One good example of the way that having too many allies checks one's ability to grief everyone else.
Pretty much yeah. Soulforge attacks all cities except for the one that raised it, so unless you're in a city allied with Seren and Glom and do it, you will be hurting your allies, and people generally don't like to rock the boat.
Likewise, hai'gloh/Xion requires the forests/Celest and Mag to work together. They're unlikely to be done, not because of social stigma where your org will shun you for doing it (unless you happen to be Everiine), but because they require cooperation between orgs in different alliances. Though requiring you to kill supermobs also factors into that.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Was stated by admin that they hit all nexii with a direct connection to Astral. Also that it'll start doing *something* if it goes on for long enough, but no one is gonna let it remain up for long.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
0
EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
Serenwilde bans quests AND has the stupid law that says, "Don't do anything that would involve the organization in conflict", which amounts to the Moonhart Circle putting a blanket ban on any action they think could be an inconvenience.
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
Serenwilde bans quests AND has the stupid law that says, "Don't do anything that would involve the organization in conflict", which amounts to the Moonhart Circle putting a blanket ban on any action they think could be an inconvenience.
Put in because some jokers would go out to stir up trouble (like asking allies to go ahead and chop down our moonhart trees, to provoke war), and then point to the Leaves and go "It's not against the leaves, it's not against the leaves".
In compensation for this, the benefits from village should be re-assessed. Additions to the game have made them largely obsolete.
Manse comm generators have gotten out of hand, yeah. Some manses out there can outproduce half of the Basin's villages (and almost all of such manses are owned by one side of the conflict here).
That aside, what benefits are we actually looking for these days? What would make people care at this point?
We'll take domoths for example. Your rewards for those are power and blessings of various sorts. Almost all of the blessings that don't affect combat/PVE will only affect other forms of power generation/retention (ie, dross increase, bards/scholars, etc.).
There's already tons of ways to get power. Power's only really good for fighting and raising more VAs (eventually).
Now look at the absolve mechanics. Absolve heavily favours whoever is absolving, given that the ones getting absolved not only need to keep killing their opponents, but keep them off of the throne constantly. If they feel like trying to lock down early, they also can potentially just mono and GPENT the entrance through the Veil, too.
Then there's the rules that martial whether you can absolve or not. Demi must be a level over VA, VA must be a level over TA if that TA bears the seal for that domoth. Nothing stops VA from absolving VA at the same level (pretty sure).
Absolve really isn't a fun mechanic. It strips away hours of effort pretty simply and easily, and will always favour the side that has more. So if one side decides they don't care that much for fighting constantly, over and over, and the other has all the TAs and more active VAs, why should there be any shock that there is virtually no domoth contention?
We can try to guerrilla through it, but at some point, we will be subject to absolve, and it is absolve or be absolved. Especially true if the other side wants to go out of their way to ensure you have absolutely nothing, and cares about this more than having more of everything else for themselves.
The last few days, pretty much all my time's gone into domoths when I am logged in, and it is pretty draining. And we've only been trying to keep two! Imaging constant and perpetual conflict over all the domoths just feels ridiculous and utterly exhausting. This only gets worse as the pbase get themselves better jobs and have less time for the game.
Absolve does have a good purpose, but it's too easy to apply for the people with everything already. It's not fun.
Also, I've been hearing some funny rumours about destruction, such as:
1.) Holding the War Domoth Throne means your destruction does more damage. 2.) The more personal essence you possess, the more damage your destruction does.
If these do, in fact, exist... why? Please delete them today and be done with it. Destruction is good enough without stupid undocumented buffs out the wazoo.
All Domoths give a buff to a power when held. Don't think the essence one has any weight, but yes, holding War does give a buff to Destruction. Holding Nature gives a buff to Affinity (I believe). Death gives a buff to FearAura (it ticks faster), and so on.
Edit: Holding Justice also gives you some damage reduction on Aegis, because Aegis isn't good enough I guess?
All Domoths give a buff to a power when held. Don't think the essence one has any weight, but yes, holding War does give a buff to Destruction. Holding Nature gives a buff to Affinity (I believe). Death gives a buff to FearAura (it ticks faster), and so on.
Edit: Holding Justice also gives you some damage reduction on Aegis, because Aegis isn't good enough I guess?
I realise this may be off-topic (less about conflict) but I wonder if there needs to be a nice way to hand off the baton when a population ages and young ones try to take up vacant roles. You get the artifact, the projects, the aethership. But then you have to look for obscure commands you never used before for admin'ing it up. You may be managing a shop for the first time or trying to figure out these DIPLOMACY commands (what do you mean not that kind of Ambassador). And then there's the whole culture bit. Do you know what you're representing? All these quests those oldbies speak about with mechanical and role-play connotations, what's the deal? Wondering if some player-written tome of 'How to be an x' or 'So you want to be a y' should be squirreled away (restricted section of library?) so younger players have something to turn to.
All Domoths give a buff to a power when held. Don't think the essence one has any weight, but yes, holding War does give a buff to Destruction. Holding Nature gives a buff to Affinity (I believe). Death gives a buff to FearAura (it ticks faster), and so on.
Edit: Holding Justice also gives you some damage reduction on Aegis, because Aegis isn't good enough I guess?
All need proper documentation, at the least.
Already done. Iosai spoke with me about this when we were testing whip damage a while back which is where I learned about Destruction getting boosted from holding War. I noted there was no way of players finding this out, so it was added to the POWERS INFO tooltips of the various abilities that are affected by their responding domoths.
The essence rumour is false though.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
I am the Archmage of the Aquamancers, and I have NO idea what most of the stuff around the guildhall is for.
The statue of Forren is for grovelling.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Once upon a time when I was GM, I was wanting the ur'Guard leaders to all start keeping a tome that recorded all of their projects/things done for the Guild, etc. While also collecting all the information they could on their predecessor's work and compile it in it as well, then whenever they were replaced, they would hand it down like council members do with their omnibus.
Alas, it never got off the ground. Kinda sad it didn't.
Back on topic though; I don't think anything is wrong with the conflict in the game. I used to bemoan how if Mag was ever given a 1 on 1 shot at <insert conflict thingy> we could always pull the win. But the game just wouldn't be fun, from a PK standpoint, if all you ever had to worry about was your polar opposite. I forget who posted it, but the comment of 'all it takes is one org to go "Hey, we could do so much better if we joined X"' pretty much sums up how the game goes, and there's not much that will ever change that. Go back to before the current alliances were made, months prior, and you'll see mile long threads about how the game is 'unfun and stale' and look how vehemently a lot of people defended the alliance they were in, claiming they'd never shift because they 'liked where they were and who they were friends with.' Yet we still mixed up to where we are now.
Also, I'd like to point out how there is just a vast skill gap in pkers that has little to do with whose side you are on. If you aren't playing to win, you will not win. Simple as that. Case in point; when Mag/Halli/Seren had that ridiculous meeting where the city leaders decided that the only way to break the Equinox up was for us to split and all go neutral, look what happened. Mag actually whipped Celest in a lot of pk engagements when it was just Mag and Celest, but the Equinox was not obligated by any means to not come to their aid, so they would and we'd get routed easily. You can't blame them for doing that, they play to win, so they did.
Serenwilde and Hallifax had the bright idea to say the Nil with it and go to Celest after the Equinox shakedown. Aside from being carried(and there's really no denying this) by Xena and Kelly, Celest never really amounted to much, and Hallifax and Seren just never had the kind of muscle to bring to bear.
Rant aside, this isn't really a dig at how 'suxor' the C/S/H alliance is, I'm just pointing out that the people in Gaudi, Glom, and Mag who pk, play to win. No matter what, they play to win and that is their mentality. If your org doesn't have these kind of people, no changes whatsoever to conflict mechanics, skills, or alliances will ever be the cornerstone to your new rise to glory. Where there is a will, there will always be a way, plain and simple.
So this thread has gone on for a while, and I've taken a largely passive role in it so far. I've read and skimmed, and mulled over it the disparate opinions (and they are quite disparate) a little, and I decided to organise it a little, if only for my own understanding and to solidify my own thoughts. Here's a summary of the thread so far - I've somewhat ignored the smaller conversations as well as posts that largely reinforce or agree with previous posts (so as to not double up and keep the summary readable) and concentrated on parsing the larger texts, and I've also largely ignored the suggestions given by players. This is because generally speaking, I highly doubt the admin will use anything put up here, (if they are even convinced of our arguments, they'll likely implement changes on their own) and also because I am personally not interested in those - so I didn't bother to put in the effort to parse those.
1) Vivet's starting post - Highlights a two-fold problem with feature creep - the first is that, obviously, it has a large impact on new players. - Secondly, it has a large impact on an organisation and its ability to remain an attractive place for well-equipped and experienced players, because when one of those said players leave, it creates a ripple effect that can drain a lot of expertise and knowledge via migration to another org, or another game.
2) Rialorm asserts that in general, the problem is "a lack of players" - And points out that a lack of guild-centric attention from players (or an effort to let newbies know the guild is not dead) can result in players leaving.
3) Celina asserts a few things: - Firstly, that there are plenty of conflict mechanics, there is not equal opportunity to take part in them (eg raid mechanics and how smobs were super buffed to have the risk far outweigh the rewards) - Secondly, that while cost of entry has been lowered, cost of becoming competitive has increased. You can no longer be competitive with the effects of feature creep. - Related to the second point, that class balance is far from optimal, a result from a "feature creep"-like arms-race where some guilds are now no longer attractive, or even competitive, with newer guilds.
4) Talan's post argues that the ultimate reason for current conflict problems is population disparity (larger population = win) - And that psychologically, winning leads to more winning because it draws more people to their org - also notes that there is no way to redress this psychological feedback loop - But that mechanically enforced snowballing effects can and should be changed to help tackle the problem.
5) Morkarion asserts that the biggest issue in the state of conflict is "that" mentality, - When "people don't want to do, they just want to benefit" - When power is given to those who cannot utilize it properly - Which leads to inefficiency that directly causes people to stop trying and which leads to a negative feedback loop of burnouts and migrations.
6) Ushaara makes a connection between the game's predominantly CTF, KOH type conflicts and static, unchanging alliances - That can cause a seasonal drop in players from an org to have a heavy impact on the atmosphere of the game and a deterioration in the state of conflict. - He argues that more fluid alliances might result in orgs being about to cushion the impact of player population drops since conflict doesn't stall to a standstill during such periods.
7) Daevos argues that conflict in Lusternia is too scheduled - That this mindset behind designing conflicts to have distinctive start-end points mean that "mechanical" conflicts are the only conflicts in the game. - Implies that conflicts in Lusternia are too result-based.
8) Rami notes that conflict here is like a ghost town - And is due to players being spread too thin across orgs
9) Rivius asserts that the state of conflict is due to population and the lack of proper guidance to new players - Not due to mechanics, or at least, that mechanical (combat) imbalances are distractions to the real problem - Notes that fluctuations in combat/conflict activeness has always been tied to population changes
10) Daevos puts forth the argument that while actions of the population is a factor, mechanics also dictate the behavior of players to some extent, - Which means that to have players change how they play the game (and make the conflict in this game fun), you need to have mechanical changes to nudge such changes
11) Vivet adds here that certain conflict mechanics are simply not fun - Like domoth absolves and the how the requirements/limits simply favour absolvers too much, allowing those who hold the majority of the domoths to easily maintain the status quo (via absolves)
Edit: Thalkros posted while I was typing. I hate you. =(
12) Thalkros argues that the current state of conflict is the norm, and not new, even before alliance changes (a year ago, at least) - And that the skill gap and mindset of the PKers is the root cause - Notes that changes to mechanics, skills or alliances won't change the current state of conflict
I think the essence rumor about destruction came about when destruction damage was based on your skill level in ascendance. Since ascendance isn't even around anymore, that may be the confusion.
Ascendance was learned by spending personal essence, so I think that's where that came from. The point is, that's not true and people shouldn't keep bringing it up or soon it'll be the whole 'shadows prevent all forms of Regen' all over again
Rant aside, this isn't really a dig at how 'suxor' the C/S/H alliance is, I'm just pointing out that the people in Gaudi, Glom, and Mag who pk, play to win. No matter what, they play to win and that is their mentality. If your org doesn't have these kind of people, no changes whatsoever to conflict mechanics, skills, or alliances will ever be the cornerstone to your new rise to glory. Where there is a will, there will always be a way, plain and simple.
.. yeah, can't really deny that. This is further perpetuated by the fact that the Play To Win types will cluster, since the similar attitudes create affinity between them, and really, failing to do so would not be Playing To Win in the first place.
All Domoths give a buff to a power when held. Don't think the essence one has any weight, but yes, holding War does give a buff to Destruction. Holding Nature gives a buff to Affinity (I believe). Death gives a buff to FearAura (it ticks faster), and so on.
Edit: Holding Justice also gives you some damage reduction on Aegis, because Aegis isn't good enough I guess?
All need proper documentation, at the least.
Already done. Iosai spoke with me about this when we were testing whip damage a while back which is where I learned about Destruction getting boosted from holding War. I noted there was no way of players finding this out, so it was added to the POWERS INFO tooltips of the various abilities that are affected by their responding domoths.
The essence rumour is false though.
Can't find anything listed under any of the Chaos powers about holding the domotheos and getting buffs, so clearly it's not documented... or Chaos doesn't get a buff, which although Chaos powers are pretty 'meh' to begin with is also a bit entertaining, because that means that we have a disparity right there.
EDIT: In my opinion, any kind of buff shouldn't need to be hunted down or guessed at. Truthfully, the best place for this kind of information would be under HELP DOMOTH BLESSINGS. Something along the lines of: "Holding this domotheos gives the following benefit to power x: Whatever benefit there is"
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
All Domoths give a buff to a power when held. Don't think the essence one has any weight, but yes, holding War does give a buff to Destruction. Holding Nature gives a buff to Affinity (I believe). Death gives a buff to FearAura (it ticks faster), and so on.
Edit: Holding Justice also gives you some damage reduction on Aegis, because Aegis isn't good enough I guess?
All need proper documentation, at the least.
Already done. Iosai spoke with me about this when we were testing whip damage a while back which is where I learned about Destruction getting boosted from holding War. I noted there was no way of players finding this out, so it was added to the POWERS INFO tooltips of the various abilities that are affected by their responding domoths.
The essence rumour is false though.
Can't find anything listed under any of the Chaos powers about holding the domotheos and getting buffs, so clearly it's not documented... or Chaos doesn't get a buff, which although Chaos powers are pretty 'meh' to begin with is also a bit entertaining, because that means that we have a disparity right there.
EDIT: In my opinion, any kind of buff shouldn't need to be hunted down or guessed at. Truthfully, the best place for this kind of information would be under HELP DOMOTH BLESSINGS. Something along the lines of: "Holding this domotheos gives the following benefit to power x: Whatever benefit there is"
What does that matter? I think the domoth powers buffs are also relics of ascendance, and that getting said I bet harmony doesn't have one either, because it used to be an omniscience boost
Point is, who cares? One person getting a boost on one power, that they need to have active anyway isn't going to make or break either side, far bigger fish to fry
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
It's certainly true to a point, but you can curb the "play to win" types by lowering the ceiling. One of the characteristics of the "play to win" group is that they (or should I say "we") will get every buff available to give themselves an edge. Will the "play to win" types have an edge over the more casually competitive? Sure. However, to grow healthy conflict and a healthy population, you can't tip the scales so heavily in favor of those with unlimited resources (time, credits, etc) against those with limited resources or you will not attract new players because they won't have immediate access to being successful. Honestly, I wish most of the game's features (outside of guild skills) were on a point system like Demigod/Ascendant powers. Health buffs, damage buffs, everything was on a point system and ultimately limited so you can't have it all. This way you could acrue buffs such as the war domoth to buff your destruction, or a throne blessing, or a dmp damage reduction buff, but you couldn't have it all. A bottomless bucket of features is fine if you don't let players just run wild with them.
It wouldn't be overly complicated, would just have to compile a list of all available buffs that exist outside of guild skills and assign it a value, then implement the existing demigod powers system. Not going to happen, naturally. Unfortunately, there would inevitably be a feature or artifact that let people have more points (like there is now) and make the whole system pointless.
To be really, truly successful in PK nowadays, you can't be a casual Lusternian. There's just too much to upkeep. I would say that the feature creep mentioned a billion times before is a large reason why casual pk is no longer accessible.
I also think we need to be done with special snowflake features. Ascendant only powers, champion artifacts, anything that only a small handful of people get access to. I sincerely believe that a healthy pk population will thrive in an evironment where everyone has access to everything. Flavor like Champion rescue and no karma loss, ascendant fly and clairsentience are fine, they really have minimal impact on the game. Super champ ents and destruction and fearaura so on and so forth directly impact every conflict they are used in in a very noticable way. Maybe Ascendants get it for free but demigods have to pay in essence. Also fewer extremes to account for if certain things can't be dismissed as "Oh such and such a ascendant curio hoarder geo champion with the war domoth, that's why destruction is OP."
If it's a relic from a time gone and should no longer apply, then they should all be removed. That's what matters. As to who cares... apparently, I do. Of course, we'll be hearing claims about how I don't matter or how I complain about things that aren't in my favor, etc, etc... well, if it's not that big a deal, why did War get passed on to Morkarion? I'm guessing because it is, in fact, a big deal.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
what's silly is thinking those buffs are the reason you win/lose. Did i give war to Mork So he could benefit? Yes, every little bit helps. Will it be the sole reason he wins? No, not at all, and is quite silly to focus on this one issue as really being this big of a deal. Sure, put it on HELP DOMOTH BLESSING. that's fine or remove them, that's fine too, because when it comes down to it, they don't make a big difference.
But hey, that's totally the reason for the current state of conflict, amirite?
The fact that you refute the idea that fair knowledge of the playing field is at all appropriate is pretty indicative of the state of conflict in this game.
Comments
Vive l'apostrophe!
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Part of the reason I want to raise it is to find out, also you can quickly recover their power losses.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Vive l'apostrophe!
That aside, what benefits are we actually looking for these days? What would make people care at this point?
We'll take domoths for example. Your rewards for those are power and blessings of various sorts. Almost all of the blessings that don't affect combat/PVE will only affect other forms of power generation/retention (ie, dross increase, bards/scholars, etc.).
There's already tons of ways to get power. Power's only really good for fighting and raising more VAs (eventually).
Now look at the absolve mechanics. Absolve heavily favours whoever is absolving, given that the ones getting absolved not only need to keep killing their opponents, but keep them off of the throne constantly. If they feel like trying to lock down early, they also can potentially just mono and GPENT the entrance through the Veil, too.
Then there's the rules that martial whether you can absolve or not. Demi must be a level over VA, VA must be a level over TA if that TA bears the seal for that domoth. Nothing stops VA from absolving VA at the same level (pretty sure).
Absolve really isn't a fun mechanic. It strips away hours of effort pretty simply and easily, and will always favour the side that has more. So if one side decides they don't care that much for fighting constantly, over and over, and the other has all the TAs and more active VAs, why should there be any shock that there is virtually no domoth contention?
We can try to guerrilla through it, but at some point, we will be subject to absolve, and it is absolve or be absolved. Especially true if the other side wants to go out of their way to ensure you have absolutely nothing, and cares about this more than having more of everything else for themselves.
The last few days, pretty much all my time's gone into domoths when I am logged in, and it is pretty draining. And we've only been trying to keep two! Imaging constant and perpetual conflict over all the domoths just feels ridiculous and utterly exhausting. This only gets worse as the pbase get themselves better jobs and have less time for the game.
Absolve does have a good purpose, but it's too easy to apply for the people with everything already. It's not fun.
Also, I've been hearing some funny rumours about destruction, such as:
1.) Holding the War Domoth Throne means your destruction does more damage.
2.) The more personal essence you possess, the more damage your destruction does.
If these do, in fact, exist... why? Please delete them today and be done with it. Destruction is good enough without stupid undocumented buffs out the wazoo.
Edit: Holding Justice also gives you some damage reduction on Aegis, because Aegis isn't good enough I guess?
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Already done. Iosai spoke with me about this when we were testing whip damage a while back which is where I learned about Destruction getting boosted from holding War. I noted there was no way of players finding this out, so it was added to the POWERS INFO tooltips of the various abilities that are affected by their responding domoths.
The essence rumour is false though.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
1) Vivet's starting post
- Highlights a two-fold problem with feature creep - the first is that, obviously, it has a large impact on new players.
- Secondly, it has a large impact on an organisation and its ability to remain an attractive place for well-equipped and experienced players, because when one of those said players leave, it creates a ripple effect that can drain a lot of expertise and knowledge via migration to another org, or another game.
2) Rialorm asserts that in general, the problem is "a lack of players"
- And points out that a lack of guild-centric attention from players (or an effort to let newbies know the guild is not dead) can result in players leaving.
3) Celina asserts a few things:
- Firstly, that there are plenty of conflict mechanics, there is not equal opportunity to take part in them (eg raid mechanics and how smobs were super buffed to have the risk far outweigh the rewards)
- Secondly, that while cost of entry has been lowered, cost of becoming competitive has increased. You can no longer be competitive with the effects of feature creep.
- Related to the second point, that class balance is far from optimal, a result from a "feature creep"-like arms-race where some guilds are now no longer attractive, or even competitive, with newer guilds.
4) Talan's post argues that the ultimate reason for current conflict problems is population disparity (larger population = win)
- And that psychologically, winning leads to more winning because it draws more people to their org - also notes that there is no way to redress this psychological feedback loop
- But that mechanically enforced snowballing effects can and should be changed to help tackle the problem.
5) Morkarion asserts that the biggest issue in the state of conflict is "that" mentality,
- When "people don't want to do, they just want to benefit"
- When power is given to those who cannot utilize it properly
- Which leads to inefficiency that directly causes people to stop trying and which leads to a negative feedback loop of burnouts and migrations.
6) Ushaara makes a connection between the game's predominantly CTF, KOH type conflicts and static, unchanging alliances
- That can cause a seasonal drop in players from an org to have a heavy impact on the atmosphere of the game and a deterioration in the state of conflict.
- He argues that more fluid alliances might result in orgs being about to cushion the impact of player population drops since conflict doesn't stall to a standstill during such periods.
7) Daevos argues that conflict in Lusternia is too scheduled
- That this mindset behind designing conflicts to have distinctive start-end points mean that "mechanical" conflicts are the only conflicts in the game.
- Implies that conflicts in Lusternia are too result-based.
8) Rami notes that conflict here is like a ghost town
- And is due to players being spread too thin across orgs
9) Rivius asserts that the state of conflict is due to population and the lack of proper guidance to new players
- Not due to mechanics, or at least, that mechanical (combat) imbalances are distractions to the real problem
- Notes that fluctuations in combat/conflict activeness has always been tied to population changes
10) Daevos puts forth the argument that while actions of the population is a factor, mechanics also dictate the behavior of players to some extent,
- Which means that to have players change how they play the game (and make the conflict in this game fun), you need to have mechanical changes to nudge such changes
11) Vivet adds here that certain conflict mechanics are simply not fun
- Like domoth absolves and the how the requirements/limits simply favour absolvers too much, allowing those who hold the majority of the domoths to easily maintain the status quo (via absolves)
Edit: Thalkros posted while I was typing. I hate you. =(
12) Thalkros argues that the current state of conflict is the norm, and not new, even before alliance changes (a year ago, at least)
- And that the skill gap and mindset of the PKers is the root cause
- Notes that changes to mechanics, skills or alliances won't change the current state of conflict
Ascendance was learned by spending personal essence, so I think that's where that came from. The point is, that's not true and people shouldn't keep bringing it up or soon it'll be the whole 'shadows prevent all forms of Regen' all over again
EDIT: In my opinion, any kind of buff shouldn't need to be hunted down or guessed at. Truthfully, the best place for this kind of information would be under HELP DOMOTH BLESSINGS. Something along the lines of: "Holding this domotheos gives the following benefit to power x: Whatever benefit there is"
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Already done. Iosai spoke with me about this when we were testing whip damage a while back which is where I learned about Destruction getting boosted from holding War. I noted there was no way of players finding this out, so it was added to the POWERS INFO tooltips of the various abilities that are affected by their responding domoths.
The essence rumour is false though.
Can't find anything listed under any of the Chaos powers about holding the domotheos and getting buffs, so clearly it's not documented... or Chaos doesn't get a buff, which although Chaos powers are pretty 'meh' to begin with is also a bit entertaining, because that means that we have a disparity right there.
EDIT: In my opinion, any kind of buff shouldn't need to be hunted down or guessed at. Truthfully, the best place for this kind of information would be under HELP DOMOTH BLESSINGS. Something along the lines of: "Holding this domotheos gives the following benefit to power x: Whatever benefit there is"
What does that matter? I think the domoth powers buffs are also relics of ascendance, and that getting said I bet harmony doesn't have one either, because it used to be an omniscience boost
Point is, who cares? One person getting a boost on one power, that they need to have active anyway isn't going to make or break either side, far bigger fish to fry
The idea that only ascendants should be able to find out how a given component of the game functions is silly.
Given that we're 2 days before the death seal, any claim that this in particular has little consequence, is equally silly.
Vive l'apostrophe!
It's certainly true to a point, but you can curb the "play to win" types by lowering the ceiling. One of the characteristics of the "play to win" group is that they (or should I say "we") will get every buff available to give themselves an edge. Will the "play to win" types have an edge over the more casually competitive? Sure. However, to grow healthy conflict and a healthy population, you can't tip the scales so heavily in favor of those with unlimited resources (time, credits, etc) against those with limited resources or you will not attract new players because they won't have immediate access to being successful. Honestly, I wish most of the game's features (outside of guild skills) were on a point system like Demigod/Ascendant powers. Health buffs, damage buffs, everything was on a point system and ultimately limited so you can't have it all. This way you could acrue buffs such as the war domoth to buff your destruction, or a throne blessing, or a dmp damage reduction buff, but you couldn't have it all. A bottomless bucket of features is fine if you don't let players just run wild with them.
It wouldn't be overly complicated, would just have to compile a list of all available buffs that exist outside of guild skills and assign it a value, then implement the existing demigod powers system. Not going to happen, naturally. Unfortunately, there would inevitably be a feature or artifact that let people have more points (like there is now) and make the whole system pointless.
To be really, truly successful in PK nowadays, you can't be a casual Lusternian. There's just too much to upkeep. I would say that the feature creep mentioned a billion times before is a large reason why casual pk is no longer accessible.
I also think we need to be done with special snowflake features. Ascendant only powers, champion artifacts, anything that only a small handful of people get access to. I sincerely believe that a healthy pk population will thrive in an evironment where everyone has access to everything. Flavor like Champion rescue and no karma loss, ascendant fly and clairsentience are fine, they really have minimal impact on the game. Super champ ents and destruction and fearaura so on and so forth directly impact every conflict they are used in in a very noticable way. Maybe Ascendants get it for free but demigods have to pay in essence. Also fewer extremes to account for if certain things can't be dismissed as "Oh such and such a ascendant curio hoarder geo champion with the war domoth, that's why destruction is OP."
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
But hey, that's totally the reason for the current state of conflict, amirite?
Edited for cursing!
Vive l'apostrophe!