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Raiding

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  • edited February 2016
    Except veil and gem let you hide regardless, which is silly. You get to say things and then do whatever will making yourself hard to find. Those artifacts are anti-combat/conflict generally. You should always have the means to attack people you have reason to that are hiding within cities.

    A lack of conflict is not fun. Therefore, having 100% save zones 100% of the time is not fun either. This is a conflict based game. Make city raiding a thing you need to do with a chargebomb like mechanic, that's fine. But making it impossible or non-existant so all there is to do is shardfalls and the like before going back to doing nothing? No thank you.

  • With the multitude of options for combat and conflict engagement that Imperian has, the argument that conflict becomes toothless without the ability to raid falls flat. No one who PVPs is going to sit inside their council or city permanently to avoid one death.

    On the flipside, if there is a niche of the playerbase that chooses to remain in their city/council because they would rather not participate (or be forced to participate) in PVP, who does that harm? I've harped on it with some repetition, but Imperian is not solely a conflict-based game. It is also a roleplaying game.

    An inability to force other players into conflict in one area should not ruin anyone's enjoyment of the game. What does ruin players enjoyment in the game, and has been called out numerous times in this thread, is being constantly forced into PVP against their will.

    Quote: There are people who will feel that way, granted, but I think that "I can't use my guildhall unless I am promised complete and total safety" is sort of an unreasonable expectation to have in a conflict driven game. Honestly, as long as people are not bountied and reasonable precautions(monoliths/hazewards) are taken, people are going to be safe in a guildhall. The best thing for guildhalls would just be to let guildhalls purchase the Protection add-on from housing so that they have an absolute way to deny prism/brazier in their tutor/ritual/hangout rooms.

    Monoliths and hazewards can be bypassed. Purchasing a Protection add-on from housing is essentially a roleplaying tax. Guilds have been mechanically stripped, and serve as roleplaying hubs. We are already footing the bill for any changes/additions to layout, description, mobs, quests, and the like, while writing the content ourselves. It is unreasonable to state that in order to be able to use it, we should also have to pay an additional fee.

    It is also unreasonable to say that without bounties and with monoliths, guildhalls are safe. In one actual day, Khandava alone dealt with - shrine defilement outside the gates at every cooldown, boneyard theft from outside the gates, the pulling of players out of the council, numerous NPCs being killed inside the city, numerous trespass incidents, and purposeful siege drain. While boneyards and shrines are both separate conflict mechanics, with the combination various conflicts that occurred in that one location, it would be absolutely stupid to sit in the guildhall for any reason.

    Quote: So change that up. IMO, most people are down for PvP in this game when they're not going to be at a disadvantage and where there's a participation reward. So give the defenders large bonuses. Make raiders always at the disadvantage. Hell, just give Antioch a disadvantage on all fronts, I'd be okay with that. Give them participation rewards. Citywide +EXP bonus. Give them damage resistance. Giant chunks of PK experience to get them reserves. Maybe have the instant experience a thing that can be claimed by any citizen within a set period of time by going to the generator and claiming it so that everybody benefits from the defense.

    Most people does not mean all people. Continuing to beat the dead horse of 'everyone likes PVP' will not change that there are those who do not and have expressed as much. Placing more bells and whistles on defense will also not make defenders enjoy being forced into it more. 

    Raiding as it currently stands is little more than a grief mechanic, and does not incite PVP opportunities as much as it simply damages an organization through attrition. Imperian has numerous combat opt-ins for those who want to PVP. It does not need the addition of another one, particularly as it would only cement in place that raids will occur each time the proposed cooldown elapses.

    Quote: "Kinsarmar is sheltering the guys who are ganking our guys 9v2! We must send them a sternly worded letter and kill them in open PK events, and our finest gemhunters will train to be sure we steal Elokia's 5k rewards away from them!"

    If accuracy were the intent here, it would read "Kinsarmar lost a bunch of citizens to us in a recent event and is tired of being assaulted at all hours with three people online, making thousands of siege, seeing their guards/NPCs die, coffers lowered, and having to lean on Demonic to lessen the constant discouragement. Maybe we should leave them alone to actually enjoy themselves instead of griefing them into oblivion to get our jollies."

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  • - Raiding as it currently stands is little more than a grief mechanic
    I don't think anyone is arguing that raiding should stay in it's current form, the argument that seems to be taking place in this thread is whether or not it should stay at all, the sides seem to be pretty much Antioch (the PvP team that wins everything if people are to be believed) for keeping it in some form versus everyone else. 
    Here's the thing, as a situation where the global politics is dictated by city-states there has to be consequences for those organizations, not just for individuals within the organizations, and if someone tells me obelisks or outposts or their members being hunted is a consequence I'm going to assume you're joking, because in their current form they aren't meaningful consequences. Raiding in it's current form provides the consequence in economic damage and further vulnerability, the feeling is pretty general that the price in terms of economic damage is too high and the cost too low, multiple suggestions have been put forward in this thread to fix that, and most people seem to ignore it for "BLAH YOU'RE FORCING PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO INTO PVP." Guess what, that's how it works, there are consequences for being a citizen not just privileges. Look at any period in History where a city-state (or just state in general) has gotten a significant military advantage over a local rival, it's not terribly pretty generally, although some of them have prevented the mass murder and looting and pillaging and rape by paying to prevent them, it's a different form of coercion on the government of a state, one that forces it's citizens to decide that if they want it to stop, maybe they need to replace some of their leadership. 
  • You are correct. I don't think that forcing an unwilling group to play defense constantly is necessary in a game that primarily revolves around PVP objectives as mechanics. Obelisks, shardfalls, boneyards/champion, shrines warfare, caravans, and the like all serve as PVP outlets. So do all major events that Imperian runs, which are meant to impact the storyline of the game itself.

    Do I think that it should be more difficult to raid cities? Yes.
    Would I like it if you couldn't raid them at all? Also yes.
    Would I settle for guildhalls/homes being that safe haven, without added economic cost, if adjustments were made to guards/siege to offset the grief factor? Absolutely.

    While the game is meant to mimic reality in some aspects, it is also an outlet for people to have fun. For some of us, that means PVP. For some of us, it means having some semblance of peace of mind so that we can roleplay our little treaties, converse, and the like.

    What I don't want to see, is raiding turned into the next flavour of the month combat objective and cities/councils suffering more so as a result of that. 

    As to the commentary about citizenry having its pros/cons:
    12.3.2 Khandava
                         [THE REDWOOD PROVINCES]
                           Prophet: Kanthari

    Yes. It's not all roses and daisies. If you'd like to chat on the side about it, as it isn't strictly pertinent to this thread, I'd be happy to. I'm sure that Khizan and I both enjoy the behind-the-scenes micromanaging and rogue syntax recall required of cityleader about equally.

    As a last note, I'd point out that throwing rape into the conversation in any context is pretty poor form. I'm certain that this discussion can occur without the further mention. 

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  • edited February 2016
    Kanthari said:
    shrine defilement outside the gates at every cooldown, boneyard theft from outside the gates, the pulling of players out of the council, numerous NPCs being killed inside the city, numerous trespass incidents, and purposeful siege drain. While boneyards and shrines are both separate conflict mechanics, with the combination various conflicts that occurred in that one location, it would be absolutely stupid to sit in the guildhall for any reason.

    Maybe y'all should have thought about that before you let citizens set up PvP conflict targets in places that require attacking Khandavan siege to access them. Your guys chose where we'd attack, we had nothing to do with that. 

    That little bit aside, the entire point of this is that all that harassment and stuff won't happen with a proper raiding system set up because the normal defenses will be designed to take care of all that stuff. Regular defenses will be able to be quite a bit stronger than they are now because the raiding system will be designed around windows of opportunity that lower those defenses. With townes acting as a sort of 'outpost' to defend the city 'obelisk' you could be looking at maybe two city raids and a handful of towne raids per month, all of which would last for maybe an hour or two tops, during a time window you could partially control by keeping your towne outposts blocking certain hours.

    This kind of raiding setup would reduce the amount of harassment and actual conflict that took place in your city by a tremendous amount because there just wouldn't be any objective to raiding, and what use is there raiding without an objective? With the system I described, we could... sit in defenses for 5 minutes and then die instantly. There would be nothing we could attack, and as long as you weren't bountied or otherwise being hunted, we couldn't take a swing at you. We could, I dunno, buy out your comms, I guess. Just make commshops not sell to non-circled or unwelcome people, easy and sensible enough. 

    Any reasonable raiding system will reduce the overall level of crap a city has to deal with by funneling city-versus-city conflicts into a reasonable and measured system which can be tweaked by the administration if raids are too common and too destructive. It is much better than the current system which is basically "hope that your enemies don't think up anything too destructive". And, honestly? If an hour of city raiding every few weeks is just absolutely too much for you, I sort of feel like that's the point where it's time to put on your big boy pants and cope, because some sort of raiding system is exactly what the game needs.

    One huge huge huge problem in Imperian's PvP scene right now is that it's not dynamic at all. Aside from Obelisks there's no real player initiated PvP objectives at all. Shardfalls are a thing you wait for. Caravans are a thing you wait for. When Svorai's statue was spraying flowers we waited for them, and when we were mining Samaos/Nyrohi/Isra for essence we were waiting for those to happen as well. There are no real ways in which a group can say "Let's go pick a fight. Let's go start something" and that means that so much of this game ends up being just waiting for something to happen because there's nothing you can do to make something happen. 

    Giving us the ability to occasionally hit targets people actually care about would do an awful lot to help mitigate that, and I don't feel that it is an unreasonable thing to ask for. This is a world of strife and conflict. The history of the world is one of battle and warfare. Certainly "No PvP in cities" is just as unreasonable as "Constant PvP in cities", no? We are opposing city states, not rival football teams, and I think it's unreasonable to expect that all PvP will be sandboxed up into stadium-style conflict like shardfalls.

    "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."

  • I think if we're going to base our new raid system on the fact that we're opposing city states and we should attack each other for that reason, we should establish just why it is we oppose each other, beyond the fact that Antioch is currently siding with every antagonist so they can in turn be the center of all player versus player conflict. It's been said several times by the leader of Antioch that they don't oppose the use of magick, and on an OOC level, that they also throw out RP if it means having what they find to be fun. I'm not saying that Antioch has absolutely no RP or purpose or reason to do anything beyond 'We want to fight other people, so we're going to force them to fight us,' but I'm definitely having trouble identifying it. Maybe once we define what these raid objectives are, if that does happen, we can suss out Antioch's true motives for assaulting other city-states.

    It's clearly gotten to the point where people are attacking one another not because of clearly defined in character roles, but because they're mechanically on 'the other side' and they want conflict. It would be great if the whole circle mechanic could be scrutinized in addition to surveying future conflict systems, because Antioch has rebelled against their 'anti-magick' designation and 'magick' and 'demonic' (which aren't by definition even opposing forces) have recently partially aligned with each other. 

  • sect info conquest

    Conquest. The word conjures images of subjugated peoples and wartorn lands, men
    and women dying with weapon in hand, great conquerors imposing their will on
    nations ripe to fall. Conquest is war in the pursuit of a vision set for all
    the world by one individual or group of individuals. The Cult of Conquest calls
    forth the greatest heroes of Ithaqua and Antioch to join their strength to a
    vision for the future.

  • edited February 2016
    Kanthari said:
    Almost no one uses city or council shops, houses, or, more importantly and a major gripe of mine for over a year now on the forums, their guildhalls.

    You are right, I probably have not even walked into our Guildhall in over a RL year.
    Khizan said:
    There are no real ways in which a group can say "Let's go pick a fight. Let's go start something" and that means that so much of this game ends up being just waiting for something to happen because there's nothing you can do to make something happen. 

    Are you serious?! Please see help shrines, help boneyards, help champions, help beacons, help obelisks, help deathball, Team ffa, ffa, manhunt, deathball, fox and hounds, bloodbaths. The list literally goes on and on. The difference here with these things is that anyone that does not want to PvP cannot be forced to do it. 


  • You want to know our motive for attacking Kinsarmar? Demonic was dropping giant gank squads on our B-team and then running off to sit in Kinsarmar. We didn't like Kinsarmar letting them hide, so we decided to smack their guards around as a sign of our displeasure, because when you side with our enemies you become one of them. 

    And you want to know our cause?

    Information about the Sect of Conquest:
    Sect leader: Khizan
    ascendari: (nobody)
    Representatives: Jules, Kryss, Septus, Ultrix, and Xeron

    The Age of Desperation has come to a close, taking with it a number of truths mortals once believed without question. Nothing
    is permanent. All things, divine or otherwise are subject to weakening and eventual destruction if constant care is not taken
    to maintain solidarity and purpose.

    Conquest. The word conjures images of subjugated peoples and wartorn lands, men and women dying with weapon in hand, great
    conquerors imposing their will on nations ripe to fall. Conquest is war in the pursuit of a vision set for all the world by one
    individual or group of individuals. The Cult of Conquest calls forth the greatest heroes of Ithaqua and Antioch to join their
    strength to a vision for the future.

    Conquest. A campaign of bloodshed and subterfuge, honor where possible, results at all costs, all in the pursuit of a unified
    land where all men and women are bound together in strength, in service to one true ideal. An empire built on strong
    foundations can survive and protect each other from all trials and tribulations.

    There is it. That's our cause.  

    When Baar was alive, I could say "The Ruling Council of Antioch is all Baarite, and so we wage war with you to purge your heresy and cleanse the world of your magickal filth." and it would be perfectly acceptable reasoning. And now, with Baar dead, I say this: "The Ruling Council of Antioch is all Conquest, and so we wage war with you because you are weak and we are strong, and because we dream of a land unified under a single banner, an empire that spans the world."

    It's religious zealotry without the Gods, pretty standard fare for Antioch honestly. 

    "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."

  • edited February 2016

    Also, honestly, "Why are you trying to conquer the world?" is kind of a dumb question to ask because "So I can rule the freaking world!" is always perfectly sensible answer. 

    "Mr. Palpatine, why did you you plot against the Republic and create the Galactic Empire?" "So I could be the Emperor of the galaxy...?"

    Honestly, I'm curious. Since I'm sure you won't accept any reason I give you, what would you guys consider to be an acceptable reason for a war?

    "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."

  • Using the excuse that there's no way for a group to pick a fight, as a reason to grief a group because you want to pick a fight, is selfish and damaging to the game. If you have to pick a fight, the other side doesn't want it. If the other side isn't currently looking for a fight, and you force it by invading their home, you lower game population.

    Although I don't know why you're complaining about needing a way to pick a fight. You do it during off-hours so that you manage to grief a population that stands no chance of stopping you, so you're not even getting that fight you want to pick.


    Raiding (griefing) cities is not required for conflict.


    If you're having issues with conflict, then the thing that needs to change is conflict options. And those changes do NOT need to include the cities. You do not need, nor should you have the right, to inflict misery upon entire populations just because you're bored. If you really wanted conflict, you'd stop raiding cities during off hours, and you'd stop picking on the weakest ones. If you wanted actual conflict, there are massive shrine networks out there you can go torment. And they're set up perfectly for your style of 'conflict'.

    You could take part in shardfalls, which are wonderfully announced. Or caravans. Both of which have people more often than not. The problem isn't conflict options, the problem is that no conflict challenges you. You've gotten lazy and content in the circle with all the class power. You guys really want conflict? Join Celidon and make them a world power. That give you plenty to do.


    If your only avenue of conflict worth pursuing is griefing people, that's a real problem. However its addressed, the first thing that needs to be fixed is that raiding cities needs to be removed. All populations, in peaks of power or at their absolute worse, need a place of safety to recoup. 

    You being bored is not a valid reason to demand cities must allow you to destroy them.

    You want a purely fighting game, go play Soul Calibur. People play these games because they're the most in-depth role-playing option on the market. The second we lose sight of that, our already constantly dwindling population is going to rocket away. Almost everyone is already leaving to other muds to avoid the non stop raiding of no-power cities. Raiding needs to be stopped entirely. Come back in six months and see if cities being safe zones is a problem, don't make them a conflict point. We'll become a ghost town.
  • To revisit this topic, I think that this event did bring up a big problem with the current lack of a raiding implementation.

    Antioch made a deal with Kinsarmar to basically middleman for an Ithaqua->Antioch->Kinsarmar remnant trade. This worked out pretty well for all parties concerned. However, as a hypothetical, let's say that Kinsarmar crawfished on the deal, kept their +2, and stuck us with the -3. Where do we go from there? Guard raiding doesn't cost them anything. Killing towne guards to pillage materials also doesn't cost them anything noteworthy. We have all the outposts and obelisks we can reasonably sustain. "Kill them extra hard at shardfalls you already kill them at!" is sort of ludicrous as a punishment concept.

    There's no effective way at all to retaliate against an organization now. What are we supposed to do? Bounty Alvetta and kill her once? Just hope that you run an event in the future that gives us a chance to get revenge, as opposed to an event where we'd already be opposing them?

    And it's not even just PvP I'm talking about here. There is no realistic way to work against an opposing city. There's no intercity trade and we don't produce anything they need, so I can't deny them access to trade routes or put out a trade embargo or levy tariffs or anything like that. I can't deny them bashing areas, even the bashing areas that are located firmly within our territory. There's no effective way to take action against another city. There's not even a practical political way to take action against another city, because the lack of trade/military/etc options means you have nothing to really politic with.

    There needs to be some kind of way to take action against another city.

    "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."

  • edited February 2016
    I'd posted similar concerns in the Remnants thread, and the only thing I'd add, that I sort of hinted at there, is that even raiding before the recent nerfs probably wouldn't be enough... especially since Antioch was probably the only org that could do it anyway.  Not with the stakes as high as they are, and not with admin planning on more similar events.  The situation is especially noticeable in Imperian, exactly because admin strives to avoid "real" consequences, which I am generally so, so thankful for, but even if that weren't the case, meaningful retaliation for high stakes "lol, intrigue" usually seems to be pretty difficult in these games - even the ones that put more emphasis on "real" losses for both players and orgs.  And part of that is because even games that emphasize losses more than Imperian does realize they have to generally limit losses in some way, so if something is genuinely high stakes, or heck, maybe even "mediocre stakes", it's often going to be worth backstabbing over exactly because the game inherently limits retaliation in general.
  • Khizan said:

    There needs to be some kind of way to take action against another city.


    Have you tried saying really mean things and make them feel bad about themselves in those quiet moments before they fall asleep?
  • Gurn said:
    Khizan said:

    There needs to be some kind of way to take action against another city.


    Have you tried saying really mean things and make them feel bad about themselves in those quiet moments before they fall asleep?
    No :(  He does that to us instead </3  One minute you're like "He looked at me!" and then he just mutters "Mediocre" and goes to make tacos...
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