There is a clear end to raids. For example, on Celestia, all the angels are now dead. You can stand around but it doesn't matter anymore because there is nothing left to gain or take away. If you have enough to do supernals, and you do so, that is the end. There is nothing left to do for that raid.
Reducing the headache of SMobs being dead by having them auto-regenerated instead of people fighting to grief essence drops would remove the possibility for people to try to ultra-grief the situation (though the fact that there is way more essence to be farmed these days than there used to be points towards this not being as painful as it used to be). Increasing SMob immunity periods also reduces the ability for orgs to be griefed. There's lots of things that can be done to reduce the pain for defenders who have lost without removing the mechanic all together, or making it so impossible that it is basically removed for all intents and purposes.
Why is killing all the angels a 'clear end' to raiding? If I'm raiding, I have 2 reasons, 1) I'm gold farming - ok with no fight, let me get my gold and I'll be about my business or 2) I want a fight.
If it's the latter, then the end of the raid isn't when the angels are all dead, it's when I've decided that they have had enough and aren't going to give it anymore goes, and that really depends on the person. IE if @Kelly's on Celestia, they'll probably continue coming until we're all dead or gone or if it's @Elanorwen, she's going to sit at the nexus unless they have 3 times (or was it 5 times?) the numbers. If raiding is just to kill angels, that's stupid. I can hit and run angels and dart off into a ship all day every day if I wanted to, and never fight a single person. Defining the 'end' of a raid that's happening because I feel like raiding is rather arbitrary and not really for you to put a hard label on it.
The rest of what people have said, I agree with. Too much focus on deaths, too much 'complain for change' mentality etc. Despite this, raids still happen and fights still happen, just not to the extent of the days of yore.
The end of a raid can easily be determined by the defenders. We used to get Nil all watered up and we'd fight for a while but then all the demons would be dead and we knew they didn't have enough for DL's, so we'd sit at the megalith and ignore them. Talkan would yell and yell about Nil belonging to the light, but at that point the raid was over, people were just peacocking.
The end of a raid can easily be determined by the defenders. We used to get Nil all watered up and we'd fight for a while but then all the demons would be dead and we knew they didn't have enough for DL's, so we'd sit at the megalith and ignore them. Talkan would yell and yell about Nil belonging to the light, but at that point the raid was over, people were just peacocking.
Right... this is what I just said, which happens to contradict what you posted earlier about the 'angels being dead determining the end of a raid.' The angels have nothing to do with it, the people involved do.
I don't really do much raiding, but the rare times we do, the only reason we hit mobs is to draw people out. They never had anything to do with anything otherwise.
1
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
They're really good gold if you let them sit for a while!
I enjoyed attacking the angels, defiling the sanctity of celestia, and attempting to damage the light. The fighting is fun, but if all you want is a fight there's no need to go to an enemy plane and get constantly stunned for it.
Does anyone care to comment on whether reducing the hassle of raising dead SMobs and extending immunity would make the mechanic viable enough to bring back to the game? You might even remove the power costs of your SMobs being dead and give an honours line for last-hitting them or putting their orbs into your nexus? She has used the power of the Megalith to enslave the Supernals. or something like that.
@Synkarin No, you see, in that situation the demons all being dead is exactly what determined the end of the raid. We had nothing left to defend, so as players we decided the raid did not have to continue. The opposition had nothing to try to pull our heart strings with, and thus had lost their power to draw us into a fight. Now, we could have said, eh let's just fight for lols, and that's where the defenders can extend the raid at their own discretion, but we were by no means obligated to. Demons dead = don't have to be there anymore. If you choose to stick around that's up to you.
@Synkarin No, you see, in that situation the demons all being dead is exactly what determined the end of the raid. We had nothing left to defend, so as players we decided the raid did not have to continue. The opposition had nothing to try to pull our heart strings with, and thus had lost their power to draw us into a fight. Now, we could have said, eh let's just fight for lols, and that's where the defenders can extend the raid at their own discretion, but we were by no means obligated to. Demons dead = don't have to be there anymore. If you choose to stick around that's up to you.
..No, If the only RP justification for you to not defend is 'why bother, the demons are dead' then you are standing on pretty flimsy ground to begin with. An enemy nation has invaded, killed all your resident demons, defiled your sacred, holy ground and are just standing there while you refuse to remove them? If you're sticking to RP, you have every reason to keep fighting and attempt to remove an enemy, demons or not.
I mean, if your whole RP base for defending at all is the demons, then why bother in the first place, wait an hour and they'll be back.
Again, the only thing that controls a raid's beginning and end is the players, plain and simple, nothing else. I'm rather sure you took part is raids in the past that lasted hours, even after everything was dead, just to continue to kill people, running along with @Thoros, who is notorious for it.
@Synkarin I sure did, because the opposition continued to come and fight, a decision they made. At any point you can justify an end to the raid once all of the things are dead. If people want to quit they can, or once they are all dead we can say we won and just bounce. The obligation to participate is directly tied to the assets that are in play. People always have the option of behaving irrationally, and often do. We would hang around on the plane, and if it looked like they were forming up we'd stay, even if it looked like they were going to end up doubling our numbers. If everyone left, we left. Continuing to fight after all the cosmic critters are dead is a personal choice made by the participants to intentionally extend the raid beyond its natural stopping point. After this natural stopping point, only the defenders have the power to extend the raid. AFKing in ripple on an enemy plane isn't fun, and people will go home if it looks like everything is over.
And, yeah, the demons are all we ever cared about. You can't damage the plane itself. If you intentionally shoehorn RP onto your character to defend something that can't be attacked, you are the one telling everybody to stick around and stab you some more.
Killing cosmic entities strips power from the nexus. I think a lot of people have forgotten the days when 10 consecutive raids on your cosmic plane actually had a noticeable, negative impact on your org's power production, even just killing imps and fiends. They absolutely were important to us, RP-wise because of demon worship and asset-wise because it mattered.
Now, please, is there anything that you personally believe could be changed about planar raiding that would make it something fun, interesting, or meaningful to all parties involved, even if they lost? Perhaps it could be changed to something that isn't zero-sum, so being killed on your own cosmic plane cost 0 xp, and you gained power to your nexus for killing enemies of the plane while on that plane. This way there is actually an all reward no risk situation for defenders, a benefit they could receive because they didn't get to stipulate the terms of engagement. In exchange, make raiding less ridiculously pointless for the attackers.
0
EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
I considered the state of conflict pretty stale when the feature creep got so insane that guards, mobs, and pre-buff smobs (which are entirely too buffed now) started getting razed to the ground by small groups or single individuals with enough firepower to wipe out a small planet. Put simply, things wouldn't have had to be buffed and made so hard to kill/attain if every time we reached the top, we didn't simply give the top bigger guns. The resulting inability to have meaningful conflict is a direct result of constantly raising the power ceiling and then having to adjust everything else around that--which is impossible to do.
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.
...ok, You seem to agree with me, but are presenting it in an argumentative fashion.
Yes, I agree, players determine when the raid actually ends, not some arbitrary event you tried to assign to it. There is no 'natural' stopping point, just a point where one side decides not to try anymore (for whatever reason that may be) and the other side leaves, thus ending the raid. Yes defenders have the power to react or not react. Everything you just said agrees with the point I've said from the start about the players being the ones that decide the raid is over. I can bold stuff too.
If you really want to sit here and say allowing invaders to walk all over Nil because they can't harm anything mechanically is good RP, I don't know what to tell you. I simply disagree.
I really think this is just another 'complain for change' campaign, which I really hate. You want to make deaths matter even less than they do now? They mean diddily squat already. Raiding is already extraordinarily costly for the raiders as it is, but you want to further make it easier on the defenders? That really just promotes off-peak raids even more so. No, I think that raiding and defending need to have appropriate risks associated with them . You shouldn't get a free ride just because you have to defend. I don't know a clear answer, but I don't really feel making it even easier on the defenders is a good road to go down.
This is just how I feel, but deaths on enemy territory are just way too painful. You lose a massive chunk of essence that takes hours of boring grinding to get back later. I personally hate grinding back essence because of how time-consuming it is, and tend to prefer fights that are on more neutral territory. I think if we decreased the essence loss on dying in enemy territory to something more reasonable, people would be more willing to take that risk. Only problem here is, what puts the stop to a raid? I don't really want it to ever come to the point where people will just keep coming back over and over and over because dying is just a slap on the wrist.
@Synkarin I think you are completely misunderstanding what I'm trying to accomplish. There is a mechanic in the game that has essentially been nullified which I used to absolutely love, perhaps one of my favorite activities. I am asking people to explain why they didn't like that old mechanic that led to it being soft-abolished, and to help brainstorm about ways in which it could be changed so we could have the mechanic back, but in a way that makes everyone happy, attackers & defenders, whether they win or not.
If I seem argumentative it's because that's exactly how I'm perceiving your comments. All the way up until this last post I have been under the impression, based on your tone and content, that you are opposed to this mechanic returning, though you've yet to state any reason why other than what sounded like a complaint about griefing in that attackers are ruining RP by attacking and sticking around when the fights keep coming to them. If I've completely misunderstood you up to this point, then I am entirely sorry. Miscommunication happens.
I can agree with you that people should want to oust attackers, but it makes completely perfect sense that you might sit back and wait for them to leave. I could name for you dozens of current event scenarios where countries, tribes, and organizations sit on the territory of others, others who claim that as their territory but exert little to no influence there because logistically they are unable to, whether from lack of power or that the other entity has overwhelmingly greater force than they can afford to deploy at that location. Here in lusternia there is an advantage in that 100% of the time the attackers will eventually be forced out, if nothing else but because there is no longer anything to gain by remaining.
I have larped and DM'd tabletop roleplaying games and had lots of fun with the flexibility to bend mechanics so that my players can do the things they want to do, tell the stories they want to tell, but we do not have that flexibility here. There is nothing bad about your RP if you say "They have done all the damage they can do. Let their fires burn out, and when they leave we will restore the sanctity of this place."
I 100% agree that reducing essence costs for deaths in enemy territory would go a long long way in making raiding worth doing on some scale. I didn't jump out there with it because we've asked for it before, but I'd absolutely like to see that as part of the package, though I'd also like to see more than that.
The reason raiding has been crushed is because lots of people hate being raided. Part of the problem with the old mechanics was that, not always, but often the fun of some players came at the expense of others. Some of my ideas have focused on the idea of a trade. Have these incentives that make being raided not suck, so that we can get some of these crappy things lifted off of the offensive side.
As the title of this post states, I believe a big part of the problem is Risk vs Reward.
Attackers experience high risk because of huge essence losses if they die. Their rewards for success are very small: an inconsequential amount of power stolen from the enemy and a bit of gold.
Defenders experience low risk: little essence loss, little power lost if they lose. Defenders also have no reward, beyond not losing the things that were threatened.
Both sides of this situation are bad, so I feel like looking at this in a buff one side because the other has it easy mentality is not going to lead to a productive solution.
The essence loss does suck, however, and should be replaced by means that do not discourage participation by new players without phasing the most established characters.
Yes, raiding should be made more interesting. Raids end because one or another side gets bored, and this hurts the living hell out of RP, especially if a major part of your rp is 'Our land is sacred", and the very best way to get infidels out of that land is to bore them into going away (by not engaging).
The standard responce to being raided recently is "fire up shrines and discretionaries so they leave" which resilts in the other side claiming victory without a shot being fired because the defence used up power and essence.
I can't think of anything more boring for everyone. As long as people are afraid of dying and losing raiding will be a battle of blue balling and "offpeak" hits.
Granted you have those who don't want to defend (somewhat understandable. Pk isn't everyone's thing) but then you have people who raid thinking they have the element of a defenceless area, only to flee at the first sign of resistance and call for overwhelming numbers. Those people don't want to fight, they just want to PvE bash an area and call it raiding.
How that's fun in anyone's mind I have zero clue. A hard fought loss is more fun than a faceroll curbstomp. There's no adrenaline rush in the latter. No one is impressed at your 5 person on one kill. So what's the attraction?
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!
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
The essence loss does suck, however, and should be replaced by means that do not discourage participation by new players without phasing the most established characters.
Yes, raiding should be made more interesting. Raids end because one or another side gets bored, and this hurts the living hell out of RP, especially if a major part of your rp is 'Our land is sacred", and the very best way to get infidels out of that land is to bore them into going away (by not engaging).
No matter how "interesting" you make it, if it's too hard to actually be done, no one is going to do it. As it stands, Smobs are too hard.
I also think we need to move away from this notion defenders losing against raiders is somehow "bad for RP." It's not, that's just an excuse to get mechanics changed to suit you, and it was used when the Smobs were buffed. There was no significant mechanical loss to the orgs while their Smobs were getting killed. It was just a belief that losing was somehow crushingly detrimental to the game, with little explanation as to why it wasn't ruining the game before then. It was dumb then, it's still dumb now. You can lose and still maintain your RP.
And give the ethereal manifestations a way to stop easy hop outs through the archway. Nexus distort should at least make leaving (not entering) a channeled effect to prevent the easy escapes.
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!
And give the ethereal manifestations a way to stop easy hop outs through the archway. Nexus distort should at least make leaving (not entering) a channeled effect to prevent the easy escapes.
Cause ethereal isn't already one of the scariest places to raid.
I'd rather we just take away the archway distortion from the elemental planes...It's why I'm more willing to go into Glomdoring than Earth if I had to choose. If things go south, I can just go north and enter archway.
And give the ethereal manifestations a way to stop easy hop outs through the archway. Nexus distort should at least make leaving (not entering) a channeled effect to prevent the easy escapes.
Cause ethereal isn't already one of the scariest places to raid.
Yet the most common. Can't remember the last big fight on cosmic, or elemental. Ethereal fights are almost daily, and not just on Faethorn.
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!
The essence loss does suck, however, and should be replaced by means that do not discourage participation by new players without phasing the most established characters.
Yes, raiding should be made more interesting. Raids end because one or another side gets bored, and this hurts the living hell out of RP, especially if a major part of your rp is 'Our land is sacred", and the very best way to get infidels out of that land is to bore them into going away (by not engaging).
No matter how "interesting" you make it, if it's too hard to actually be done, no one is going to do it. As it stands, Smobs are too hard.
I also think we need to move away from this notion defenders losing against raiders is somehow "bad for RP." It's not, that's just an excuse to get mechanics changed to suit you, and it was used when the Smobs were buffed. There was no significant mechanical loss to the orgs while their Smobs were getting killed. It was just a belief that losing was somehow crushingly detrimental to the game, with little explanation as to why it wasn't ruining the game before then. It was dumb then, it's still dumb now. You can lose and still maintain your RP.
I meant more that it tends to be most efficient, if your goal is to get people out of your territory, to not engage in combat than it is to kill them off - unless you have overwhelming numbers. Not so much that losing hurts RP, but that the best way of ending a fight right now hurts RP, because it's a tactic that depends on player boredom.
This probably isn't the greatest of ideas, but it is something I remember from some of the old world bosses in World of Warcraft that made a definite end to an attempt on a boss (could be modified to something that affects a cosmic plane, allowing people to return to fight more than once, but giving them an upper limit as to how many times they can return)
Basically my idea is that the penalty for death on an enemy Cosmic/Elemental plane is dropped, but instead when someone dies while there (this would include using heartstop to avoid people using it to circumvent the debuff), they are given an uncurable debuff that persists through death (perhaps something like <name>'s spirit is corrupted by the taint by 20/40/60/80/100% (maybe even 10% steps?) - or something fitting for one of the other planes - when you hit 100%, the instant you try to set foot on that plane again until the debuff wears off (an hour maybe?), you die instantly and the timer resets back to its original time. Perhaps with lower percentages other effects could occur, like a stronger chance of afflictions, or faster insanity generation (The idea comes from some bosses in WoW where if you died, you got a debuff that persisted through death, if you got within a set range of the boss while afflicted, you either were perpetually put to sleep, or you died instantly).
Just an idea I had been kicking around, if anyone has any suggestions that could improve further on the idea, I'd certainly appreciate them - something like this would allow people to raid enemy planes, while having a hard limit on the number of times that they can return so they can't just zerg infinitely due to having a large buffer or low penalty costs.
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
....no, no debuffs for raiding please. Being the aggressor on a raid is balls already. Shrines, discretionaries, huge x loss, etc.
You must have missed my comment about substantially lowering the experience loss to entice more raiding, while also putting a hard limit in place so people didn't abuse it and just zerg infinitely.
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
People haven't 'zerged infinitely' in years. The odds are already in the defenders court as it. I don't think anything hard coded is needed, just a case of 'zip up your mansuit' and stop worrying so much.
In any case, it was just a suggestion as an alternative to people losing a couple of million essence each time they die (a drop in the bucket for higher end players, but for the newer demigods, a couple of deaths could easily bump them back down to titan). That being said, I don't think Celest has used discretionaries in a while, because we don't have any aetherbubbles, meaning anyone that activates one is expected to pay back the 250 power (500 in the case of a Celestine that Distorts and ripples or an aquamancer that distorts/fluxes)
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
Any new demigods who go raiding without a decent buffer are asking for the consequences. It doesn't take long to build up essence, I realise now even a 2mil loss isn't as painful as it seems.
Comments
They're really good gold if you let them sit for a while!
I won't like, I raid to farm the mobs sometimes.
Does anyone care to comment on whether reducing the hassle of raising dead SMobs and extending immunity would make the mechanic viable enough to bring back to the game? You might even remove the power costs of your SMobs being dead and give an honours line for last-hitting them or putting their orbs into your nexus? She has used the power of the Megalith to enslave the Supernals. or something like that.
@Synkarin No, you see, in that situation the demons all being dead is exactly what determined the end of the raid. We had nothing left to defend, so as players we decided the raid did not have to continue. The opposition had nothing to try to pull our heart strings with, and thus had lost their power to draw us into a fight. Now, we could have said, eh let's just fight for lols, and that's where the defenders can extend the raid at their own discretion, but we were by no means obligated to. Demons dead = don't have to be there anymore. If you choose to stick around that's up to you.
And, yeah, the demons are all we ever cared about. You can't damage the plane itself. If you intentionally shoehorn RP onto your character to defend something that can't be attacked, you are the one telling everybody to stick around and stab you some more.
Killing cosmic entities strips power from the nexus. I think a lot of people have forgotten the days when 10 consecutive raids on your cosmic plane actually had a noticeable, negative impact on your org's power production, even just killing imps and fiends. They absolutely were important to us, RP-wise because of demon worship and asset-wise because it mattered.
Now, please, is there anything that you personally believe could be changed about planar raiding that would make it something fun, interesting, or meaningful to all parties involved, even if they lost? Perhaps it could be changed to something that isn't zero-sum, so being killed on your own cosmic plane cost 0 xp, and you gained power to your nexus for killing enemies of the plane while on that plane. This way there is actually an all reward no risk situation for defenders, a benefit they could receive because they didn't get to stipulate the terms of engagement. In exchange, make raiding less ridiculously pointless for the attackers.
If I seem argumentative it's because that's exactly how I'm perceiving your comments. All the way up until this last post I have been under the impression, based on your tone and content, that you are opposed to this mechanic returning, though you've yet to state any reason why other than what sounded like a complaint about griefing in that attackers are ruining RP by attacking and sticking around when the fights keep coming to them. If I've completely misunderstood you up to this point, then I am entirely sorry. Miscommunication happens.
I can agree with you that people should want to oust attackers, but it makes completely perfect sense that you might sit back and wait for them to leave. I could name for you dozens of current event scenarios where countries, tribes, and organizations sit on the territory of others, others who claim that as their territory but exert little to no influence there because logistically they are unable to, whether from lack of power or that the other entity has overwhelmingly greater force than they can afford to deploy at that location. Here in lusternia there is an advantage in that 100% of the time the attackers will eventually be forced out, if nothing else but because there is no longer anything to gain by remaining.
I have larped and DM'd tabletop roleplaying games and had lots of fun with the flexibility to bend mechanics so that my players can do the things they want to do, tell the stories they want to tell, but we do not have that flexibility here. There is nothing bad about your RP if you say "They have done all the damage they can do. Let their fires burn out, and when they leave we will restore the sanctity of this place."
I 100% agree that reducing essence costs for deaths in enemy territory would go a long long way in making raiding worth doing on some scale. I didn't jump out there with it because we've asked for it before, but I'd absolutely like to see that as part of the package, though I'd also like to see more than that.
The reason raiding has been crushed is because lots of people hate being raided. Part of the problem with the old mechanics was that, not always, but often the fun of some players came at the expense of others. Some of my ideas have focused on the idea of a trade. Have these incentives that make being raided not suck, so that we can get some of these crappy things lifted off of the offensive side.
As the title of this post states, I believe a big part of the problem is Risk vs Reward.
Both sides of this situation are bad, so I feel like looking at this in a buff one side because the other has it easy mentality is not going to lead to a productive solution.
I can't think of anything more boring for everyone. As long as people are afraid of dying and losing raiding will be a battle of blue balling and "offpeak" hits.
Granted you have those who don't want to defend (somewhat understandable. Pk isn't everyone's thing) but then you have people who raid thinking they have the element of a defenceless area, only to flee at the first sign of resistance and call for overwhelming numbers. Those people don't want to fight, they just want to PvE bash an area and call it raiding.
How that's fun in anyone's mind I have zero clue. A hard fought loss is more fun than a faceroll curbstomp. There's no adrenaline rush in the latter. No one is impressed at your 5 person on one kill. So what's the attraction?
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!
No matter how "interesting" you make it, if it's too hard to actually be done, no one is going to do it. As it stands, Smobs are too hard.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!
Yet the most common. Can't remember the last big fight on cosmic, or elemental. Ethereal fights are almost daily, and not just on Faethorn.
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 also tried reducing xp loss in the past but people thought it was too crazy. Just like my death timer idea
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?