Shades and plagues

Septus

I love this event, its awesome.

My one request would be if we could see the current counters on shade status. I think both sides end up in a kind of limbo where we're not sure if we can take a break from the bashing or if we're still behind, etc etc. Alternatively updates every hour so its not a precise thing might work too, if obscuration is desired there.

ALL HAIL LEGION!

Eoghan

Septus said:

I love this event, its awesome.

My one request would be if we could see the current counters on shade status. I think both sides end up in a kind of limbo where we're not sure if we can take a break from the bashing or if we're still behind, etc etc. Alternatively updates every hour so its not a precise thing might work too, if obscuration is desired there.

ALL HAIL LEGION!

We've deliberately excluded counters from player view (we have one, of course). The biggest reason for this is that if one side gets very far ahead during one round of the event, the other is very likely to be discouraged and stop trying, which just exacerbates the problem, given the drop rate and the ease with which you actually can catch up. We're not planning to add a player-visible counter.

Iniar

Quick question;

Is there any value in stopping people from killing the escaped plague? We sat on the blood wyrm for ages... random people dropping by trying to get a piece of snake.

Eoghan

Jules

Yeah, we lured the Wyrm to a more defendable room, and sat on it, yeah.  And then, absolutely nothing happened.  If there actually was some sort of benefit, it would have been nice to get SOME sort of indication of that.  My thought was, keep that guy alive at least until the next stage and see what happens, since he was supposed to be one of the Shade's new pets... which was, again, nothing  As far as I can guess, this really is purely "get bones, give bones".  I sat on him until after 4 AM to see if there was ANY tangible benefit to keeping people from killing him (with people ready to come assist if I screamed like a little girl, obviously) - which also means I wasn't bashing.  At all.  I haven't seen anyone mention anything otherwise, and I don't see any indication that anything other than "get bones, give bones" pays off in any way... 

Also, I would actually really appreciate it if, for an event like this, we could turn repop rates waaaaay down, and also no horns.  Because, high repop is great for mitigating horrible bashing under all normal circumstances, and I appreciate it, but it would be nice to have things like "control areas" and "keep areas bashed out" be more of a valid tactic. 

Eoghan

Jules said:

Also, I would actually really appreciate it if, for an event like this, we could turn repop rates waaaaay down, and also no horns.  Because, high repop is great for mitigating horrible bashing under all normal circumstances, and I appreciate it, but it would be nice to have things like "control areas" and "keep areas bashed out" be more of a valid tactic. 

This isn't something we are really considering. A big part of this event is that it appeals to many different kinds of players, and part of that is allowing for PVE. We aren't interested in completely forcing people to change the way or reason they play the game during the course of the event.

Reducing or removing the amount of hunting would also mean that while things were locked down, there would be fewer people out, which would mean fewer chances at attacks for those interested in taking that route. It would mean less player engagement in the event overall, in an attempt to cater to a particular play style.

Jules

Well, I can respect that, but our repop rate actually IS incredibly high... higher than most games, by a LOT - which is great in general, but really does mean that it truly is just "bash bones, bring bones"  I feel like you could possibly tone it down SOME without totally locking out PVE guys.  

Khizan

Eoghan said:

We've deliberately excluded counters from player view (we have one, of course). The biggest reason for this is that if one side gets very far ahead during one round of the event, the other is very likely to be discouraged and stop trying, which just exacerbates the problem, given the drop rate and the ease with which you actually can catch up. We're not planning to add a player-visible counter.

This is a basically a straight no-PK bashing event that pits five orgs against one. It's already discouraging and problematic. 

There's only a competition because Septus and I and the Antiochian crew are willing to throw the traditional Antiochian RP to the curb and stand up against the entire world to make a fight of it, but, again, there's five organizations worth of people against one and we're not allowed to try to stop people from bashing. We are not going to win this. It is impossible for us to win this. The only reason you are getting a fight is because the Antiochian crew would rather fight for a lost cause than not fight at all. 

There's a few problems I have with this event.

• The first is that supporting Legion is kind of a "what the hell why would anybody do that" type of thing. Demonic is too into not-being-evil, Magick is too huggy, Ithaqua still cares about anti-magick as a cause. That leaves Antioch, who supports Legion for deep RP reasons like "It would be really boring if everybody worked together".
  
  
• The second is that this is a straight up bashing event with 12 hour windows. Great Hunts are three hours long to prevent them from being giant poopsock contests. Doing well in this event, especially as a small team, requires huge amounts of dedication and forces players to play literally all day long. This is frustrating here for all the same reasons it's frustrating in Great Hunts.
  
  
• With no PvP allowed for bone holders, there's no real way to affect the event outside of bashing, and when your bashers are outnumbered by enough, there's no real way to affect the event regardless.
  
  

These are the kinds of changes I would like to see in the event(or in future events):

1. Drop bones on player death. This gives a way to actually affect their bashers. As it is now, all we can do is blockade Tomas and hope that the opposition isn't willing to suiciderush into his room and spam "give bone to tomas" a few hundred times before dying.
   
2. Require some kind of pseudo-champion status or the like to gather bones. This prevents the thing where we get to attack literally anybody we catch bashing, but it also means that people who are bashing for the event have to put some skin in the game and can't just roll their  basher around the world with zero risk.
3. Shorter rounds. 6pm to 6am makes for an awfully long round. To have a chance of winning it, Septus and Kryss and Jules and I would need to bash for basically 12 straight hours and even then we might lose. This event dropped on a holiday weekend, but it's going to extend into the work week where that kind of thing becomes largely impossible for many people.
4. More ambiguity in the sides. Legion is enough of a bad guy that the only people who are willing to support Legion are the Antiochians whose guiding principle can best be summed up as 'Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne'.

Eoghan

Khizan said:

These are the kinds of changes I would like to see in the event(or in future events):

1. Drop bones on player death. This gives a way to actually affect their bashers. As it is now, all we can do is blockade Tomas and hope that the opposition isn't willing to suiciderush into his room and spam "give bone to tomas" a few hundred times before dying.
   

This is already the case. There was a bug causing these drops to occur incorrectly, but it's cleared up now. I'll note that it isn't a 100% chance for a drop.

Khizan said:

Require some kind of pseudo-champion status or the like to gather bones. This prevents the thing where we get to attack literally anybody we catch bashing, but it also means that people who are bashing for the event have to put some skin in the game and can't just roll their  basher around the world with zero risk.

This is something we will take into account for the future, but is something that doesn't quite make sense for the current event (for reasons that will be clear later).

Khizan said:

Shorter rounds. 6pm to 6am makes for an awfully long round. To have a chance of winning it, Septus and Kryss and Jules and I would need to bash for basically 12 straight hours and even then we might lose. This event dropped on a holiday weekend, but it's going to extend into the work week where that kind of thing becomes largely impossible for many people.

The real issue here is the uneven sides, and the fact that different sides have people in different timezones. Our goal was to allow for players in different timezones to impact each stage of the event. I recognize that this forces some players to feel the need to extend their hours they play, and for some people that isn't ideal. At the end of the day, that's a value decision you have to make. It isn't our goal to disrupt your life, but you're also making the decision to do that for yourself for the sake of winning.

Khizan said:

More ambiguity in the sides. Legion is enough of a bad guy that the only people who are willing to support Legion are the Antiochians whose guiding principle can best be summed up as 'Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne'.

Many events have ambiguity. Not all of them do. Yes, it's absolutely true that siding with Legion is the sort of thing that makes very little sense for most characters in the game. The alternative, though, is for us to feed you railroaded events in an effort to advance the story. While you may think the outcome here is predetermined because one of the options is siding with the badguy which means you're outnumbered and will lose, it still beats the alternative. We strive to make fun, fair events, but not all events will be equally weighted for all sides. Picking the underdog means an uphill battle to win - that's the side you chose to back in this event.

I also challenge you to consider the in-role choices you're making. We have been running very lore-heavy events lately, and players have been making definite decisions that will come back in the future. The actions of characters, and the outcomes of events, are having an impact on those characters and on the world. Many of you have noticed that you are branded enemies of one NPC/group or another. We're striving to make the decisions that players make have a real impact going into the future - so make sure you make the decisions that fit your role, and that you can live with. The number one piece of feedback we get is that players want a real impact on the world, and they want their decisions to matter. For that to happen, there have to be tough choices, there has to be the option to be the underdog, and there has to be ramifications for making those choices.

We absolutely want to keep an open dialogue, and the feedback you have given here is instrumental in that. We are keeping these things in mind as we go forward. Where possible, we will make adjustments to events based on feedback, and we absolutely want to make adjustments based on the way things play out. In many cases, we just can't iterate fast enough, so the feedback we get has to be applied into the future, but I promise you we're listening. You have to keep in mind, as well, that there are other playstyles in the game, particularly some that are not heavily represented on the forums, that we must also consider.

Khizan

Eoghan said:

This is already the case. There was a bug causing these drops to occur incorrectly, but it's cleared up now. I'll note that it isn't a 100% chance for a drop.

I mean, "When players die they drop all the bones they are holding", not "player kills should award bones". Right now the bone generation from PvP is utterly trivial. we'd need to generate hundreds of bones per kill for it to actually have an effect.

That aside, I'm perfectly okay with taking the underdog side knowing I'm going to lose. I did the exact same 1v5 thing for the Hammer of the Gods for the exact same reason: it's boring when everybody works together. I'd just like a chance at winning, instead of it being straight "You're horribly outnumbered in a bashing event, you have no chance to win".  If PvP had more of an impact we'd have a chance to win. We'd probably still lose, because we're horribly outnumbered and we'd be fighting 5v12 odds, but winning would not be impossible in the way that it is now.

Iniar

Eoghan said:

lol... I don't quite get that, but ...

I asked because I felt bad as I had told Jules to go and baby-sit Mr. Pebbles. She contributed 4 hours of sitting there (doing nothing) to make sure people didn't kill Mr. Pebbles... 

After all, it would've been a shame had some person, having contributed 0% to either side (Tomas or Shade), decided to roll up and kill the latest addition to Antioch's line-up of the Weird and Wonderful.

e: Thank you @Jules for being so patient.

Khizan

You know. I wanted to point out here that the only reason this wasn't a completely boring 6v0 event is because Antioch was willing to step up and play the antagonist despite the 1v5 odds, and that if we had played it smart and stuck to sensible anti-Legion RP nothing would have happened, but I realize that there was honestly never any question that Antioch would step up like that.

We sided with Urzog, we opened the borders to magickers, and when the shade started shouting "Who will help Legion?", my entire city started saying "That's us, right, we're gonna help him?". 

We're the worst best Antiochians ever. 

Jules

Yeah, that is probably my biggest disappointment.  It seemed very reasonable to me that this new "pet" absolutely should be worth protecting.  

So, I was curious to see what would happen if we kept Mr. Pebbles alive and healthy until the next stage.  I realized that it could lead to nothing, but I was really hoping that that wouldn't be the case, because it really does mean that even one of the Shade's new pets was just another bashing mob.  Ugh. 

EDIT:  it was even sentient  And its ugly babies too.

Septus

I'm on the other side of the fence, personally.

I really, really am glad that guarding the mobs wasn't a big thing. We complained about how unreasonable an expectation guarding a mob like this was during the golems thing. One loss and your out is just kind of infuriating, and I'm very happy that the event runners took that feedback into consideration.

I mean, let's be reallistic here. Antioch is probably going to lose most straight up engagements given the size of the potential enemy team. If they wanted the mob gone, it'd go at some point during the 12 hours, and it'd probably happen at hour 11.5 and we'd all be like "I hate life right now."

As for the main part of the event, I am still really enjoying it. I don't think any of us seriously expect to win once the other side gets serious (the outnumbered thing is kind of compounded by the fact that the cwho of Antioch is probably a list of the games worst bashers), but I am loving how much it is shaking things up in terms of city dynamics. I think literally my only complaint is that we can't really effect a shift in a round by winning any of the huge fights at Tomas (which have been amazing, for reference). People can keep trying until they get passed us because of no bone drops, which makes it a little frustrating but perhaps that's just how its got to be. It'd be nice if there was that option though, just so you could potentially see the counter fluctuate rather than it being locked in once the person has the bones. I think it'd be pretty reasonable, given people have already got the "have or reason, or no killing the bashers" post.

Honestly though, the biggest trageddy of this event is that the horned one got sealed. There shall be no HAIL SARTAN for us this event.

Khizan

tHE TH

Jules

Yeah, that is a good point on the mob Septus.  That being the case though, having the mob exist and be very much killable seems weird.  There could certainly be some kind of "aha, plot twist thing" at the end of the event on that count but that would be rather silly too, since players are supposed to have some hope of reacting to what is going on based on what they can reasonably guess.  Maybe just give a message that a plague is released, but no mob comes out... or make it unkillable/repop instantly (like Tomas, and I am assuming, Shade) if one is released.  

For the rest of it, I totally agree, but I feel like this event really was made with bashers in mind, and that is fine, but I would like to know that fairly early "up front" next time, so I can decide if I want to sort of dabble in the event or not (and I might be better at guessing now).  There were amazing fights, but honestly, that was because you and Kryss and Khizan imposed it on an event that wasn't really set up for PK - in the sense that PK is mostly fairly useless in terms of winning/losing the event (or realistically, since we were always going to lose, just having the satisfaction of "moving the meter") in all of the ways that have been detailed - the bones not falling out of inventory being a key point there.  

In our game, bones not falling out of inventory means you can just try to run in and give 50 bone, as has been mentioned.  You will certainly die if you are well opposed, but it seems to be very doable.  I love that our game makes death fairly meaningless, but it can be something that has to be considered in events like this, too.  Very possibly it was, and admin decided "no, we want this event to be more favorable to PVE players".  If there were an event that is more PK oriented again, and you are simply handing items over to a mob, I would appreciate it if they considered making the action of giving the bones channeled, as well as making bones drop out of inventory on death.  Either that, or expand the kill radius at least a room or two if so and so enters the area carrying 200 blah.  Finally, we DO get events that ARE skewed very much towards our playstyle, so hopefully we will get more in the future, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.  I suppose it is possible to make events that truly serve all playstyles, but I get the feeling it is incredibly tricky to pull off.  

Ario

All I want out of this event is a quest honors for doing this:

2016/01/04 18:22:10 - Alvetta favoured Ario for: for single-handedly taking down the Beholder.

Literally took me ages to kill that thing only to get one bone out of it. Bigger mobs should drop more than one, especially if they're 'god-like' in strength.

Further review of the Beholder: Can I get it as a pet? That would be cool.

you guys.

Iniar

I think the (minor) design imbalance is that a released plague becomes physical whereas a captured plague is not. This in essence is a unilateral development that is easily perceived as intelligibly part of the design, particularly when the mob does this:

   The Blood Wyrm bellows its challenge yada yada yada

as a world wide message.

It leads all parties into thinking that the mobile's survival has purpose. If the captured plagues were physical as well, we would be doing our best to hunt them down and destroy them. As it stands, I think the released plague should not have been made kill-able.

At any rate, it is a great event because

- it involves PvE players

- it creates a small scenario of risk for the PvE players

- the descriptions are fun

Thanks admin.

E: Unless there's a secret hidden bonus at the end, where each Antiochan gets a baby pet Blood Wyrm (YESSSSSSSSS).

Jules

The Tomas room situation is sort of scary for me as is.  After a big fight with demonic today and some little skirmishing (so when everyone was very much amped up), I had someone from the other team come "learn" from Tomas (yes, really), clearly in hopes that I would hit her, and I am very, very certain that this was so she would be able to issue me (thankfully I didn't hit, so no issue - but I am not nearly as calm and collected as "great" fighters and I easily could have).  It definitely scared me, because clearly, someone was hoping I'd get into "big trouble" in an OOC way.  Especially since there were a LOT of issues in general today.  

The whole way this event has shaken out, and the people it's brought into contact with each other in a PK situation that is definitely more inherently "legalistic" than most (e.g. here I am, a couple rooms outside of Tomas with 200 bones, or really... right on top of him, but nope, not doing anything, don't worry) - I am, definitely very uncomfortable.  On the worst day, most of the time, I am just going to die.  A LOT.  But I almost never have to worry that someone will basically try to get me in "trouble".  I realize this is apparently a totally "legal" thing to do in general (baiting, tricking into hitting), and it can also be used to invite PK, but when it is used to invite an attack in hopes of being able to issue, it is far scarier.  

Septus

You should probably always give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove you wrong.

Its a long event, if a new person shows up and you're not sure of their intentions, its not the end of the world if they get some bones passed. You'll know for next time that you can be a bit firmer with demanding "you shall not pass".

Celestine

Jules said:

The Tomas room situation is sort of scary for me as is.  After a big fight with demonic today and some little skirmishing (so when everyone was very much amped up), I had someone from the other team come "learn" from Tomas (yes, really), clearly in hopes that I would hit her, and I am very, very certain that this was so she would be able to issue me (thankfully I didn't hit, so no issue - but I am not nearly as calm and collected as "great" fighters and I easily could have).  It definitely scared me, because clearly, someone was hoping I'd get into "big trouble" in an OOC way.  Especially since there were a LOT of issues in general today.  

The whole way this event has shaken out, and the people it's brought into contact with each other in a PK situation that is definitely more inherently "legalistic" than most (e.g. here I am, a couple rooms outside of Tomas with 200 bones, or really... right on top of him, but nope, not doing anything, don't worry) - I am, definitely very uncomfortable.  On the worst day, most of the time, I am just going to die.  A LOT.  But I almost never have to worry that someone will basically try to get me in "trouble".  I realize this is apparently a totally "legal" thing to do in general (baiting, tricking into hitting), and it can also be used to invite PK, but when it is used to invite an attack in hopes of being able to issue, it is far scarier.  

From what I understand - it wasn't to start an issue - it was to see how far AM was going to go. I mean come on, while I don't know the exact terminology of what was happening yesterday - there was definitely shady business with you guys.

Septus

Unsure if pun or not.

Why do you do this to me

Celestine

Septus said:

Unsure if pun or not.

Why do you do this to me

This is hilarious, now that I re-read what I wrote. Totally was not meant to be a pun, but it is now!

Jules

Oh yeah, definitely, Septus.  I would much rather have the bones get given than possibly get hit with an issue that could very well be winnable with the rules of engagement for this event.  And really, we mostly can't stop people from bone giving anyway.  We can just kill them for it... which doesn't really affect the event at all, and basically does nothing but send them to the river for a few minutes (which is why I am floored more people aren't just eating the deaths and laughing all the way to the bone bank).  

As for intentions, our team had just received something like 3 or 4 issues (mostly demonic, but one magick), and people who were definitely trying to give still popping on forboding constantly.  Just then, someone from demonic, who definitely regularly involves herself in conflict, comes in (might as well be exact) 9 seconds after the other side has offered a fairly large number of bones, and starts to "learn" from Tomas.  I really do think issues would have flown if I'd killed her, and possibly even if I'd been trigger happy and merely hit, then stopped.  It also would have made the other issues that had just been filed against us look better, I imagine, or, that would have been the hope.  I don't think any of this would be a concern in the first place in most of the situations we have.  It is specifically the "fussy" rules for bone giving that invite a more legalistic attitude, and potentially reward it with getting the other side "in big trouble".  

Really, although we've got some great mileage out of it, and a lot of new people in AM who felt Kinsarmar or Ithaqua or Stavenn was being overly pushy with them, or just boring, plus an evil genius death star that will probably not live very long, maybe future events should just be utterly straight bashing events, and I will happily ignore them completely, and then hopefully there would be an event for our playstyle again sometime.  I realize this is not the ideal admin strive for, but I do think that making events that truly serve bashers and PK-oriented folk, and actually get them to play together is going to be horrifying difficult.  The people who only want to bash are almost certainly not enjoying AM's hijinks, actually (which are the only way we can try to get a bit of our playstyle out of this solid week of bashing) and if you are angry with people, getting them in OOC trouble is going to be better vengeance than killing them in our game, especially since death doesn't really hurt (thank god).  

Jules

On another note, I LOVE the idea of using theft in events, even though I hate theft in general.  I have always thought that theft should be used exactly for stuff like "steal magical org item" and "steal bones/eggs" etc...  I would love to see more theft in events/theft of "competition" items like bones (but please, not outside that ) even though it would definitely mean I need to do some work myself to not be easy pickings.    

Jeremy Saunders

Glad you guys are enjoying this one.

We have a really good 'next stage' planned to start in a couple weeks. It will be pretty different and should really get people who like to RP involved. 

Septus

With the bones dropped from champion, is there any chance we could have it so killing a champion with a higher killstreak gave you more bones?

I.e. if I go kill some poor innocent basher with no pk kill streak who just wanted their double xp bonus I'd only get one bone, but if I go kill some mass murderer with a 4 person killstreak I'd get 4.

Just to give some motivation to try for harder targets.

Khizan

So, uh. I really wasn't expecting Demonic and Magick to choke so badly that they'd get curbstomped by AM in a bashing event. It should have been impossible for us to win.

That aside, my big concern now is that this Plagues system has so much to do with Champions and nobody goes Champion. These numbers are so huge that unless further event stages require Champion, it's pretty unfeasible to actually use this system without intentional killfarming. And if you do require Champion, I'm afraid that people will just choose not to participate in the event because, let's face it. Team AM will kill them into the ground every time they get it until they stop doing it, because it's fun and we feed on tears to gain strength.

Septus

Also also, could we get a command to list current boneyards? Currently the optimal method is to build in the most obscure place possible so noone can find it to attack. Its similar to shrines but whereas you need to build a fair few shrines in notable locations for them to matter at all, this is just one room where obscurity beats practicality in terms of position.

This looks fun, by the way. +1

Wysrias

Khizan said:

So, uh. I really wasn't expecting Demonic and Magick to choke so badly that they'd get curbstomped by AM in a bashing event. It should have been impossible for us to win.

That aside, my big concern now is that this Plagues system has so much to do with Champions and nobody goes Champion. These numbers are so huge that unless further event stages require Champion, it's pretty unfeasible to actually use this system without intentional killfarming. And if you do require Champion, I'm afraid that people will just choose not to participate in the event because, let's face it. Team AM will kill them into the ground every time they get it until they stop doing it, because it's fun and we feed on tears to gain strength.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but AM has by far the bulk of the active playerbase right now, particularly for PvP, but not solely. Check TOPCITIES for a quick gauge if you're unaware - this event basically killed off the bulk of Magick. You're welcome to some deserved gloating, but the sides were a lot more equal than you're letting on.

Additionally, a lot of people in Demonic and Magick are just worn down. This event is enough, but then there's endless defiling, endless raiding/siege draining, ganking - basically just aggression on every single front from Antioch, who are sporting far more fighters and artifact weight. In general, you guys played a LOT more and worked harder for it, so kudos, but let's not pretend it was just a bashing competition.

Eldreth

If you have to say one thing about Khizan's hilariously biased commentaries on Imperian life, say that he has always been consistent.