to test lag, I feel it would still be a good idea to give people a chance to remember the craziness that happens and to show first-time participants what happens. 

I don't believe Ascension is winner-takes-all. I've been on the winning side and the losing side throughout the years in Lusternia. However, Ascension is primarily PVP, I don't think it would be fair to completely take that away from the people that enjoy PVP. I do think that there should be a little something included for the PVP'ers and the RP'ers. 

During Malarious/Malayn's Ascension, I enjoyed traveling to different nodes on Astral. It gave the other alliance a chance to get the staff without being fortressed on a node with the team never moving. The beast on prime that gave points was a good attempt for people who didn't want to be in the scuffle of PVP. I'm not sure how much of a benefit of the beast vs staff time balances. One thing I have noticed is the prep work of the different alliances. For example, Magnagora is very combat driven. There is always room to improve, different ideas get talked about and executed. If this continues to be a high PVP event, people need to practice, strategize, and know their skills. That can't be avoided, things can look great on paper but unless it is tested and executed you can't assume it will work. Ascension is the most significant event where the strategies are put to the test, literally. That won't be everyone's vice, but for some, it will be. Not everyone is going to be happy and that's okay. 

Uilani

We'd like to hearback about the following specifically:

1. How could the various Trials be balanced/changed?
2. How can we ensure trials still reward preparation and experience, but not make it impossible to compete altogether without it?
3. How could we make the Final Ascension event feel less "winner takes all"? 

Tredian

Suggestions:

1. During the influencing/debate trial, attacking the participants should be prohibited.
2. During the Final Ascension, add a way for influencers/bashers to contribute to points (e.g. influencing villages, or gathering essence/corpses for something). Points from sceptre hold would be just one of the ways to earn it.
3. Non-winners could obtain a ladderized credit and/or power reward on org basis (for raising their own VA maybe, or rewarding participants).

Ayisdra

1 and 2 are a bit connected - Take Death for example. A person(/org/whatever) can prep areas by prekilling so they know when a respawn happens and in essence locking down several areas for themselves. I personally don't think this type of prep should be allowed for a Trial. Rez everything that's dead at the start or kill everything and put them on random timers so no one knows what is respawning when. To me, prep should be things like knowing to kill X because its worth a 15 points and quick to kill while skipping Y because it may be worth 25, but it takes too long to kill.

Justice as all these extra rules about which artifacts and buffs are allowed or not and yet the other trails basically allow every auction and limited item there is. Even the damage perk ends up making a huge difference in something like Death. If Justice is going to have all this extra balancing, so should other Trials about what artifacts give advantages and such.

Final Ascension should, and Ascension as a whole, should be about stopping the soulless. But it doesn't really feel like that at all. It feels more like an alliance vs alliance contest. the 6 nations should be coming together rather than fighting each other. These are more thoughts than anything but:

Having something for second/third place (or reaching X points, or something) - Maybe Seal Holders have their seals become 'empowered' and can get a 2nd power for free (instead of just 1).

I'm not sure how you would do it, but perhaps something that takes each Sealbearer and have them to do something to charge the staff

Shango

Could do more like the shakeup that was the Ghani ascension, sans the tracking bug. Or really the annoyance of chasing Ghani in the first place, BUT the Ascension seal events themselves were quite a bit more interesting than they are without those additions. So including some of that would be great.

The final event, as @Ayisdra noted, could be geared more towards us vs Souless as the heart of it rather than org bloc vs org bloc and who's the most popular/corrupt to be backed. The next Ascension we do being kicked off as particularly unique given the delay between would be the best time for new ideas to be floated and utilized I think. Long as it's fun for everyone and the damned Ascension lag is finally dealt with But a further delay on Ascension is acceptable, given that. We've waited this long after all, a bit more is fine so we can do it right.

Luce

I am going to lead with "I know this would be a lot of work, but" would putting the Death trials in a new, instanced area each year be feasible? New so that it's not a question of whose autowalker has the best path laid out, instanced so that it's about the participants' ability to bash, not who can interfere with others the best or has the best help? The one thing this eliminates is knowing what mobs to go after, but I'm not sure how to preserve that while addressing other issues with Death.

 Justice, Beauty, and to an extent Chaos feel like they strike the balance well (especially if Chaos uses a new set of mobs each year and disallows sharing). Beauty has its own issues, most of which are unavoidable in its current format, but it's the event that new players are most likely to do well in with little experience. Justice requires some prep time, but since it's more or less the exact same set of circumstances for every participant, experience is sometimes the tiebreaker but not the be-all-end-all factor. And Chaos has the same mobs for everyone to collect, with consistent point values laid out, and those mobs go EVERYWHERE and respawn in such a way that "just run around and spam GET <thing> HERE" is a viable strategy.

I definitely feel like the "no summoning" rule added to the recent events will probably help some of those go more fairly, as well. Any event where PvP is not allowed should use it.

As for the Final Ascension, having multiple ways to contribute, perhaps with each one themed for a different challenge, would definitely shake things up a bit if the numbers were done right. I shudder to think of what Beauty's would be, but the Ascension Staff battle might be War's, for instance, chasing down kethbits/beasts for Death, rallying defenders with empowering for Harmony, etc.

I also want to echo Ayisdra's thoughts that we should be more "Us vs Soulless" than "Us vs Us but with a different hat" for any additional methods added to contribute points.

For ideas to make it less 'winner take all' I like the idea of anyone who gets more than X points gets Y benefit (maybe tiered credits?) but there does also need to be an org reward, because those point contributions often come from massive coordinating efforts. A direct points > power for the highest scoring participant from each org, maybe? Something to encourage orgs who know they can't win to still field sealbearers, and for winning orgs to risk transferring the staff to someone else for a bit.

Chogan

Side note: Ciaran here, I still haunt the forums even though they've sadly been replaced by discord these days. Reading/discussing ideas on forums is soooo much better than on discord! **shakefish**

There are so many angles to address the big issues with ascension, but the most rewarding avenue of attack I would recommend is to try to make the events as intrinsically fun to participate in as possible. To that end, putting real effort into blocking the most griefy aspects that have evolved over the years is worthwhile.

--- Part one ---
First, a simple idea which should require no coding but could seriously shake up the (stale) meta:
For some of the challenges where points are gathered (your discretion), let players anonymously name a player to take their points at the end of the event. After X minutes, the results are tallied and the winner is declared. I of course wouldn't want this for every challenge as it would massively favor whoever has the highest population, but it could be a change of pace. (edit: the credit rewards would have to be rewarded based on raw score, not sum of pooled contributions)

Hopeful result:
 -The meta of griefing whichever opponent challenger is doing well should be suppressed.
 -If this method is run towards the end of the cycle, disabling seal holders / TAs from scoring could give an alliance which has been shut-out of seals a minor comeback mechanic. 
------

--- Part two ---
Three challenge tweak ideas which try their best to not require sweeping coding changes, with the constant disclaimer that I have really way of knowing whether a simple change would in reality be enormously difficult to implement:

1)
Influence challenge: Global peace during the event. (Stops aggro influencer harassment and mob clearing via bashing)

As a consequence I foresee two subsequent issues (alas, they require coding intervention to address):
 -To prevent enemies from following the challenger and diverting every mob, disable diverting (or give it a significant power cost)
 -To prevent a griefer from spamming starting influences to block mobs, reduce the reset time after an incomplete influence attempt. Alternately... Starting an influence on a second mob (when you have an already incomplete one on a first mob) instantly resets the attention of the first mob. (i.e., each char. can only hold the attention of a single mob at a time)

2)
If it's simply a variable value somewhere which can be changed: drastically altering mob reset times could be an interesting meta change to both the influence (harmony was it?) and death challenges.

3)
Sick furrikin challenge: Global peace during the event. Make giving furrikin the wrong cure block the player from submitting further cures to -that- furrikin, but the furrikin doesn't die.
------

Can y'all tell that I'm deep in a procrastination cycle? Hope everyone is well and enjoying Lusternia.

veara

From the previous years on the trials:

1. Nature, Knowledge and beauty are fine as is.

2. Death and Harmony suffer from basically the same issues:

    - Don't allow people to prepare areas ahead of time (influence / killing things in advance to know when it happens )

    - During harmony remove the free for all combat, only allow debating to slow people, perhaps award contestant points for winning debates

    - During death, implement some mechanic that makes it harder to camp people. I remember one death challenge where, despite being third during the trial,

      I eventually got camped by a squad somewhere north of 10 players of the opposing alliance so much that I ended up being below 10th place by the

      end. I died a lot of times that day and couldn't even leave the havens before being immediately scried and ganked again.

     => Essentially this means the person with the biggest friend group wins. I feel death should be more about one's prowess in bashing and not about who has the

     most gank-squads on their side. How to effectively fix that, I am unsure, because I feel death should be an open-pk event... perhaps only allow duels and award

     the contestant for actually killing their attacker?

3. justice

    - I think justice itself is fine. It needs some updating on the rules, specifically dealing with rose glasses and anything else that's not buff system

4. chaos

    - similarly, chaos massively benefits from you having a group of friends who are an effective death squad, making the most popular person the one who may gain

      it more likely then the most skilled one.

    - I think one big fix for this could perhaps be to up the teleportation of hamster + player way more, making it much harder to track down a player holding the hamster.

    - I'm sure there's better ideas to address this.

5. life

    - Personally I'd love to see a completely different challenge then the current life challenge. 

    - It is majorly frustrating that people who have the lines of the furrikin from the previous year or are super quick at scripting have the major advantage

    - Furrikin need to be unkillable and perferably also not snipable. Ideally the lock onto the first person who gives them something for a few minutes, giving that person

      a chance to complete that one furrikin.

6. war

   - War as a challenge is mostly fine.

   - Combat balancing will make war more fair.

TL;DR

=> make challenges more towards favouring the participants and less towards the large roaming squads of people supporting one person. Gaining Seals should be a personal achievement, not a "I am the most popular" achievement.

Uilani

All very good comments, reading and collecting them all for review. Keep em coming!

Freja

I think some trials still need to be open pvp - or you're going to exclude the ones that either don't want the seal, already have the seal, or have already ascended. Everyone should be allowed to participate and not have to sit on the sidelines. 

Beauty: rap battle to defend your designs (sort of joking..). 

Harmony/Death - I agree those mobs should be reset/available when the trial starts. Luce's idea of an instanced area could be doable, this trial could be more of a tier of each spot getting harder and harder. Or class weapons only instead of whips/gnomeweapons for Death. People walk away from debates during revolts, they could easily walk away from the debates during Harmony as well. Unless there is some sort of penalty for walking away from a debate, I'm not sure how that would work. 

Chaos was super fun when the holder got moved with having the hamster. With the teleportation that meant no more fortressing in one spot. 

Justice - I feel like this trial is fine.

Life - I know the lines did change the last time. Different mobs could be added in, or a mix of the new and previous Life trial lines.

Xenthos

Unfortunately, if you allow "open PvP" in events, you undermine the mechanics/purpose of it - it's not about the event itself any more, the focus is much more strongly on who has the most people fighting.  If the game's in a lopsided state, then you end up with a situation where one side doesn't even show at all (or, if they do, they are quickly removed).  Events can have other ways to participate in them that aren't just "murderballs."  This is why War, despite being PvP related, is at least in a better state than Death - there's a forced limit to at least give a semblance of parity.  Open PvP simply cannot do this.  So, unless the event is specifically designed around fighting (again, see War), it shouldn't be the primary method of ensuring a specific team wins said event.

So, some ideas are presented here.  Note that some of them may be much more complicated technical-wise than is an option.  I'm trying to present ideas that I think would make the events more fair and fun to participate in, and in some cases that requires a fair bit of elbow-grease.  If nothing else, maybe at least portions of them can be used.

Nature

The person who wins can then share their answers with their team, leading to a sweep.  Sharing clues is a very important part of this challenge - the teamwork is great - but it can be made somewhat less so by using additional clues (as has been done in a couple of treasure hunts in the past).

Suggestion:

Make sure to have at least 30 clues.  This means that it's very unlikely the top 1-2 people will have all the same answers as others.  It does mean that there's a chance someone might "miss" out on the "hard" clues, but hard is also pretty subjective in this challenge!  What's hard for one person isn't always for the other.  With only 25 clues, there's still just too much overlap.

Chaos

Some classes currently have skills which can force elevation change (making the holder drop the hamster), others do not.  Further, the open PvP nature of this ends up leading to fortress-style conflict (putting the person holding the hamster in a secured location, with the team a room away blocking access).  Additionally, holding the hamster makes the person holding it unable to perform many actions at all, necessitating a healer be present to SACRIFICE away the drunkenness at least while everyone else remains stone-cold sober.  And, even when the hamster randomly teleports the holder around, it still led to just seeking ways to get the person back to the fortress as quickly as possible.  It's just not very ChAoTiC.

Changes to hamsters running away:

- Instead of PvP, a new command that can be used against the holder of the hamster.  This makes the hamster immediately run away (just as if the holder changed elevations).

- Magical movement/elevation changes still lose the hamster.

- If the person holding the hamster doesn't move for more than 30 seconds, it will run away.

- If the person holding the hamster stays in the same area for more than 3 minutes, it will run away.

- Attempting to GIVE the hamster away by any means causes the hamster to run away.

- The hamster will now run away based on a scaling level of the holder's drunkenness/insanity (so at low levels it will run away quickly, at high levels it is much less likely to run away).  For example, at neurotic/feeling a bit tipsy it might have an 80% chance running away within 3 minutes.  Once it gets high enough - such as psychopathic/totally plastered - the chance would be 0%. Scaling between those levels).  This means someone who is actively chasing and catching the hamster is more likely to be able to hold onto it when the final countdown ends!

- When you pick up the hamster, if: you have less than 500 hamsterhunt points your hamsterhunt points will be set to 500, if you are less than neurotic you will be set to neurotic, if you are less than feeling a bit tipsy you will be set to that.  If any of these are true, the hamster will run away (you're just too put-together to hold onto it!).

Additional Rules:

- For the duration of the event, insanity/sobriety will not recover passively.

- There will be an NPC who you can go to who will set your insanity/sobriety back to 0; if you do this, you will not be able to pick up the chaos hamster again during this event.  Basically an "opt out".  You can still go chase regular hamsters if you want, though!

- Command denial of drunk/sober for people NOT holding the hamster will be capped at 20%, and at 50% for the person holding the hamster.  We're now using these levels to gauge how comfortable the hamster is with being held, but it's decidedly not fun to be able to actually... get anywhere / do anything!  You want it to be chaotic, but not so frustrating that everyone just nopes out.

- If the event ends when nobody is holding the hamster, 60 seconds are automatically added onto the clock.  This keeps going until someone is holding the hamster at the end.

- Disable PATH TRACK (or make normal movement - with bixes / paths off - actual able to fumble when path tracking during the event).  Right now only pathfind/bixes seem able to fumble, the speedwalking room changes don't.

All of this should end up leading to true chaos.  It's no longer about death/murder/forts, the person holding the hamster is gonna have to stay mobile.  It'll be harder to be mobile than someone chasing, but the people chasing are going to have some issues catching up too if they've ever picked up the hamster!  You cannot defend the hamster-holder, or grab the hamster for someone you're supporting.  You have to be actively chasing the thing if you want to win.

Obviously this would require extensive play-testing as well, to check for Fun / offer additional ideas / etc.

Harmony

There's still a bit that's not very Harmonious about this event.  Chasing someone around to spam-divert their mobs, for example, or influence over them.  Also, the entire game is peaced so if you DON'T want to participate you're locked out of doing... well, pretty much anything!  Most quests require a little violence.  It should be possible to strike a balance between keeping the peace/disruptions to a minimum while still allowing some gameplay.

Suggestions:

- All currently-influenced mobs immediately shuffle when the event begins.

- Instead of the whole game being peaced, only the following Planes are: Prime (where the influencing must happen), Ethereal, Elemental, Cosmic (to eliminate raids as distractions/annoyances).  Someone can still go to hunt on other non-Prime areas, or quest on Aetherbubbles, etc.

- Divert is disabled (the mobs are engaged in their conversation on the topic of harmony and simply will not acknowledge attempts to break them away)

(Unfortunately not much to be done about "influencing over" someone, but at least it doesn't STOP that person from working on the mob they're working on, just means that they'll have to move on to another area a bit faster)

I considered suggesting an instanced thing for this, but the problem is that influencing is just so... basic.  There's no complication to it.  An instance would just be a stack of mobs sitting there and whoever has the most +influencedamage buffs +influencebuffs wins.  The only actual challenge to this event is mapping out your routes, what to do when an area is influenced, etc.

Beauty

The only real problem with this is how crushed some designers can be about it - there've been many who just get put off of designing (or even the game in general).  Unfortunately I don't know that there's a lot to do about that, because the design process just fits beauty so well.  But, one thing that could be done is:

- Anyone who wins, places, or receives Honourable Mention gets the "BeautousWorkings" demipower until the next Beauty challenge for free, 0 weight.

Basically just a little perk - nowhere near as good as being recognized as the #1 design, of course, but it gives you a special little mark on your crafted goods and you can say it's because your works were marked as being beauteous by Avechna.  You'd get this even if you're not currently a Demigod.

Knowledge

I have no suggestions on this one, I think it's fine as-is.  It strongly encourages preparation, this can be a team-thing, and all-around it's just kinda fun / entertaining to watch.

Justice

This event is a good little showcase of Debating.  Over the years there have been improvements to try to make it so defs that aren't supposed to work, mechanically don't.  Please make sure that this time this is thoroughly tested so people do not have to pick through their defs and/or get disqualified because something wasn't "supposed" to work but did.  Other than that, it needs no changes - the burden really shouldn't be on the players here though.  If something's banned, just make it not have an effect!

War

The only real problem to war is morale.  If the game's in a state where one side's not feeling super-combative, they just don't put forward any teams and it's a pretty anemic showing.  But trying changes (such as forced random teams) would likely be even worse!  Someone could choose to just throw their current team's match to give their friends a better shot, etc.  It's probably best left as-is for now.

Life

This is, hands-down, the worst Ascension event.  Everything about it is unpleasant.  1) The trigger lines are obscured, so it strongly favours anyone who either has a previous year's triggers OR who can make new triggers super-fast (I even have an alias still called "makeltrig" where I can do MAKELTRIG *triggertext* *curative* and it'll just automatically build a trigger for me that echoes back to me what the furrikin wants - would be just as easy to make it auto-give the herb but I opted for not fully automating it). 2) The furrikin show up in waves and in random areas, so it strongly favours whoever has more people running around finding furrikin for them to save (and has the teleport-power-free / fast-teleport rings) - instead of searching for your own, it's far faster to just quickly bounce between other searchers using artifacts. 3) People can decide to just murder the furrikin by giving them the wrong curative if they see someone else trying to heal it (this is supposed to be about Life, it shouldn't be encouraging murder). 4) ... just, why furrikin?  Where did they all come from?  Why are they all over the place?  Why are they diseased, and why just this one hour?  At least Chaos, the thing is being driven by a ChAoTiC HaMsTeR.  This just comes from nowhere.

Changes:

This is a tough one to suggest changes for because I don't really see any way to salvage it as-is.  It's just not fun, and I say that as someone who's won it thrice.

Alternatives?:

The only real thing I can think of is basically setting up something based on the Ice Havens (an area where you're under slowed movement).  You are put into an area with a number of citizens who need to be rescued.  The more you have following you, the slower you move.  You need to decide on the optimal path to rescue them (they spawn in random rooms) - maybe you walk around and bring each back one-by-one.  Maybe you run around first to identify where they are, start at the back and move inwards, minimizing the number of delayed steps you need to take.  Basically, this is a kind of puzzle where, due to the npcs spawning in random rooms and the fact that movement speed will change under certain circumstances, it's harder to script.

- Could even have things where a certain citizen has an item which makes it easier to move with your following, but you have to find them and beg it from them before you bring them back to their sanctuary.  Do you sacrifice a bit of time to find it in order to gain more time later?

- Once all citizens are rescued, a new set appears (and if there are any special items, they would also reset and require gathering for this new round)

- Whoever saves the most citizens wins.

- If you've got better ideas, feel free to pursue those as well!  I just loathe the Life Challenge as it currently exists.

Death

Death is just a murderball-prioritized event.  Lopsided murderballs means that side is going to sweep the event.  It's not particularly fun to participate in unless the murderballs are roughly even, OR yours has the clear edge, and encourages a team just not participating at all if the disparity is too wide.

Instead:

Set up a "Namiraa Trench" instanced area which will generate 20 rooms with random exits (no ins/outs/ups/downs), all of which MUST have a path back to the center/original room.  Spawn 30-40 (exact number should be done through testing) Namiraa Trench enemies into this area.  Once all are dead, 30 more spawn.  That's it.  Kill them before they kill you.  The most kills, wins.  Each participant gets their own area to hunt in.

This tests both your ability to survive / not die (more deaths = less kill time = less likely to win), your ability to pick off clustered enemies, kill quickly without critical hits, on mobs who have a range of affs that are designed to make hunting them harder.

Bonus:

This lends itself very easily to a Namiraa-Trench themed solo-ish endzone!  I'll write about that in a separate post so as not to make this long one even longer / clutter it with something only partially related.

Xenthos

Followup: Namiraa-Trench Themed End-Zone

Building on the idea for a Death Challenge featuring the Namiraa Trench, you could do something like follows (using the same underlying code):

1) An entrance is added to the Horizonwalkers area.  You can enter it with a group between 1-3 people (getting a passcode).  Anyone who has the passcode can enter the area as long as it's still on the 1st level.  After that, it's locked to just those people.

2) When you enter, you start on level 1.  You get 20 rooms with 25 Namiraa-Trench mobs in it.  You enter into a "safe" room (with an OUT leading into the 20-room npc area), and an ENTER RIFT exit which takes you back to the Horizon Walkers (ending your run).  The exits between the 20 rooms are randomly generated, but all must have a path back to the main/central room.  The descriptions can be based on existing areas in the trench as well (some of them are very reusable!).  Lots of places underwater will end up looking the same.

3) Fully clearing the area spawns an enterable tunnel through the weeds of the Trench which will take you to the next level.  Again, you'll go into a staging area.  Each new level adds an extra npc (so level 10 will have 34 Namiraa Trench mobs, level 20 will have 44, etc).  Exact numbers can be identified through playtesting, and could have it increment by 2 or 3 per level instead with a base of 20 to make it ramp up faster if desired.

4) When you exit the rift, you get bonus essence based on how many levels you cleared.  50,000 per level, incrementing by an extra 25,000 every level, for example, would be 50,000 for clearing 1 level, 125,000 for clearing 2 levels, 500,000 for clearing 5 levels, 1,650,000 for clearing 10 levels).  Again, exact numbers can be adjusted, especially depending on how fast the ramp-up is for # of creatures spawned!

5) The total essence gained is split between number of participants (so making 10 levels with 2 people at the numbers suggested above would give each 825,000).  This is because multiple people will clear the area faster and theoretically will make it more levels in, thus earning more total essence.

6) They can drop little things like bones, shells, small treasure trinkets from the shipwrecks, all of which can be taken back to the Horizon Walkers as artifacts.

7) Edit: Forgot this one.  Once you die, you're out.  You can't get back into that run.  It's a survival-mode style!

The mobs are already designed to be difficult as-is, so I've thought for a long time that it would be ideal for an end-zone type area!  This is my stab at making it a reality, in a way that gives smaller groups a chance to participate in end-game hunting.  Further, we've been told that the trench is huge and we have only seen a small portion of it (and that portion is large!).  This just seems to fit super-well.