Obeslisks, Outposts, Guards, Raids, and XP.
Lots of stuff here. Keep this discussion strictly on the topics presented here. Some of the items are vague as we are mulling them over.
Obelisks and Outposts
They are not used. Instead of completely moving them into a raiding system as previously suggested, we are going to tweak the system to encourage use.- Outposts can no longer protect other outposts; only obelisks may be protected.
- Capturing an outpost destroys it.
- Increase outpost upkeep cost.
- Simplify the protection algorithm. (It's a mess)
- Re-purpose the Efficiency Obelisk power and the Efficiency Attunement.
- Review the other Obelisks powers for tweaks.
- Caravans: change the fight encounter a bit to not require prismatic barrier, as it does now
Raiding
I think raiding another city is an important part of the game, which has been removed. Very little gives a rush like going into enemy territory, killing guards and players, and escaping unharmed. In the past griefing was out of control to the point it was completely made impossible in order to slow the constant guard/gold destruction. Adding in objectives will make a way for cities to 'win' without destroying morale completely and gives cities a way to 'buff' themselves. I prefer giving stolen objectives a buff vs a penalty. Getting multiple objectives from several cities will stack.- A city may only raid another city once per game month.
- A city must declare a raid and RAID city FOR objective.
- Raiding will use X number of shards from the attacking city.
- The shard cost will not be insignificant. If you want to raid you need to be harvest shards.
- Disorients the guards so they cannot attack as fast/strong.
- Blinds the archers and telepaths.
- The shard cost will not be insignificant. If you want to raid you need to be harvest shards.
- The raid/shard effect lasts for 20 minutes.
- It will take 5 minutes for the effect to hit the guards (warning system).
Raid Objectives
- Three objectives per city.
- Objectives will have objective points.
- TOPCITIES is changed to just reflect which city has the most objective points.
- City logs will reflect raids City has captured x objective from other city City has defended x objective from other city.
- More objective points based on the number of defenders killed/participating. Perhaps on the kill to death ratio?
- Objectives need to be evenly distributed in each org.
- CITY RETURN objective TO city: Cities can return objectives or recapture them for other cities and give them back.
Guard Simplification
Not completely sold on removing patrols and making things just work more simple. I have not had to manage guards, but I do get complaints about it. Please provide feedback on guard management. We will make guards reset and not require constant rehires though. Guards will not be as helpful in raids, but you will need them to keep "unofficial" raids from happening.- Guards reset.
- Guards have an initial hire cost and normal monthly upkeep. No need to rehire unless you want to change your setup.
- Guards can be:
- Set to a room
- Set to a siege weapon
- Set to the barracks
- Set to a room
- Remove patrols.
- Guards in barracks will automatically go to enemies in the city and start attacking them at a predetermined rate. For example, 5 every 5 seconds or something like that. This includes characters hiding out in houses. Need to brainstorm how this will work a bit more.
Experience Changes
I have been thinking about this for a couple months and saw it mentioned on the forums recently. XP loss removal was originally done so that people would get involved in PK more, but I actually feel as though it has had the opposite effect. In a PvP game this has removed motivation behind killing another player/character you hate in the game. It also removes some of the thrill of fighting, as there is no personal risk. I am leaning toward putting it back in, but not at the same levels it was before.- Bashing
- 1% of level max at aspect?
- Flag some areas as more risky? More XP gain/loss? Some areas as less?
- 1% of level max at aspect?
- PK
- No loss while in your city. (Defending)
- Extra gain while in any city. (Defending or Attacking)
- Normal loss everywhere.
- 1% of level max?
- No XP loss in shardfalls.
- Add a open PK indicator icon to the prompt so people know they are in a shardfall?
- No loss while in your city. (Defending)
- A possible time cap on XP loss, especially for newbs. The one off kill hurts, but multiples would not be as bad.
- Less XP loss if you hang out with Charon a little longer after you die?
6
Comments
Raiding: Yes, please bring back raiding. Raiding can be great. I don't like the shard cost. I think it was suggested more as an attempt to prevent raids than to invigorate PK, by creating a large up front "shock" cost that tends to serve much more as a deterrent than anything. It also rewards and encourages skulking around shardfalls, rather than awesome fights, and worse, it encourages demonic and magick allying at shardfalls in a juggernaut "don't even bother coming, AM" fashion, which is already proving to be a hard habit to break (I was AM, am now magick, btw).
Raid Objectives: I'd sort of prefer raid objectives that are more about causing a bit of damaged pride, than actual, shiny trinkets, but I don't feel incredibly strongly about it at this very moment.
Experience Changes:
In this first post, I will mostly just reiterate the e-mail I sent about punitive mechanics (including XP loss) with a few tweaks. This conversation is definitely going to get interesting. Bringing back XP loss is going to push people like me out of (most) PK. Despite a lot of work, I am still a relatively weak combatant, and I have also chosen to move to a weak circle (in order to try to make combat more balanced and interesting). Simply put, I will be on the losing side of far, far more fights than I win, and I will be punished simply for playing.
Please don't put XP loss or other negative mechanical consequences back in for regular, day to day PK. I have a lot of thoughts written but I am going to hold on to most of them for the moment.
For now I will just say that the problem is that XP loss is inherently a punishment for losing, and losing itself should be enough of a punishment most of the time. It also just creates a very harsh negative feedback loop for any would-be PK-er who can't "get gud" REALLY REALLY fast.
If you're going to bring back "consequences" please consider having them be a tool for very, very specific situations where there is truly a reason to exact some kind of more serious retribution. And please don't leave that tool lying around for people like Juran and Khizan to use as they please, because that is what they actually want.
We do have a boring and safe game right now, but this is not our problem - the problem is much more "don't you dare interrupt me with an unscripted PK thing EVER", along with people feeling like the deck is way too stacked to try sometimes (like AM having such a hard lock on obelisks).
Will post more on the other things later.
I could see forms of abuse going on, and trying to prevent such should be brought up initially.
If we get to buffs for raiding and no penalties for losing, then raiding becomes another sandboxed minigame. Raiding will happen regularly for buffs and then you'll be left in a situation where you have no area to raid as a punishment. If Kinsarmar betrays Antioch during an event, what is Antioch going to do about it? Raid and get a buff and have Kinsarmar actually lose nothing over it? Without a way to actually hurt a city, intercity politics and relationships lose their teeth.
Let's say you do another event like that monolith fragment event. Antioch, who is significantly stronger than Kinsarmar, makes a deal with Kinsarmar to trade fragments. Now, let's say Kinsarmar goes back on the deal and leaves Antioch holding the bag. In a world with raiding and PvP consequences, that is a serious choice with significant consequences. You can lose guards over it. You can lose resources. Players can lose experience. Betraying another sovereign citystate here is a serious matter.
In Imperian currently and in Imperian with raiding as a zero-consequence minigame, there's no consequences for your betrayal at all really. You might as well just do it. Raids are not actually a punishment, and if they gank you personally over it you don't lose anything significant. Cities now are so sandboxed that there's basically no consequences at all for screwing around with other cities. You can't hurt our trade. You can't hurt our guards. Killing citizens doesn't cost them anything. This complete lack of consequence makes the game feel shallow and makes it hard to take anything in the game seriously.
Also my gut feeling is that if you implement it like this you are going to see cities voluntarily trading off raid wins. "I get your X, you get my Y, we both win!" It will cease to be an actual conflict system and somebody will be punished by city leadership for defending against a raid.
A big problem with the feeling of the game is that it is too safe. Making cities even safer doesn't help that.
PK:
I agree with the idea that buff only objectives would have less meaning to a city and could result in trading.
The hard part is coming up with a consequence that is meaningful, but not horrible for the city in question. If never having your objectives means that people in your city just quit (which has been the problem in the past) then it is not worth doing.
As an example, how would people feel about an objective like this.
- If you objective is lost, your guard cost and upkeep its 25% more due to low morale.
- If you have captured this objective, your guard cost and upkeep is 10% less due to high morale?
Is something like that worth trying to keep or steal?This is for players over level 100. Previously it was capped around 1.25%. I think.
I do think it would be fine to have serious consequences for serious enough offences. I would suggest something like the following, so that there is more recourse for real, serious offences:
Special Bounties - These bounties would be for situations like the following: someone steals a large sum from your organization or one of your RC actually screws over your org in a high stakes event. It is important to note that this should not include "didn't do what the rest of the RC and/or CL wanted", because that actually happened. Ithaqua wanted to eat the malus (which is fine), but one member helped make sure Kinsarmar got the fragment, to keep Ithaqua from having a malus. Perfect example of where he should get bountied - with a regular bounty and not a special one. This bounty never expires until collected. XP loss would be commensurate with the offense (at a minimum, it would be 5-10 "real" deaths to guards). The bar for this is that the person has caused REAL, tangible damage to your organization.
Special Raids - true "war" raids. Valid reasons to raid in this fashion could include things like harboring someone your org has a special bounty on, betrayal (at an org level), or in something like the monolith event, an org agrees to take your fragment, and then refuses it, leaving you with the malus. In that situation you know that their entire RC agreed to screw you over. A lot of other scenarios would be more murky... Still, I think you could just say "I don't care why it happened" and raid a bit if you got screwed in that particular event.
"day-to-day" pk loss is rather insubstantial with the amount of things out there to increase your gain. 1% with sect favour takes like 5 minutes in necropolis/demon's pass/anywhere to get back. If you don't want to bash, then learn to fight better and get it back that way.
Removing xp loss entirely is just silly, considering everything else that happened on death (gold/curative dropping) was also removed, so there's literally no penalty for dying now except your "precious k/d record"
You've yet to give any really meaningful reason as to why XP loss is a bad thing; as Jeremy said it's had the opposite effect, because no one really cares about PKing now outside of a handful of people. And in a game where conflict is one of the main draws, it's not really doing anything but hamper its growth.
Vaguely recalling something Sarapis said for Achaea: If you honestly care about losing experience on death in combat, that's what the arenas are for.
If you truly enjoy combat, then losing is not a punishment for you. If you only like casual dabbling in combat, then stick to the arena where you can enjoy the safety of it, and not have to worry. I don't really know how to explain that more clearly; you've merely given your opinion, contrary to Jeremy stating it's had an adverse effect.
To conclude, I'm sure I can find anywhere from 5 people who think no exp loss is boring, for every 1 you find who thinks it's a good thing. (Probably more than that, if you wanna count IRE playerbase as a whole)
If the objectives give a buff that goes away when stolen, then that's enough of a negative penalty if the effects are made properly. If the objectives only give a buff if stolen in a raid, then yeah, there should be some negatives.
With regards to objectives, I'd divide them up into something like Economic, Military, and Political if there's going to be 3. Slap them with a suite of effects on the theme so you can make life generally more miserable for the enemy by taking one but not cripple them in any one area.
I like the general theory of the sample objective in giving a larger buff with a small negative. I'd add a caveat that having yours stolen should make same-type objectives stolen from other cities slightly less effective.
Are objective points going to be a gameplay factor or a showpiece?
Guards
I imagine if I expected an incoming raid and knew where it would hit, you could assign guards to the room/nearby siege.
'Patrol' response from barracks should be based on location and require a call for help. A flat rate that goes up for doors and such the guards have to pass through would work.
Not having to rehire will cut down costs, no? So some sort of guard killing penalty like an increment to the monthly cost of that specific guard could be feasible.
Will you also be taking a look at siege, including the bombfields/trenches/etc?
XP Loss
@Kiskan Keep in mind that these are all exp sidebars, not overall level. A smidgen of reserve and ranking loss shouldn't be a hard enough thwack to push anyone away.
The exp penalty could start at 1% and swing from there. City-based PK exp loss prevention should definitely be linked to an active raid. If there's like a 30s delay between a call for help and the guardbots arriving, the loss prevention could maybe be provided at a lower rate to those who show up once the guards are there? I'm kinda torn here, especially if there's a city bonus already encouraging defenders to respond.
I'm also not super opposed to putting back in bashing xp loss, but there should also be some quests that knock xp if you fail to give each branch a taste of the pain
There is only one real reason to create tangible punishments (like XP loss) for losing at normal, day to day PK, and that is to make people feel worse than they already do about losing, usually by making them spend more of their playing time doing an activity most people hate - bashing. That's pretty interesting too, because it means you're using a supposed "feature" of the game (PvE) as a punishment. PvE can be relaxing, even for me (in small doses), but any sort of meaningful XP loss says to the player "you are bad and you should feel bad, and yes, bashing is a punishment, we know everyone mostly hates it". If you lose often enough, you might just say screw it and quit, because you will be spending most of your game time bashing. It's just a crappy concept that I shouldn't have to tear down brick by brick. But I know I do...
Of course some people don't like it when you put it that way, and the justifications for having XP loss in normal, day to day PK usually sounds like "but people will have no reason to get gud" (we definitely heard that one lately, and you will always hear it in any conversation about this). All of the reasons people give pretty much boil down to "beatings will continue until morale improves" combined with "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" (which incidentally originally meant "something that is literally impossible to do"). It is the kind of idea that I can't imagine any IRE player base would ever support in any other form, in any other arena, but it has some very vocal, very staunch supporters in these games.
If a game is currently struggling like ours is, and it ditched XP loss in the past, some vocal players will always be waiting to suggest it as a surefire cure today - even if it may have been one of the big culprits for a similar dip in activity in the past. And yes, our game feels too safe and boring right now, but I guarantee you that allowing the "good" PK-ers to use live rounds on the "bads" is never going to improve things. I feel very strongly that our real problems are lots of resistance to any sort of unscripted PK ever, along with some decks that feel way too stacked sometimes, and not "but when I kill people, I worry that they don't feel REALLY REALLY horrible about losing". Yes, sometimes games get away with it, and those games are otherwise very healthy, but I don't think "we actively punish people for taking part in the system and not coming out on top" is the special secret that is making them successful - those games are almost certainly doing a LOT of other things right.
I am trying to think of any sport or normal game that goes out of its way to handicap losers rather than winners, and then also says "oh, but you can try to mitigate or remove the handicap by doing this boring, time-consuming and completely unrelated activity", because it's so backwards and crazy that it feels like there should be an old Monty Python skit about it. You especially wouldn't ever want to handicap a consistent loser, and yet that is EXACTLY what an XP loss system does. The more you lose, the more of a real, mechanical handicap you have to try to dig yourself out of (as if feeling pretty crap about losing more fights than you win isn't hard enough). I don't think we need a handicapping system at all, but we certainly don't need one that keeps loading up the slowest horse with more lead - because everyone knows that will make it run FASTER (no, not even if the horse could technically avoid having to carry the lead by pulling a plow between races).
Still, it is an idea that just won't seem to die a merciful death in these games (probably online gaming in general to be fair, but I only do MUDs). And I think the reason it's so, so persistent boils down to people who think "I want to make a REAL person somewhere feel EXTRA bad about losing, because that makes me happy", which is pretty screwed up and weirdly greedy - because you already get to make people feel bad when you beat them, and that should be plenty of reward, if that's your thing. People care about losing, period. So if you want more than that without a damned good reason, you're a special kind of jerk, but I think people just have this idea that "hey, maybe this weird little online community will let me be that much of a prick, and even glorify me for it", and somehow, they've got their way most of the time, for a very, very long time.
Off the top of my head, I would do penalties more like this: City streets around the objective covered in rubble. Needs worker crews to remove it, takes a couple of months. This provides a minor irritant to everybody in the city but carries no significant penalty or punishment. Everybody will know they lost and everybody will be bothered by it, but it is not actually a significant penalty to individual players.
I'll start with the obvious. "Boring unrelated activity," I will assume you're referring to bashing? Virtually every single MMO forces you to do the equivalent of bashing, in order to be able to PvP at the highest tier. Once you get max level, guess what you have to do to get better? Yep. You 'bash' via dungeon grinding. If it's not that, you slowly crawl through battlegrounds (or whichever the game's equivalent is). Guess how you're handicapped there: You either a) Don't get anything, or b) You get very, very reduced amounts of whatever you're grinding for, that is dependent on how well you perform.
eta: Then when you get into the real stuff, guess how you're penalised by losing to other players? That's right! You lose rating/mmr/whatever you wanna call it. What do you get from losing? Nothing, most of the time, except a learning experience of how to improve, just like I said. Often times you have to go back to grinding as well, in order to be able to improve!
You say it's unrelated, practically every single game developer out there say it's a necessary curve of progression. You don't wanna do it, you don't get to experience it. Literally as simple as that. Quite clear cut, there. Every single PvP game has SOME form of monotonous grinding you have to put up with, before you get to experience the good stuff (unfortunately for MOBAs, that tends to be putting up with the toxic cesspool of low MMR players)
Moving on to sports! I would bet all my money that you're not really thinking very hard here, if you say there's none that penalise/handicap losers. (This will also pertain to e-sports, whether or not you picky people out there want to say it's "not a real sport" - newsflash, it's being recognised as one by pretty much every 'top' country out there!). You seem to be forgetting one very important thing here: That sport is their JOB., and if they fail at it, there's a very high chance that they lose it. Are you going to sit there and say that's not a way of handicapping losers? Real life equivalent of this "bashing" would be the years upon years of training they do prior to becoming a professional, and even after becoming pro they still dedicate a very large portion of their life getting better.
Come on, now.
snarky eta2: Lol at off-topic flag, when it was very much on-topic. Compared to your senseless jab at @Juran (who by the way, IS one of the more helpful people in this game
Adding a cost to death is important if you want death to actually matter; you did not need this cost during shardfalls because the cost of failure in shardfalls was losing shards. That's why I don't care if you lose experience in a shardfall or an obelisk fight: those deaths carry the cost of losing resources to another city and thusly losing that conflict has a penalty baked into it already.
Other deaths don't have that and they need one.
This is very relevant to you, Jules.
OT: You said you were having trouble thinking of any sport/game that penalises losers. I gave you multiple very clear cut examples. If "having fun" means you don't lose anything, then don't partake in the thing that makes you lose stuff when you fail? That seems pretty obvious, yes?
Are you going to go on WoW forums next, and say you don't like having to lose rating from doing Rated battlegrounds/arena? Are you going to say you don't like having to get gear over and over again (equivalent to experience in this case, at max level), when the seasons restart?
Or how about... Let's pick a lesser known game; Summoners War (a mobile PvP game, that has excessive amounts of PvE requirements) -- Are you going to complain that you have to do hours upon hours of grinding to get 'gear' to be able to fight players? Or lose millions of mana (gold) trying to upgrade that gear, only to have to go back to grinding PvE?
Both games you can very much play "recreationally" ... So long as PvP isn't your goal, both very much meeting your 'argument' despite you trying desperately to say it doesn't. You know what you're gonna get greeted with, when you make those complaints? The very same thing I've been telling you, "Don't like doing that? Don't do that aspect of the game. Or get good, so you can do them."
I also don't think he meant the real deal, anyhow, but @Jeremy can answer that more definitively.