My one big concern is maintenance. Specifically, I don't want Imperian to end up feeling like something like WoW where I HAVE to make time to do my dailies or I'll fall hopelessly behind, and I don't want it to end up as something where I end up feeling like I need to dragoon sect members into constant bashing because otherwise we'll fall behind competitively.
Also, I really like Caelya's idea. If some of the entities were shells that would ally with "neutral" factions like the liches or the horde or some other NPC group, there would be more room for entities to lose to other entities without getting the player feelings as involved.
I'm of two minds about that. Someone, somewhere, will enjoy doing the upkeep. The people that don't can sacrifice using other powers to stack a bunch of upkeep-reducing powers in. It's still a burden, but it's something you can remove or lessen.
I am the righteous one... the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Okay, I am not hearing a ton of issues with this, so I think we will begin some more detailed design. On our side, the biggest issue will be creating an interesting way to combine relics so that we can creating a very large and interesting array of options.
If you have any other issues with this proposal, post it here before we get too far into the work on it. However, I will probably be working on the city defense stuff first.
Am I going to be able to attack any of these shrines at any time? Or am I going to have to work my way outside to in? If it's the former, I'm just going to zerg an area in 1 hour. If it's the latter, it's going to be a strategy game (\o/)
I am undecided. I was thinking that a shrine that is within the influence of 3 other shrines could not be attacked, and would force people to work their way from out to in. However, it is possible to build a web where all shrines would be touching 3 others.
Another concern about this is the likelihood of huge megasects coming to dominate simply through force of numbers, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. The sect is dominating because it has the most members, so it gets the most belief. Because it gets the most belief, it has the best shrine coverage. Because it has the best shrine coverage, it attracts the most new members. And because it has the most new members, it has the most belief...
I remember the old days of shrines, when Janus literally had the entire world carpetbombed in shrines and his Order actively ostracized and worked against every new God. "Oh ho ho. You want a shrine in Kinsarmar? Well, you'll have to destroy one of ours to make room, and that means you'll need to raise two shrines for us elsewhere!" I don't want to see this kind of thing a year down the road after most of the "good" areas have been taken.
"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 remember the old days of shrines, when Janus literally had the entire world carpetbombed in shrines and his Order actively ostracized and worked against every new God. "Oh ho ho. You want a shrine in Kinsarmar? Well, you'll have to destroy one of ours to make room, and that means you'll need to raise two shrines for us elsewhere!" I don't want to see this kind of thing a year down the road after most of the "good" areas have been taken.
How's this coming along? Have we put any thought in to the scale/size of player involvement (i.e, how big will the PvP teams be), or anything else that can be shared?
I am beating a dead horse here, but I still support a much smaller scale for combat - 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3. I still think the idea of anointing a handful of sect champions to participate is a good idea, because it nips the issue of numbers in the bud - a certain sect still has 41 members. If you can mobilize even 8 of those people, that is a huge team and it just becomes a clusterf- like shardfalls are. I would like the conflict/combat in this system to feel different, instead of the constant arms race of bringing double the amount of dudes if you lose. It isn't fun, it isn't interesting, and I'm totally ready for the typical crowd to tell me why I'm absolutely wrong. If you don't cap participants, you will inevitably run in to an issue where the group with the most numbers will Win Just Because. Sheer manpower will be > RP, because sheer manpower has the highest chance of achieving the largest amount of benefits/boons from relics and stuff. I don't want that. I want smaller cults and sects to have agency in their own way, and capping the combat participation part is a great way to do that. I can live with the whole cult/sect getting to bash/quest/whatever, if you just make that allowance.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Yet again, you are wrong. You are wrong for the same exact reasons you are wrong every time you bring up a "We need a 1v1/2v2 system!"
I shall sum them up again, though.
It's exclusive, not inclusive: In a 1v1/2v2/etc format, the newer players and low/mid tier combatants in the Jackals get all the fun of cheering some combination of Iniar/Iluv/Juran/Khizan on from the sidelines, because we're not going to run an Ario or a Ladaia when anything is on the line. The vast majority of the playerbase won't be able to participate, because we won't let them. More to the point, they're not going to want to go in because most people aren't going to want to lose rankings for their Sect when they could be running their best guys available. Any kind of sect/cult conflict system should be inclusive. New players and low-skilled players should be encouraged to jump right in and participate alongside the experienced people; this creates more experienced people. it is a good thing.
It's Rock/Paper/Monk: There are too many match-ups which are notably one-sided from the start. Skilled fighters basically just write off monks at this point in the game. "Oh, Brishi's a monk, just ignore him or team him, you can't 1v1 a monk, he'll run away to heal or shield 3 times after every combo or both."
It Doesn't Work: If you believe people will flock to a 41 man cult because it's stomping every battle, why do you think they're not going to flock to Jackals when the Khizan/Juran/Iluv/Iniar Artifact Train is running down smaller teams and winning benefits for everybody? Or to whatever cult Septus/Azefel are stomping in at the moment? If they'd join with a Giant Zerg Cult just for the benefits, they'd be the people just joining the one with the best champions anyways.
"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."
Shocker, I'm with Khizan on this one. The game is not balanced to favor micro match ups. I've said this forever and will continue to say this. If you want to 1v1, 2v2, there's the arena and there's out of the arena. Make a gentleman's agreement and skeet skeet your way to e-bushido glory. The rest of the game can't hang with that because it's a niche gameplay mode.
I question the insanity of every demonic fighter who tries to 1v1 a monk, let alone Kryss or Brishi. A monk is a stall king. Batter, disrupt, banish, kai heal. Unless I pull off some late game heroics of ultimate destiny, I'm not going to put away a monk. If a monk has a clue (luckily, those two don't) they're going to rape a 2v2 by making a 2v1 and running the troll train over the unwilling victim. There are a lot of matchups where you really just can't put enough DPS on one target to drop the other. This is why the sweet spot is really 3v3, 4v4.
The problem with that is our team rosters are 10-20 people. People see Ahkan, Juran, and Khizan beating the snot out of the Avengers going 12-2 and they want to get involved. Soon, that 3v3 is a 4v3, a 5v3, and a 5v5. It makes combat inclusive and really broadens who gets and involved and what they experience. Then your tier 1,2,3,4 and Brishi's are getting involved and maybe having fun, as opposed to some troll spamming Champion status before the admin asks him to quit being a dong.
If you want a mini game of 1v1, 2v2, go for it. Please do not ruin an awesome conflict system with this "hero of the internet" crap that you'll make an excuse for not competing in 6 months down the road. Imperian honestly isn't built for it. Few games are.
I don't understand how you can support inclusive systems and say that's fair, but then totally ignore a niche of the game that wants one exclusive subsystem inside of a conflict system. In fact, you do more than ignore it - you berate it and continue to shout loudly about how it isn't necessary. We have an all-inclusive system where everybody's C and B-listers can practice and become A-listers. They are called shardfalls. Why can't we have one small section of a conflict system that encourages a battle of 3 or so A-listers vs. another side's 3 or so A-listers? Why must we be forced to use the arena, or wait once every year for the duel tournament, because you always raise a problem with the idea of a system that would enforce a numerically fair fight?
The problems you both raise are with individual class balance - that's cool, but it is our fault for not asking that such things be taken away from those classes. Monk is a primary suspect here - why haven't we tried to address this? The existence of such a system would encourage the need to do away with a class like Monk and the fact that their utility becomes a Batman Belt of Lame. I see no reason why 'because Monks' or 'because XYZ' is a valid reason to reject my points. These are issues we can work out. They aren't fixtures of the game. They can be dealt with, classled out, and balanced.
The reason why I want a 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3 system is because your roster is 10-20 people. That isn't interesting to me when you can field ~33% (or more) of them at any time. Anything above a 3v3 really becomes, as I said earlier in this thread, a cartoon dust cloud brawl. There's nothing interesting about it to me or people like me who want a smaller/micro conflict system built in to this. You will say that I do not like shardfalls because I cannot think strategically, but the truth is that I just hate the amount of people involved. Classes don't have time to shine in those kinds of fights. It's about Quickest Path to Damage. You cannot develop a more advanced strategy. You assign some guys to stop some other guys, you tell the rest of your dudes to rail one guy, and proceed to the next target. In a 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3 system, you can develop an actual fight with back and forths. As much as you will say that the system would result in the Khizan/Juran/Ahkan stomp trio, I'd have a lot more fun losing to that than I do losing to the Khizan/Juran/Ahkan/Ario/Wysrias/Verexa/Vivianne stomp gang, because I feel I have far more agency as most classes in a trio vs. trio or whatever fight. You eventually reach critical mass in numbers where whatever measures you take to protect you really do not work, and that isn't fun to me. My desire for a micro-scale conflict system stems a lot from this.
The game was perfectly fine with it for years. The actual issue was the overhead on the part of the player - investment in to skills, investment in to coding, etc. For those people that enjoy that niche, what is left? Arena duels just feel so mundane. They provide no actual effect on the game, which is truly unfair to those people.
Why must we ONLY have systems that supports massive numbers? Why can't we have one small facet of a greater system that encourages a different niche of players to participate? If you don't like it, just don't participate.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
It's very easy to say I want to be inclusive and downplay a singular conflict. In your system, only two people can participate in 1v1, and four people can participate in 2v2. At a good shardfall there are 20 people in the room. That's 16-18 people who ARE NOT competing. They are spectators. Spectating sucks in Imperian. This is the best way to put it. People log on this game to have fun. They have fun via participating. They don't have fun watching two people throw their linear systems at each other for 45m and then mouth breathe high five over a clan.
You have to take class balance into account in any system. How could you not? You're a hero at pissing and moaning at class balance. When Demonic unleashed the Summoner train on your war machine, you suddenly had a very important job at all hours of the day. We didn't ignore the coincidence. When pound did eleventy billion damage, you were suddenly the king of pounding. When Azefel theorized that pummel/quarter was the bees knees, you were suddenly Sarrius, Lord of the Pummel. How can you, of all people, say that class balance shouldn't factor into a conflict system? Your player history is an in depth review of the cyclical nature of the process of exploitation. You can't build a 1v1, 2v2, system when class balance has created classes who excel at stalling. The goal is to win. I can destroy you with a stonewall of stall tactics that make you want to quit. This is unfun. This is stupid. This is how it is going to play out when people would rather stall in an attrition war than lose. See: How you played the Demonic/AM war. See: Raksha band. See: Warp. See: Kai banish. The game isn't built for rock-em-sock-em robots.
I applaud you on your use of irony there. You're crying about getting out zerged. You're also describing your entire AM combat strategy. Dogpile on A. A is dead. Dogpile on B. B is dead. This is the nature of large scale team fights. It's just the way it works. Luckily, I've been to some fights where it's 4v4 to 6v6 and they're a helluva lot of fun. Other times it's just a straight massacre. Also, part of the game. You don't need to build an entirely new, and shitty, system because of this. That's why the system is 'random' and is thus 'diverse'. Lately, I've had some amazing engagements where we change priority, split dps, split aff, and hinder based on what the other team is doing. See: Avenger massacres 1-5.
The game was not fine for years. Maybe it was fine for you because you looking back on your 'glory' days. But the game sucked. I remember fighting the same people all the time. The rosters were 6 fighters per circle and it was insanely boring. The only deviation was when some Greek PK God descend from his Tier I rank and killed the ever loving shit out of 28 Tier II and Tier III terribles. It was lopsided. It was boring. The only person that had fun was the mouth breathing Tier I Pk God. I was a dick for doing it.
Can we please get off of the tunnel vision here? You're deliberately ignoring the big picture and basing your arguments on your skewed personal experience. You hate team fighting because from what I've seen, you're not very good at it and avoid it. The rest of the game seems to be enjoying team fighting, both large scale and small scale. I've seen more combatants in the last 2 weeks than I saw from in 3 years of old school. Hell, Aleutia and Kanthari pk. When did the knitting circle from the old days -ever- pk? (Never).Based on posts in other threads, there's also a healthy contigent of e-bushido harassing the world for new ffas so they can white knight it up to chase the glory of the truefavor. 1v1 is alive and well, it's just a niche market, like hentai. (Pre-existing dream 1v1, 2v2 system)
Honestly, I think this system will accommodate people who want smaller group engagements anyways. It sounds like it'll be a more drawn out kind of deal to defile a shrine, so its unlikely people will be constantly fielding 8+ people for every single defile run outside of major wars and stuff (and that's just how it goes in those kind of conflicts).
A lot of people who participate in shardfalls would not be there if it was every hour. Shardfalls are an awesome system because they allow people to casually pk and be useful. Lots of those people probably aren't going to want to pk so frequently as is in this new system, so I theorise you'll end up seeing smaller teams on average.
I love small pk engagements. Most people who pk probably do. You want people to actually turn up to fight though, and constantly staring down four minmaxed aspects rolling level 2-3 damage is going to get old for the teams on the receiving end pretty fast. It'll be like shardfalls in that sometimes you'll get amazingly fun fights, and sometimes you'll get steamrolled. That's a good thing, I think. Fighting the same team constantly would be fun for the first week or so, but it's going to get old really fast (even best case cenario where its back and forth wins/losses).
It's been said to death, but just to reiterate: conflict systems that revolve around forcing small matchups won't succeed because they exclude players who are already invested in the overreaching conflict/system. In this case, we're talking about sects, a facet of the game that involves more than just the highest tiers from each group. Khizan's points are spot on, in that if a group stands to lose in a significant way from an engagement (shrines, faith, anything tangible or with permanency), they're going to refuse to field anything but their best fighters. This means that not only are lower tier players likely to be outright shunned from the conflict (because they're much riskier to field), but they still stand to lose significantly in the group they've invested their time and effort in - and they can't do anything about that, because their only option is to let other players fight their war.
A system like that discourages participation, and it discourages individual players who are not as capable as the 'top tier' from opting into the system as a whole. One of the major reasons I've had so much fun since coming back has been because it really feels like every player has something to contribute - even if you're relying on stock curing and (maybe not even) tri-trans skills, there's always a way you can help. You may not like that demonic can field such large numbers right now, but that's the cyclical nature of the game, and that's that way it's always been; give it another few months, and the tide will inevitably shift again. It's not a bad thing either, because shifts in power are largely what keeps the game dynamic and keeps players interested.
If you want to have a conflict system that emphasizes/requires small groups, it has to be opt-in and detached from the main themes of the game, because keeping players out of a central mechanic is the antithesis to retention. It fosters in-fighting, because now players are forced to pick among themselves who will have the best shot at helping their org succeed rather than allowing everyone to contribute; it fosters resentment, because if your 'chosen few' failed, well, guess they should have picked you instead. Off with their heads!
There's definitely a place for small group conflict, and it's generally just for bragging rights. Tournaments, arena rankings, duels, these already exist and serve this purpose. Could the game use more of it, with more benefits/emphasis on fair fights? Sure, other games have implemented similar systems to varying success. But it's important to allow the general playerbase the ability to contribute, because let's face it - we need MORE players participating in MORE conflicts, not fewer.
Why must we ONLY have systems that supports massive numbers? Why can't we have one small facet of a greater system that encourages a different niche of players to participate? If you don't like it, just don't participate.
This is what the Champion system and the like should be for. Should Champions become the Honorable e-Bushido Duel System, that would be fine.
The problem here is that you are asking for Sects to be that system, and that is a terrible miserable idea. It's a miserable idea because Sects are, ideally, an RP-heavy participation-intensive thing. You want people to participate, you want to include new players, you want to create an environment where everybody gets involved. If there's sect conflict system you want to get them out and involved in it; you don't want to tell your new people that their role is riding the bench.
"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."
How's this coming along? Any new information to share?
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Haha, yeah. Sarrius is sort of bored picking on a cult that doesn't fight and then killing people while they bash for faith. He's getting concerned that he may actually lose some of the issues that he's earning. Update needed. Unable to stop being dumb.
Haha, yeah. Sarrius is sort of bored picking on a cult that doesn't fight and then killing people while they bash for faith. He's getting concerned that he may actually lose some of the issues that he's earning. Update needed. Unable to stop being dumb.
Or maybe I'm just sick of the sect system being an immense failure from a myriad of perspectives, one of which is conflict generation. Since desecration was a mistake to implement (says the man who probably has the highest logged amount of time using the command), sect conflict is pretty much a question of 'will they, won't they', with 'won't they' just really translating to a handful of people bashing faster than desecration can take effect and not saying a word to said offender. Even entity-less sects are in zero danger when being desecrated, which is something of a shame considering we were put under the impression that entity-less sects would be at a disadvantage (they aren't).
It isn't about issues at all. It is about how bored I am with the mechanical aspects of the system. My entity only has so much free time to keep me from being bored and picking fights. We were discussing this idea in December, and nothing has really been delivered on it.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Excepting shardfalls, sustainable conflict generation is a myth.
Especially when the answer to that conflict generation is to ignore it because the way you poke the hornet's nest is inconsequential. Desecrating a sect with no entity should not be an inconsequential thing that sect can ignore.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
I probably know the answer to this already, but, is there any possible way to get some sort of itemized list of what's to come? There really hasn't been much of anything beyond classleads and monthly promotions in the last five or six months, and I'd personally like to know if there's anything coming around in the next month or two that involves the narrative (I AM THAT GUY) so I know whether or not to bother logging in. Appreciate the transparency!
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Ha. Welp indeed! I'm not personally involved in sect stuff, but I'll direct @Jeremy towards this thread.
As for what's coming, that's tricky. We do have things in the works, and I'm a big fan of transparency, but delays do occur, so I don't really want to make any promises that I'm not reasonably sure about being fulfilled. As such I'll leave that to Jeremy to comment upon.
I really do apologize for the delay on this. It is one of my top priorities. As I stated in a previous announce post, we are working on releasing a massive new area and a new skill. The skill/game has taken much, much, much longer then expected, otherwise all of this would probably be done and we would be working on other things. However, the skill is virtually done and once it is in, we will bust out the last couple bosses on the area and go right into sect stuff.
I am super excited for what we planned out for sects, so hopefully it will all go smoothly.
I want narrative for the game, not an expansion on a system that's Orders 2.0. This isn't going to fix the underlying problems of sects/cults, it's going to compound it.
First off, I think that's awesome that you're developing a new system and new content. Kudos.
The problem is this doesn't resolve anything. They're all specialized niches that are going to appeal to a minority of existing players. You have 10349 untended loose ends that are left over since we executed all the gods. I don't think you realize the problem here. You deleted six years of mythology. That word MYTHOLOGY is important. You have zero mythology in place to replace it. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero.
I don't know how to explain this to you. You're awesome a designing 'hooks'. You get me in the door by pitching some over the top vicious 300 war scene stuff. Your follow through blows. I enter the room and everything is card board cut outs with elevator music playing while you promise to deliver 'the next big thing' which I will game for about a week and then it will become a "wait for something to happen" shardfall system. A story line, a mythology, will give life to your cardboard cut outs. It will give your game depth and give me and my fellow mortals room to maneuver and develop our own stories within the framework of your story. If Imperian were a TV show on a major network it would have been cancelled because you have nothing but a good hook so your viewer ship started off big and tapered hard. You lost to American Idol, @Jeremy. You -need- a story line. Mortals wandering around aimlessly with fancy toys is a boring freaking story. The age of mortals sucks. Mortals suck. Mortals are boring.
Things that develop the mythology from here
Look at Khandava. Khandava has an epic mythology. Khandava has morphed and changed as the world has changed. Nothing else has. You should try and remedy this. Though, beware, some people are just dumb and would do more damage than harm.
You need to re-hash your bad guys. Why are they no bad guys? We don't have a -good- bad guy. Where is our Magneto? Our Saruman? Lex Luthor? Emperor Palpatine? We have like 580 foot clan members but 0 legitimate bad guys. Your liches could try but they're busy spewing banal lines of WORLD DOMINATION for no reason but atmosphere.
We need more bad guys than orcs, undead, and demons. You overplayed their hand to a ridiculous degree. Your bad guy playbook needs a lesson from Barney Stinson. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave you met Alekmanhala?
You miss out on a -ton- of story line development every time you turn your homework in late on the promotions. Fiery Xiur? Hey, there's a volcano that spews some shards. Evil bat looking things. Aren't there bats in demons pass. It's like you didn't even try to story line it.
Let players revamp, redesign, develop their townes or cities (with a limit). They know the story far better than you (hopefully) and can possibly do it justice. Perks, it's organic, player driven development. You throw in a tiny little event. Months later, you'll have people telling stories of the time they defended x,y,z and helped introduce cat people to be citizens of tayar, Mrow. A good example here is Gadan/Cherufe/Xiur.
When you do class revamps, that's an amazing time to shoot out a 30m or maybe 2 day event explaining it and how mortals have impacted their world.
You deleted SIX YEARS of mythos. You don't even need to be good at filling the gaps. Just do something to fill the void. And really, at this point, there needs to be some sort of transparency in planning, cohesion, and back and forth between the players and the admin so that we can see that our $25 a month is actually going to development. It will also allow us to suggest concepts and ideas that are relevant to the game and the development of a storyline.
It would also be nice if you actually addressed the concerns posted in the thread linked below, rather than painting broad strokes here about new content. I agree with @Aleutia. I would rather have the old content fixed than have it compounded with additions that will never resolve the original issues.
As a whole, we seem to just jump from one new idea to the next without ever resolving existing plot holes or in some cases, the altogether lack of roleplay that surrounds new functions that are added in.
I was looking around on youtube, and I found a video of Kanthari talking to Jeremy about narrative issues and such things
Got to admit, I am pretty fond of explosions.
"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."
For the sake of transparency, this is currently what I am planning for the rest of the year (once the skill and area are released).
This is very brief, but this is what is on the top of my todo list. These things have been hanging over me for months. I am horrible about keeping this in front of you guys and I am sorry about that.
1. Improve cults and sects for players. This is via a better coded system, more interaction, and lore.
2. We are looking to release a new major 'enemy' akin to orcs and undead. We have literally been talking about this one for months. We have something planned that I currently like and we are going to move forward with.
3. Significantly expand the lore around orcs and undead. This will be done with the following strategy:
- Refreshing existing enemy areas (also see item 4 below)
- Run events for those areas.
- Release new major enemies that will reside in those areas.
- Run one off events with lore additions and/or new major protaganists.
We actually have an entire lore written up for the eastern side of the continent (mainly horde) that explains some of the early mysteries of Imperian. Svorai is very excited about it and harasses me all the time about starting events for it.
4. We are working on a much more organized line of quests and story for each circle, running from newbie to level 100. Allowing players to get into the theme of their circle and city as they progress from level 1 to 100. This revolves around refreshing areas and cleaning up the quests in those areas. This is not a small project and will probably take a couple of years for us to complete as it will semi happen in the background. Unless that area allows for a nice event that can encompass a larger group of players.
In short, I want to increase our lore, shore up our existing enemies (horde and undead), release a new 'enemy', and create a much better story for people progressing through the game.
I HATE making excuses for why we are so slow on this, but the main reason is that I am the main coder right now. Garryn actually is an IRE coder that works on the client and does Imperian in his spare time (and he does a lot). Jesse has been working on a project for 6 months (much longer then we all anticipated, but it got much larger then first anticipated, and we decided we should finish it). Then you have a crappy, slow old coder (Me). Once Jesse gets back to coding bosses, cults, our monthly sales, etc, then I will be much much better about getting our entities slaving away on areas, RP, events, and new lore. I would MUCH rather be doing all of that anyways.
In short, the crappy speed on things is 100% my poor planning.
However, I am play testing the new skill/game today and we should be good to more forward very soon.
As a sidenote, let me address the volunteer rules so that we can clear up misconceptions. This is what we tell people when we take them on.
1. You cannot go around killing players. There is nothing they can do in return. It is not fun for players. Get your followers to do it. (we sometimes make exceptions here)
2. Please don't tell people who your mortal was.
3. Don't tell mortals about our secret projects.
4. Once you are comfortable in your role, you can talk with players as much as you want, run events as much as you want, RP as much as you want, mob possess as much as you want.
5. We don't let volunteers run more then one role because very few people have the ability to do it, let alone the time. Outside of Svorai, how many of you think your entity is online enough? If we give them a second role, that time is effectively cut in half. (We don't tell them this at the beginning, but this is why.)
That's pretty much it. I just ask volunteers to make sure they run any big things past us to make sure they are not breaking old lore.
Comments
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
<inner area-------------------------------------------------------------------------outer area>
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5
Another concern about this is the likelihood of huge megasects coming to dominate simply through force of numbers, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. The sect is dominating because it has the most members, so it gets the most belief. Because it gets the most belief, it has the best shrine coverage. Because it has the best shrine coverage, it attracts the most new members. And because it has the most new members, it has the most belief...
I remember the old days of shrines, when Janus literally had the entire world carpetbombed in shrines and his Order actively ostracized and worked against every new God. "Oh ho ho. You want a shrine in Kinsarmar? Well, you'll have to destroy one of ours to make room, and that means you'll need to raise two shrines for us elsewhere!" I don't want to see this kind of thing a year down the road after most of the "good" areas have been taken.
"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."
Yet again, you are wrong. You are wrong for the same exact reasons you are wrong every time you bring up a "We need a 1v1/2v2 system!"
I shall sum them up again, though.
"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."
The problem with that is our team rosters are 10-20 people. People see Ahkan, Juran, and Khizan beating the snot out of the Avengers going 12-2 and they want to get involved. Soon, that 3v3 is a 4v3, a 5v3, and a 5v5. It makes combat inclusive and really broadens who gets and involved and what they experience. Then your tier 1,2,3,4 and Brishi's are getting involved and maybe having fun, as opposed to some troll spamming Champion status before the admin asks him to quit being a dong.
The game was not fine for years. Maybe it was fine for you because you looking back on your 'glory' days. But the game sucked. I remember fighting the same people all the time. The rosters were 6 fighters per circle and it was insanely boring. The only deviation was when some Greek PK God descend from his Tier I rank and killed the ever loving shit out of 28 Tier II and Tier III terribles. It was lopsided. It was boring. The only person that had fun was the mouth breathing Tier I Pk God. I was a dick for doing it.
A lot of people who participate in shardfalls would not be there if it was every hour. Shardfalls are an awesome system because they allow people to casually pk and be useful. Lots of those people probably aren't going to want to pk so frequently as is in this new system, so I theorise you'll end up seeing smaller teams on average.
I love small pk engagements. Most people who pk probably do. You want people to actually turn up to fight though, and constantly staring down four minmaxed aspects rolling level 2-3 damage is going to get old for the teams on the receiving end pretty fast. It'll be like shardfalls in that sometimes you'll get amazingly fun fights, and sometimes you'll get steamrolled. That's a good thing, I think. Fighting the same team constantly would be fun for the first week or so, but it's going to get old really fast (even best case cenario where its back and forth wins/losses).
A system like that discourages participation, and it discourages individual players who are not as capable as the 'top tier' from opting into the system as a whole. One of the major reasons I've had so much fun since coming back has been because it really feels like every player has something to contribute - even if you're relying on stock curing and (maybe not even) tri-trans skills, there's always a way you can help. You may not like that demonic can field such large numbers right now, but that's the cyclical nature of the game, and that's that way it's always been; give it another few months, and the tide will inevitably shift again. It's not a bad thing either, because shifts in power are largely what keeps the game dynamic and keeps players interested.
If you want to have a conflict system that emphasizes/requires small groups, it has to be opt-in and detached from the main themes of the game, because keeping players out of a central mechanic is the antithesis to retention. It fosters in-fighting, because now players are forced to pick among themselves who will have the best shot at helping their org succeed rather than allowing everyone to contribute; it fosters resentment, because if your 'chosen few' failed, well, guess they should have picked you instead. Off with their heads!
There's definitely a place for small group conflict, and it's generally just for bragging rights. Tournaments, arena rankings, duels, these already exist and serve this purpose. Could the game use more of it, with more benefits/emphasis on fair fights? Sure, other games have implemented similar systems to varying success. But it's important to allow the general playerbase the ability to contribute, because let's face it - we need MORE players participating in MORE conflicts, not fewer.
"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."
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
As for what's coming, that's tricky. We do have things in the works, and I'm a big fan of transparency, but delays do occur, so I don't really want to make any promises that I'm not reasonably sure about being fulfilled. As such I'll leave that to Jeremy to comment upon.
Mortals make terrible bad guys.
As a whole, we seem to just jump from one new idea to the next without ever resolving existing plot holes or in some cases, the altogether lack of roleplay that surrounds new functions that are added in.
http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/365/yet-another-sect-thread#latest
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
I was looking around on youtube, and I found a video of Kanthari talking to Jeremy about narrative issues and such things
Got to admit, I am pretty fond of explosions.
"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."