Yet Another Obelisk Thread
I'm starting this thread because Magick lost an Obelisk fight in record time tonight.
Specifically, I am starting it because I was ABSOLUTELY THRILLED to lose it in record time, because obelisk fights are, by far, the most irritating terrible no good awful unfun miserable horrible atrocious tedious badly designed things in this entire game. They're bad, in other words. They're so bad that they corrupt the in-game chat channels, because when Kryss says "we have enough, I think we can take an Obelisk", what I actually here is "Hey everybody I'm going to steal your evening! The best case scenario here is that you spend an hour here doing nothing, and the worst case scenario is that you're tied up here for a couple of hours or more!"
I am perfectly willing to just give up all the Obelisks to AM or demonic or whatever, because I never want to do another of these tedious wait-fests again. I knew tonight was going to be a contested outpost, and I flat out told my team that I was just going to follow, defend, and AFK, because these things are so stupidly miserable to participate in. I don't care about shard research at all at this point, if it means I have to put myself through those boring waitfests.
There is no way to fix this system as it is. There is no band-aid that can be applied. The entire generator/chargebomb/outpost thing is screwed for one major reason: players choose when to attack. This means you need a long wait time to help avoid the offhours ninja-attack, and it means that you need the off-hours ninja attack because you're using limited resources to make the attack. This is never going to be a fun mechanic, because these things are inherently anti-fun.
What you need to do is make Obelisks into Shardfalls MkII. A captured Obelisk will revert to neutral ownership at a random time, no sooner than 2 days after it is captured, but no later than 5. When it reverts to neutral, the shield generator-thing on the outpost explodes, spraying pieces everywhere. The explosion is visible across the entire world(indoors and outdoors) and it destabilizes the island for 5-10 minutes , which throws everybody off of the island and keeps people from entering it, so that the various sides have time to form up. When the island stabilizes again, everybody can powercall in to the island to collect generator pieces to rebuild the generator for their faction.
The generator pieces will be black shards, and they will be harvested just like normal shards, with a few differences. They drop when the holder is killed, and they drop if the holder leaves the island. You claim them for your generator by taking them to a capture node or power node, to prevent just camping the Obelisk. Once all the pieces have been picked up and claimed, the side that has the most shards claims the Obelisk.
The goal here is to basically replicate shardfalls, because shardfalls are awesome. They can't be off-hours gamed(intentionally). They have enforced mobility, to prevent teams from just forting up.
SOMETHING has to change with Obelisks, because the system we have now is miserable. Frankly, letting Kryss and Iluv white-knight it out to determine whose side gets the Obelisk would be preferable, because at least then I wouldn't pretend to be AFK or lie about being at work everytime somebody mentions the word.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Comments
Here goes:
- Each structure (obelisk / outpost) has an invulnerability timer, initially at 350, going down by 3 every hour
- When the timer runs out, the structure becomes open to chargebomb attacks for 4 hours; if no attack occurs, the protective shield recharges and starts again (at 350)
- Outside of this 4 hour interval, no attacks are possible
- At each hourly tick, the reduction is altered by the number of outposts protecting the obelisk - no outpost = 3, 1 outpost = 2, 2 outposts = 1, 3 outposts = no reduction
- Effectively this means that unprotected obelisks/outposts can be attacked roughly every 5 days, which is increased to 7 if there's one outpost, 14 if there are two, and infinite if there are three outposts protecting the structure
- All those convoluted protection intervals, cooldowns, etc, will be abolished - all that matters is what protects what at the hourly ticks
- Cities will be able to spend some obelisk energy to reinforce the shield somewhat, extending the timer by a few hours (details tbd) - this won't be possible if the timer is already very low (less than 12 hours or so remaining)
- There will be a way (not sure what yet exactly) to see which structure will be open to attack when
- The intent with the above is to shift the system away from the 'only attack if having a clear advantage' approach, as there will be a clear time window during which the defenders can anticipate attacks, and they will be able to shift it around as needed by rotating outpost protections and/or using the extension ability
- On the actual capture process, I plan to change the process so that instead of the current control-the-majority system, each faction and each node has its own counter that increases depending on who controls the node, and the node is 'sealed' as soon as one faction gains enough influence over it (numbers tbd). The timer will never decrease. The faction that ends up sealing more nodes wins.
- Node controlling would otherwise stay as-is -- although I'm fine with changing it into a proposed CTF-style system too, where you'd need to deliver periodically spawning items to the nodes to increase the counter, if that's what you guys prefer.
- I'm also considering redoing the chargebomb powers (HELP CHARGEBOMB POWERS), as the current ones are largely unused, and many people seem to not know about them at all. So what I am thinking about is changing these into effects that the obelisk owners can use to somehow (details tbd) offset the attackers' advantage, at the cost of losing some progress on a node
Okay, there you have it - obviously this is merely a draft and anything can change, but it should be good enough as a basis for discussions.
I would prefer we just do away with the obelisk system altogether as it stands, but the changes mentioned might redeem it even a little.
- You say the window of attack will be open for four hours. Does this mean that if I know the window opens at 7:30, I can rush it at 7:31 and have the obelisk by 7:40?
- Conversely, do the points remain open for capture until the end of the window, making the first 3 hours and change meaningless?
- Knowing when an Obelisk opens up to fight means that it will end up being a schedule thing. "Aryana's coming up at 4:30! Everybody be here!". This is frustrating and stupid, because if you don't plan your day around that window, you'll never win obelisks against a team that does. This is less gameable than firing up the batsignal, but frustrating to know that you will lose a fight simply because you didn't schedule your day around making an appearance for it. This kind of thing isn't very fun in the long run, as the need to keep scheduling around these fights grinds on you very quickly.
I'd like to suggest randomizing it more. IMO, the ideal setup is one where the Obelisk turns over during a fairly broad window of time. It makes it harder to defend, but this is not a bad thing; higher rates of turnover are better for the game, imo. It makes it easier to complete researches, helps ensure that every side gets a chance to have it on occasion, and it prevents stupid scheduling necessities."On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Can we run a poll that's like, "Which would you rather do?"
-Swim through acid with sharks
There's so much that's terrible about obelisk fighting.
Shocker, this obelisk is still stupid. It bypasses the powercall. If used properly this is a doom weapon. Luckily, AM has it so it's not utilized well at all. The awesome benefit to this is watching AM lemming to their deaths x 18
The problem with Landmarks tying into the game mechanics was that it turned them into a "succeed or suck" mechanism that penalized you if you weren't competitive in them, which is a thing you don't really want in a PvP system. "Your circle is on the low end of the cycle, so we're going to make it harder for you" is a terrible mechanic that's basically why Landmarks went away.
The problem with Obelisks is that the benefits look like this:
Aryana
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Moradeim
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Nature
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True Sight
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Sukhder
Efficiency is the odd-man-out here, because shard research aside, it's only useful if you're holding a lot of Obelisks already, and it gains you nothing otherwise.
The problem with Obelisk powers is that Aryana is a horrifically overpowered piece of crap that makes it way easier to win fights, and the rest of the obelisks are all decent utility skills, with Moradeim's "hahah never use your house" being nerfworthy, but only for irritation factor, rather than than anything gamebreaking.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
We should call it the bypass system. It's largely why it's bad.