I know Imperian is largely a PvP based game but is there possibility of having
1) Combat objectives
2) Mind (puzzle) objectives
3) Bashing objectives
towards raiding a city.
It may make raiding a lot more inclusive so that defenders who are non combatants can still actively contribute.
Raiding isn't really something I feel the game should encourage, it's just something that's going to happen because people are able to and should be mitigated somewhat so it's less of a one sided risk. It isn't a system that should be inherently 'accessible' in the same way shards or RP events are.
I've been thinking about city defenses for a while now, and this is what I have come up with for my requirements for city defenses.
City defenses should not be attackable under normal circumstances. This is because attackable city defenses are a tacit offensive objective in and of themselves; we will raid specifically to break defenses, which means that putting up defenses is both provoking an attack and giving that attack a target, which is not how it should work.
City defenses must allow for effective infiltration. Imperian is a conflict-driven world and it shouldn't be possible to hide in your city and be perfectly safe. Attackers should be at a disadvantage when they go after somebody in their city, but they need to be able to go after them.
City defenses should not be instant kills. By this I mean that running into the standard city defenses should not just explode you. Guards should be heavy disable and eventually kill you, but you shouldn't be dead as soon as they enter your room. Similarly, telepaths/archers should not gib you in two shots.
Assassin-type classes(Assassin/Renegade/Predator) should have an advantage in infiltration, but they shouldn't be the only classes capable of it. So avoiding/mitigating city defenses should not be a class specific thing.
Raiding should be a thing that is possible, because cities should be vulnerable to attack from other cities in a way that is apparent to all of its citizens. Removing real/frequent raiding as a thing makes it too easy to sandbox the conflict into a system which is then ignored.
So, with that, this is how I would set up guards and raiding right now. Your 'standard' defenses would consist of archers, telepaths, and guards.
Telepaths would no longer do damage. Instead, they'd do a slow-burn mind radiance style attack. When the telepaths become aware an enemy is in the city, they get a warning message letting them know the telepaths are aware of them. A minute after that, they get a debuff. A minute after that, they get another 'stack' of that debuff. Once that debuff builds up to 5 stacks, all further telepath ticks instantkill you. Stacks wear off at a rate of one stack every 5 minutes, and are not removed by death. If you enter the city with 5 stacks, they spot and kill you immediately. Maybe if you hit the kill point you need to clear all stacks before the instantkill stops. The idea here is that the telepaths prevent Kryss from just staying in your city to harass all damn day, while giving a decent window for attacking a target. Could fluff this as Mages locking you in with some arcane spell or ritualists preparing to kill you or whatever.
Archers don't do straight damage anymore. Instead, once they realize you're there they fire nets and broads and barbed arrows and such at you. Heavy on the disable, light on the untankable damage.
Guard numbers are reduced as well as their damage and maximum squad size, and they do more hinders and less damage, and they also instantly report your presence to telepaths and archers. They'd also be unkillable under normal circumstances.
The overall idea here isn't that guards and archers will outright kill me, it's that they will significantly reduce my ability to accomplish whatever I went in for and make it easy for anybody else to kill me. The telepaths are what will kill me or force a retreat, and the debuff mechanic forces a wait period.
Maybe Assassins/Renegades/Predators get a technique that makes telepaths take 30 seconds per tick for their debuffs, instead of 60.
As far as the actual raiding goes, I'd use a system sort of like the chargebomb from the Obelisks. The attacking team pays some sort of cost to build some sort of ShardTech heist-movie-style EMP device and uses that device to shutdown the telepaths and archers and maybe weaken guards while opening up an objective for a period of time. This would prevent the "Antioch is always raiding" type of thing, because your ability to stage a real raid would depend on the cooldown on the bomb. Antioch blows down your defenses and your city is a battlefield for an hour and after that the defenses snap back up and raiding is done until the raid cooldown comes back up. Maybe the raiders have a choice of EMP weapons and they can choose different effects depending on what conditions they'd rather fight in.
Sure, this system is vulnerable to the off-hours attack, but what system isn't? You could maybe give townes outpost-like effects where they can generate a shield that prevents the city from being raided at certain times, so that raiders have to sack townes to get at the city. This type of thing also has some of the strengths inherent in the existing Obelisk system. When you defeat a city raid, the raiders have burned their cooldown and received nothing, making this a clear "defenders won" instead of a "raiders didn't win", and you could use that opportunity to maybe take back a sacked town and regain ground, or hit one of their objectives so that they have to go defensive. This would also bring townes firmly into the city conflict system because even if citizens don't care about the townes themselves, they'd still be an important defensive measure and letting your townes get sacked just means that you're gonna find Antioch in your face every raiding period.
"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."
So, with that, this is how I would set up guards and raiding right now. Your 'standard' defenses would consist of archers, telepaths, and guards.
Telepaths would no longer do damage. Instead, they'd do a slow-burn mind radiance style attack. When the telepaths become aware an enemy is in the city, they get a warning message letting them know the telepaths are aware of them. A minute after that, they get a debuff. A minute after that, they get another 'stack' of that debuff. Once that debuff builds up to 5 stacks, all further telepath ticks instantkill you. Stacks wear off at a rate of one stack every 5 minutes, and are not removed by death. If you enter the city with 5 stacks, they spot and kill you immediately. Maybe if you hit the kill point you need to clear all stacks before the instantkill stops. The idea here is that the telepaths prevent Kryss from just staying in your city to harass all damn day, while giving a decent window for attacking a target. Could fluff this as Mages locking you in with some arcane spell or ritualists preparing to kill you or whatever.
Archers don't do straight damage anymore. Instead, once they realize you're there they fire nets and broads and barbed arrows and such at you. Heavy on the disable, light on the untankable damage.
Guard numbers are reduced as well as their damage and maximum squad size, and they do more hinders and less damage, and they also instantly report your presence to telepaths and archers. They'd also be unkillable under normal circumstances.
The overall idea here isn't that guards and archers will outright kill me, it's that they will significantly reduce my ability to accomplish whatever I went in for and make it easy for anybody else to kill me. The telepaths are what will kill me or force a retreat, and the debuff mechanic forces a wait period.
Maybe Assassins/Renegades/Predators get a technique that makes telepaths take 30 seconds per tick for their debuffs, instead of 60.
I'm on board with everything I think except the 'make cities raidable easily and work for everyone' approach. No one plays this game to be hyper vigilant all the time, so dying in your city should be somewhat uncommon/rare. Otherwise, you risk making 'afk' synonymous for 'logging off'.
You -should- be able to be killed in your city by determined people with sufficient motivation. But it should require either a mistake on the part of the defender or an infiltration class without ranged attacks like Assassin. Otherwise you just get the MIND RADIANCE problem again, and we don't need to go back there as a game.
The nice things about objectives is that other cities can retaliate. Honestly? Current raiding isn't a thing if you're not part of the tiny subset of the game with the experience/artefacts/class abilities to make it a viable thing. If Antioch goes to raid Kinsarmar, Kinsarmar isn't coming into Antioch to retaliate because the players with those capabilities are all either in Antimagick or Demonic now. The system won't be give and take as it'd need to be for it to be fun for both sides unless that accessibility barrier changes in some way.
This is it in a nutshell for me. I would love a way to strike back, I can be slippery, but I'm not a great combatant nor do I have any shot at tanking any of the damage I would need to tank, to cause any real retaliatory mischief in Antioch.
Also, I would have to deal with being hunted until they fulfilled their city bounty, which means I would get nothing done. I have lots of things to do, that is why I log in and if I can't get them done I have no incentive to log in.
And yes, I could just submit myself to be killed to clear my bounty so that I can go hunt but quite frankly that defeats the whole purpose of it in my mind.
What if people on the losing side of a raid got a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to being bountied or hunted for retaliation outside of the city?
If this could happen, then a lot of Khizan's recent suggestions might really make things more fun. It would the limit the griefing time that a winning raiding city could impose on a defending losing city and shut out raiders to the losing city for a period of time in which everything resets and has a cooldown.
Maybe you could even give a defending city an opt out that could be used if they wanted at the cost of a large amount of shards or something like that.
Things like this might provide some balance and make it fun for all.
Oh and for the record, I don't want to know the poorly made up, crappy reason why Antioch raids Kinsarmar. They do it because they can upset a large population of people with little resistance. They are bullies. It's what they do. If you think you do it for any other reasons than that, you are deluding yourself.
for the record, I don't want to know the poorly made up, crappy reason why Antioch raids Kinsarmar. They do it because they can upset a large population of people with little resistance. They are bullies. It's what they do. If you think you do it for any other reasons than that, you are deluding yourself.
You're entitled to that opinion, of course. You'll note Celidon doesn't seem to be having problems though. I think you'd find us surprisingly receptive to discussion, but we probably shouldn't go off on that tangent in this thread more than we already have.
What if people on the losing side of a raid got a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to being bountied or hunted for retaliation outside of the city?
Defenders can't be retaliated against after a raid, and raiders should always expect a bounty. There's no need for this kind of thing. I mean, a bounty is one death and it doesn't even cost experience.
Maybe you could even give a defending city an opt out that could be used if they wanted at the cost of a large amount of shards or something like that.
I'm firmly opposed to this. You shouldn't be able to just opt out of a conflict system. If you really want to avoid fighting it out, just don't resist the raiders and let them have it unopposed.
"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."
Assassin-type classes(Assassin/Renegade/Predator) should have an advantage in infiltration, but they shouldn't be the only classes capable of it. So avoiding/mitigating city defenses should not be a class specific thing.
I would like to talk on this matter. While I believe it shouldn't -only- be about Assassin/Renegade/Predator, but I do believe they should have a very large buff to this sort of thing. With how many classes there are, there are many ways to hide yourselves, and I apologize if I keep this posts towards the actual stealth classes, but that's just what I know.
I feel, that if guards are far far stronger, it should be possible to make some hidden movement past them. For instance, if you are a class that can hide, you should be able to pass 1- 2 guards without being noticed, if you evade, maybe make it 1-3. Then add benefits for things like windwalk(I don't know if assassin's or renegades of a skill like this, but maybe weaving could add that sort of benefit?) ... I think the lower end of the hiding should also include things like shroud, camouflage, and whatever other stuff, but specific guards should pick out specific hiding techniques better. Obviously things like, phase, should not be a problem walking past guards, and mask should make it possible, but not 100%.
I agree with most of the things in @Khizan post. Not sure I like the idea of a chargebomb, but I will have to think about that.
The problem for me around a new system is coming up with a meaningful reward for getting objectives/items from other cities. XP bonuses are boring and the wrong reward for a PvP type activity. Stealing comms is possible, but also gets griefy/boring. Could be you capture the standards of the city for bragging rights? That is not super compelling either.
That said, I don't want people to feel like they need to raid, to get the objective bonus, in order to be able to compete in other parts of the game.
@Septus I am sure you will use the excuse of the alliance as the reason, yet there are three multiple factions in the alliance and none of them have been hit like Kinsarmar. Celidon is doing absolutely nothing in the area of conflict, but Kinsarmar has found a creative way to get involved even though we have almost no combatants, and frankly it has been the most fun I have had in the game in a long while. You claim to want conflict, yet look for RP reasons and use city raids to suppress it. You only seem to want it if you can be the winner.
@Septus I am sure you will use the excuse of the alliance as the reason, yet there are three multiple factions in the alliance and none of them have been hit like Kinsarmar. Celidon is doing absolutely nothing in the area of conflict, but Kinsarmar has found a creative way to get involved even though we have almost no combatants, and frankly it has been the most fun I have had in the game in a long while. You claim to want conflict, yet look for RP reasons and use city raids to suppress it. You only seem to want it if you can be the winner.
You can assume all you want. Like I said, we can discuss it in game or not discuss it at all. I'm absolutely fine with either.
I agree with most of the things in @Khizan post. Not sure I like the idea of a chargebomb, but I will have to think about that.
It doesn't have to be a chargebomb, really. The important thing is that the system is creates a definite raid window that prevents the "raiding all night" problem. Myself, I like having a big divide between "regular defenses" and "raid defenses" because it lets you design the normal defenses around normal anti-infiltration things without having to worry about how it plays into the raid system, and it lets you design a raid system that doesn't have to worry about city defenses. Instead of a shardbomb, maybe your city has your troops attack at the same time you do, and their telepaths and archers are busy handling that. Just something that lowers the general defenses to open up a PvP objective.
As for the objective, maybe do multiple objectives, but only let the raiders pick one to capture. Giant chunks of PK experience for attacking their arena. Steal widgets from their refinery to temporarily decrease your refining costs. Steal food stores so that feeding your guards is cheaper. Vandalize their main gathering point for a morale boost that gives the city an experience bonus. Hit up the armory for a city-wide PvE damage boost. Throw up a bunch of things, people will want one of them. Just don't make the bonuses directly combat related or too powerful, and don't make punishments something that will directly affect the playing experience of individual citizens.
I think the city that was raided should take some kind of a hit, so that they don't get to roll over without losing something. There should be an incentive to defend. Maybe include partial victories towards this end. We still won, but your resistance means that we only stole 75% of a load of widgets instead of 25%, so the defenders take less of a hit and the raiders get a worse bonus. I also think that the defenders should get a PK experience bonus relative to the strength of their defense so that a successful defense actually gains them something.
"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 am currently thinking of adding objectives in a city to claim or objective in the area around the city to claim. Or, items held by city mobs in the city which you must kill and steal. Or some sort of combination of things. Objectives would reset once a week or something like that.
I don't really like the feel of it yet though. It just feels like exchanging one form of griefing to the another. That said, any form of city competition will feel like that when you are losing.
Cities have remained the primary hub of where roleplay happens; in Khandava, in Kinsarmar, and elsewhere - these fun things happen within the perceived safety of the cities.
Every raid, every attack on "sovereign soil" is an insult to the defending party because of the personal nature of the intrusion. The sanctity of the space where the majority of city and guild roleplay occurs has been violated - this is most keenly felt when a raid interrupts an actual roleplay session.
It creates an environment where defenders are compelled to expel the raiders.
Acknowledging that the vast majority of the game does not enjoy PvP and does not feel comfortable in PvP situations, forcing a PvP objective onto what is primarily a roleplay arena has you on the back-foot in terms of introducing any new conflict system within cities.
Creating a PvP objective within cities also encourages the repeated despoilment of what is generally considered a safe and private place. I will guarantee that the side in ascendance will hit those objectives as often as they can. Each attack will be taken personally by the defenders because of the nature of the space that the attackers are entering. This will stem from the majority of the game who do not enjoy PvP and who already do not feel comfortable in PvP situations that already exist outside of cities.
You are more likely to lose customers by enforcing a PvP objective onto cities than you are encouraging existing players to engage in PvP.
But how about PK?
Putting conflict generation aside for the moment, there is a single unmitigated primary PvP problem with cities: enemies who run their mouth and incite PK can permanently camp out in these strongholds. It encourages bad behaviour.
This needs to be addressed.
Putting conflict generation aside, and putting together (a) the understanding that cities are roleplay hubs, and (b) the understanding that cities currently are fortresses for people who incite PK, the most reasonable action is to remove the guard and siege system completely. The new defence will need to be something that places emphasis on deterring prolonged antagonistic behaviour in any room of the city, yet allow the opportunity for a player to kill a PK-douchebag - allowing both roleplay in a protected space, as well as allowing limited opportunity to strike against a person who incites PK.
The way to do this, is this:
- Area-wide defence systems
- Activated upon request by members of the city
- Allowing a "raider" to strike for an acceptable kill-window on a soft target - this is 30 to 60 seconds.
- Giving said "raider" warning at 15 second intervals of their impending eviction via death
- Higher ranking city members will create a smaller kill-window for the raider.
It allows for an on-demand defence of a generally sacrosanct space for roleplay, yet allows for windows of opportunity to deal with a misbehaving antagonist. It removes the personal nature of attack on the city itself, and therefore removes the feeling of despoilment when a raider attacks the city. You'll have less collateral damage from people who right now feel compelled to defend the city.
What else do you gain by demilitarizing the cities? More cross-circle interaction. Increased value of city shops. Less segregation.
For conflict generation, look elsewhere other than the heart of where most roleplay occurs.
In summary,
1. Do not make cities PvP objectives. Forcing PvP in a roleplay area is a bad idea. You will lose customers.
2. Saying that, cities should not be impenetrable defences for people who incite PK.
3. Guards, siege, the whole idea is antiquated and creates unnecessary design issues. Imagine cities that didn't have to have effin' straight lines.
1. Do not make cities PvP objectives. Forcing PvP in a roleplay area is a bad idea. You will lose customers.
2. Saying that, cities should not be impenetrable defences for people who incite PK.
3. Guards, siege, the whole idea is antiquated and creates unnecessary design issues. Imagine cities that didn't have to have effin' straight lines.
Really everything Iniar said really deserves consideration. But I agree with points one and three here 150%. Point two has its merits, but I don't see why cities CAN'T be safe zones.
Current Setup:
Pros -
1) 4-6 people in our population can deal with their apparent unending boredom by forcing entire populations into reactive conflict.
That's it, there is no other pro to this.
Cons -
1) Entire populations are forced into conflict that 90% of that population want nothing to do with.
2) Its reactive conflict. To be specific, the current people who caused this problem are the same people that always cause these problems. Namely, they abuse every opening they can, the most abundant loophole being attacking when there is NOBODY TO STOP THEM.
3) Entire sections of cities are cut out of interaction. Guildhalls, houses, museums, Inns, anything at all not on a siege line is basically forever unsafe. The amount of Rp and city growth lost to this con alone is staggering.
4) Not only is the entire cost of a "raid" (night-time griefing of entire populations) on the defender, there's literally zero way for defenders to win. Even if everything is done perfectly.
The current system caters to asshats.
What happens if you make cities safe zones?
Cons -
1) A small population of people can no longer force conflict by inflicting grief upon entire groups of people. They will be forced to find other avenues of conflict.
That's it, that's the only con.
Pros -
1) Entire populations will flurish. No longer will you see Kinsarmar/Celidon/Stavenn become a ghost town for months at a time because Antioch got bored.
2) Newbies will always have a safe area from people like Kryss.
3) Even if Celidon loses every single everything, their population will still have a place to recover from, and not feel forced to give up and stop logging in
But wait, then people will just hide in their cities!
So?
The hunters will be slightly annoyed, but still get a moral victory of knowing they've pigeon holed their quarry into a place they can't leave. They might even try a little Rp in mocking them. The hunted will be stuck unable to leave their city, but still able to PLAY THE GAME, until they face the music. That or they spend an actual week/month hiding until they're safe from whatever they were being hunted for. That should be an option. A death would obviously be faster, but let them serve the time if they want to do it.
But I like invading cities! Yeah, it has its moments. But I promise you -any- conflict system you place within city walls will result in even worse problems than we have right now. Antioch will get bored, declare BECAUSE RAWR, and grief the shit out of entire populations. And continue actively driving our population away because they're bored. But lets say we want to give a window to go in and fill that contract. I can see that, but it needs to be a small window. Ideas?
Kinsarmar mages finish their long tasked mission of cleaning up the streets. They enact a magickal grid over the entire city, guards are sent home. They're no longer needed. Instead five terrifying death machine magick powered golems are positioned around the city. They never move, they never eat, they just stand there, looking like pretty sculptures. But the second Kryss comes in and attacks X random npc? Within five seconds she's dead. No chance to escape, no fair, just one hit, dead.
(Kinsarmar): Awesome Golem Five, "Kryss was slain for attacking citizens of the Duchy. Please file charges."
Kinsarmar 1/1/1 0:00 > Kryss got her ass handed to her by an unfairly powered defender, reason stated as attempted murder.
Well that's not fair, if they respond that fast, how do you kill a bounty? Easy, you go to your city headquarters and buy a <stupid item here> which costs <a stupid amount of red shards> which when detonated inside an enemy city, will stop you from being noticed until you perform an aggressive act. The moment you do, your <stupid item here> starts fighting off the location spell in Kinsarmar, swifting running out of juice. You have three minutes to kill your target. During this time if you cross next to any of the stupid awesome death statues, you die. If a defender of the city is able to come "tag" you for the system to see you, you die.
Cost to the city for such a stupid awesome powerful defensive network? Constant shard drain. Results? Shard falls will eventually mean something again, and raids will never happen.
This will result in Rp that isn't:
Antioch - Stavenn, do what we say because we're broken/bored.
Stavenn - No, because our Rp demands we stand tall
Antioch - Fine -Griefs the shit out of the Stavenn population until it quits and the city dies. Again-
Cities will be able to grow and evolve based on community input, not security layout. Guildhalls will once again be open to -gasp- new players. Interesting places like Kinsarmar's museum won't leave citizens who've been members for a hundred years asking what you're talking about. There will be 'opt out' zones for each population, where you can't be forced to dance to the strings of bored people.
Will STILL have:
Obelisks, Monoliths, Caravans, Shardfalls, monthly events, Arena, villages, shrines and a handful of other nicely presented conflict center points. Non conflict-desiring people will have ONE place to be safe. There's nothing wrong with allowing the cultural hub in a place people go to relax and enjoy themselves to be safe.
After reading through most of this, while I like some of Khizan's ideas, I much prefer a system that enables conflict away from our nice streets of major cities/councils. Personal raiding should be possible, and maybe some minor group bits, but there should be a cost to it. I think the idea of using shards for this (thanks @aakrin) is a wonderful idea.
I would expand upon the idea of making shards the default way to invade a city by allowing the shards to power the defenses of the cities (expanding upon Aakrin's idea here.)
If Large Golem A is defending Kinsarmar's South Quadrant, but the Generator is not full, then there would only be a delayed response when Kryss or Dreacor decide to kill Citizen Y. This would increase the time needed for Dreacor/Kryss/Whoever to raid, while also making sure that eventually the Eye Beams of Death will find that raider if they wander around too long, or are located by Citizen Z in Dreacor's pursuit of Citizen Y.
Locating attackers would cost shards so that citizens could use their own resources to empower Large Golem A during it's defense - if the city's Generator is not full, otherwise standard rules (as noted in Aakrin's post) apply.
Outside of this, I also support the idea of positions guards/squads into an outside the city fortress/whatever system.
Example:
Stavenn wishes to expand it's resources in order to bring in quartz/gold/commodities from Antioch and would need to construct an outpost within, for example, Arkaskarr. Townes would not have the benefit of Construct of Death, but would have smaller groups of guards (max number within townes, positioned in small groups) to defend. Stavenn's new Imperator Ahkan calls upon the might of his controlled townes and funnels resources (quartz/shards/commodities collected) into a constructed outpost within the towne of Arkaskarr.
After the initial guards/defenders are routed, Stavenn builds an Outpost within Arkaskarr. Ahkan is then able to order towne guards into the outpost (but by extension, guards are no longer within the townes leaving them vulnerable) to defend Stavenn's new money/commodity harvesting asset. After a certain number of quartz/commodites is reached, the Outpost is not able to withdraw anything else from the coffers of Arkaskarr. The Outpost remains until Ahkan and Co and his assembled guards are routed by Antioch through the combined use of their towne guards and defenders. The Outpost is then able to be reclaimed/destroyed by Antioch and the towne is able to recover within a month or so.
These attacks would have no long term disadvantages to townes structure/members, and with a cap on the amount of commodities received it only becomes a negative outcome if the attacker holds their outpost open for so long. Sure, Stavenn could hold an outpost in any/all townes of an opposing organization if it wanted to, but it's going to be burning it's own stockpile to hold the position and keep guards/defenders available.
As a note, these outposts would be unable to be marked by shrines, and would be temporary rooms with the ability to expand to five rooms (thus capturing more commodities) with a large gold cost.
I'm not sure if this idea is completely sound, but I think it would provide townes with a needed boost to their importance in the overall PK nature, and the other changes to cities would allow them to expand per the whims of their citizens rather than the need for long rows of seige lines, or whole house plots taken up for siege areas. It would focus large scale conflict outside of the cities, while allowing smaller skirmishes the ability to exist through player effort.
Thoughts? Did I ramble to much? Do you even like me?
In a shocking twist, I have to say I agree with @Iniar here. What I miss the most about Imperian is the ability to have meaningful roleplay in my council and use my guildhall without it being a security risk.
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. Aleutia and I sunk an entire real year into the revamp of the Tzolkin GH and the use of it is minimal because it provides a security risk. It is not a safe space for roleplaying with new players and the like, which is problematic given that guilds are now entirely built on roleplay with no mechanical benefits.
I can't tell you how amazing it would be if GHs, shops, and housing were useful again. Khandava, for example, offsets a portion of their Trade costs out of what is made on the shop/housing tax for a year. It's not much.
Example: 5 out of 20 council houses are owned. None of them are used regularly.
I understand that Imperian is a meld of PK and RP, but I often feel that RP is left at the wayside so that we can further emphasise PVP. Shardfalls, obelisks, caravans, entity death/essence gathering, and champion/boneyards are all PVP objectives. These are great because they allow players to opt in, and at the end of the day you can go back to your city and (ideally) try to relax a little.
All of our major events also involve PVP. There will always be an outlet for it and anyone who wants to impact the outcome of an event is going to have to get their hands dirty.
With the myriad of PK outlets in the game, there should also be outlets for other players. Allowing players a safe haven in order to roleplay and build up community would play a large part in revitalizing the game.
It would allow us to actually use some of the neat RP hooks that are in place, and maybe other cities/councils could come up with their own as well. Shops and houses would see increased use, and guildhalls would become what they are intended to be, a hub for meaningful roleplay.
While I can see why some portion of what @Khizan provided is appealing to the PK population, I can also assure you that it isn't to the rest of us.
1. The same individuals will still raid with the same frequency.
2. While there will be less cost to the city, CT will still be full of spam of Dreacor and Co. spam-murdering every NPC they can get their hands on.
3. Lowering the amount of killing that guards can do will make this happen more frequently.
4. Citizens will be forced to defend or deal with grief until the attackers get bored, which is essentially a tired repeat of what they're doing right now.
5. Guilds, shops, and housing will continue to not be used.
6. Trade is already completely miserable. Don't make me also have to worry about all my guard's food comms being stolen. That just adds insult to injury. The injury is Trade. tldr: I hate Trade.
I like the idea of an objective to raiding outside of killing guards, perhaps like temporarily taking over the city, stopping its comms production or something else. Maybe a room that if the raiders hold for a long enough point stuff happens, also maybe guards cant enter the room, otherwise everyone would just have 30+ guards in the room at all times.Objectives are good things to have aside from lets cause them damage and give them grief.
Never give up, never surrender, and if you have to die, take some of them with you.
Good points about how raiding is very disrupting to people who want nothing to do with it.
Will consider that.
This is why I like the idea of a window that can only open every few days. It's hard to realistically claim "But we can't use our guildhalls" or "we can't use our houses" when the raid window is something like one hour every three days and the goal of the raid is to occupy and hold a non-guildhall location.
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.
And I still feel that it's important for conflict to hit the cities occasionally. With all player/player conflicts sandboxed into external systems, it's far too easy to end up with a city that just ignores conflicts entirely and that's not good for the game or the organization, because the zero-conflict organizations lose citizens and their new players get disheartened when they realize that their organization's just gonna sit back and watch during every event. Just look at it. Antioch snapped up a ton of magickers during the Shade event because it turns out that people like it when their organization does things.
So. Thinking on that, here's what I say. 1 hour raid windows with a 3 RL day cooldown. Allow for partial victories/defeats, so that defending is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Give defenders solid rewards for successful defenses. And start out by making raiding ballbustingly difficult. Raiders should feel good about getting out with a 33% victory, and defenders should get enough reward from a 66% defensive victory so that they feel good about their 'win'. Maybe don't even give the city a penalty unless they have more than a 50% defensive loss. The idea here is to make defenses rewarding enough so that people feel that their participation is gaining them something.
I think that cities need a touch of conflict in their lives. Making it possible to just ignore conflicts is how you get those events where everybody in the world decides to team up and there's no conflict at all.
"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 root issue with your ideas is that it won't be fun for both sides. Just like now, it'll devolve to side A attacking when side B can't defend. All this does is forces defeat on side B. It will also devolve to side B simply logging out for the duration, which isn't going to be fun for side A.
You'll just end up with the strong side farming the weak sides until even that gets boring. See: Obelisks.
Until something is done to equalize population strength, which is going to include Rp, and hopefully include the really unfortunite circle class restrictions, there's no reason for raiding to exist.
All raiding does is provide one-sided amusement to a tiny portion of the population. It has lasting, harmful effects on larger portions of the population. There is zero reason to cater to this.
There are numerous avenues through which players can pursue PVP in Imperian, and none in which an individual can simply opt out without feeling a distinct after-effect. While I do believe it is important to have conflict in a game, Imperian is also a roleplaying game and an equal number of people appreciate that aspect as well.
With all major events involving some manner of PVP, I think that you'll find that the playerbase isn't simply going to turtle up inside their cities and pretend that conflict does not exist. In fact, I would say that if anything is going to affect a city, it should be an event and not a section of the playerbase looking to push more conflict.
I have been very active in the defense of Kinsarmar, for instance. I don't enjoy it. I certainly don't enjoy spending my days off making siege ammunition because someone decided to off hours drain it for 4-6 hours. But I participate in it because the alternative at this point is to allow another group of players to become so discouraged that they stop logging in, and the game population is low enough already.
I think that you'll find that most, if not all of demonic, doesn't shirk PVP. There are, however, those who don't enjoy it and do not want to be forced into defending their cities and councils at all hours.
While making raiding a window-only opportunity would cut down on this to an extent, what does it really change about the situation, realistically? The same section of the playerbase who is constantly raiding is the same one that will be raiding organizations every time that window opens.
There would be less of a cost, sure, but that honestly doesn't make it any more fun for the defending party. No one wants to be forced into PVP all the time.
It's also easy to claim that being zero-conflict is led to the exodus of many players to Antioch. It's equally easy to tally the amount of players that I've spoken to in the last week who are incredibly discouraged with the current state of things, and who either already have, or are considering, leaving the game entirely due to it.
That doesn't indicate a situation that is any healthier.
Overall, the impression that I've gotten from these discussions is:
Demonic/Magick: We would like one avenue outside PVP bounds, so that we can engage in non-PVP activities without being forced into it constantly.
AM: We should be able to force conflict onto anyone.
Honestly, the breakdown of cities as roleplay and trade hubs over time can be directly attributed to raiding, even from the opening of the game. Totems existed to protect cities from raiders, so we needed engineering. Cities had to be restructured to optimize engineering because otherwise it wasn't fair post-release in terms of defending against raids. Other factions had to be prematurely enemied to prevent security breaches, leading to the unfriendly setting to prevent people from slipping by. Shops, houses, guildhalls all have to be treated as potential entry points first and foremost, rather than their intended purpose.
With the advent of so many opt-in systems, PK is more accessible than it's ever been. People are fatigued, though, from having it be forced down their throats at every turn, as virtually every event or interaction lately has come with the caveat of "well, Antioch is probably going to attack us for whatever reason". Drawing clearer boundaries and focusing on attracting a larger variety of players can only serve to spur interest when you have a battle-worn population.
So, hey, crazy idea. What if raiding didn't happen in cities and councils? I absolutely agree with Iniar that the population is too small to keep dividing.
Let's create new "fortresses" for cities and councils. I dunno, do some event, and these will be the training grounds/army/villages/whatever. These will be the raid points, instead of the actual cities/councils. This allows cities and councils to be generally safe points where you can socialize and trade.
EDIT: I would totally pay credits to design my own army of dudes. And pay to totally design my own badass fortress with unique guards wielding unique weapons. And totally pay to have some kind of leaderboard where I'm totally showing off those badass things that I did.
I'm down with this. I saw a game on Youtube called Rust where there are fortresses groups can raid, and it looked badass.
(Ring): Lartus says, "I heard Theophilus once threw a grenade and killed ten people." (Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
I've been on every side of the game and, in my experience, every person complaining about combat here has been happy to participate in it when we were winning, and most of them are happy to come out now when the odds are pretty favorable for them. Similar to Septus' maxim of "Everybody's sorry after the issue", this really sort of seems like "Everybody dislikes combat when there's a chance they might lose", and I think that' because in most PK here the loser just loses.
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.
Fighting in these games is fun and most people will have fun if you prevent them with a combat scenario that isn't just "you get stomped on and gain nothing". This is why WoW battlegrounds give the losers honor, and why losing an LoL match still gives IP, and why you can get the first win bonus off of stomping bots. The problem here in Imperian is just that is that most PvP scenarios are set up so that losers gain nothing and so have no incentive to fight when they know they'll lose. If you give a reward to fighting in general and not just winning, you encourage more people to fight even when they think they'll lose.
TL;DR: Reward people for participating(even if they lose) and more people will want to participate(even knowing that they'll lose).
"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 reason people are flocking to Antioch is because it is the only place they can go to get any peace.
So far what I've seen and talked to people, almost everyone who is new or old in the city, was it older character or a new one, wants to PK and/or raid.
When you get down to it Imperian is a game of conflict between the six cities and/or three circles. Some sort of raiding or direct assault is necessary so that it doesn't end up turning into something like "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!"
In a world like this you need some way to take direct military action against your enemy city-states, otherwise conflicts in the world become toothless and ridiculous.
"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."
People will say mean words. That shouldn't decide the system of conflict. If all they do is cower in a city because they know DudeX will PK them, then that seems like reasonable punishment to me. If they continue to talk feces from behind the walls, make fun of them -> snub them when you're bored -> issue them if they dance around the snub. If no area is safe, the next step for them is going to Aetoolia where you can hop into a haven or just go roleplay in a game where it doesn't cost 1 mil+ gold (~67 credits -> ~$25) to have the luxury of an emote room where Kryss won't attune/focus moradeim bypass. If it's between that and having them infuriatingly existing on thirdeye while possibly putting money into the game, I'm for the safe zone option.
E: And if it's the "organization" doing it or Wrenning all over the public board, same difference. If they aren't coming out for actual PvP objectives, just laugh while you're the only ones with significant advancement in the quartz research line the conflict of the day.
Participation awards are a swell idea, though. Even if my lancemates in lights charge the assault line or Teemo happens, I'll still get a few IP or Galaxy Bucks for my time. I might be more tempted to cave into Dreacor's ask for a duel at 4 AM, which usually would require hopping out of a queue in some other game.
So the problem is you have them holed up in a city, hiding? And you don't find that a favourable position for you? If the person who has wronged you is hiding away and thus not able to do whatever they want, you should count that as a win. And guess what, the conflicts are already toothless and ridiculous when you consider 6 cities/councils fighting for centuries and not a single one has been destroyed/killed off
Comments
I've been thinking about city defenses for a while now, and this is what I have come up with for my requirements for city defenses.
So, with that, this is how I would set up guards and raiding right now. Your 'standard' defenses would consist of archers, telepaths, and guards.
As far as the actual raiding goes, I'd use a system sort of like the chargebomb from the Obelisks. The attacking team pays some sort of cost to build some sort of ShardTech heist-movie-style EMP device and uses that device to shutdown the telepaths and archers and maybe weaken guards while opening up an objective for a period of time. This would prevent the "Antioch is always raiding" type of thing, because your ability to stage a real raid would depend on the cooldown on the bomb. Antioch blows down your defenses and your city is a battlefield for an hour and after that the defenses snap back up and raiding is done until the raid cooldown comes back up. Maybe the raiders have a choice of EMP weapons and they can choose different effects depending on what conditions they'd rather fight in.
Sure, this system is vulnerable to the off-hours attack, but what system isn't? You could maybe give townes outpost-like effects where they can generate a shield that prevents the city from being raided at certain times, so that raiders have to sack townes to get at the city. This type of thing also has some of the strengths inherent in the existing Obelisk system. When you defeat a city raid, the raiders have burned their cooldown and received nothing, making this a clear "defenders won" instead of a "raiders didn't win", and you could use that opportunity to maybe take back a sacked town and regain ground, or hit one of their objectives so that they have to go defensive. This would also bring townes firmly into the city conflict system because even if citizens don't care about the townes themselves, they'd still be an important defensive measure and letting your townes get sacked just means that you're gonna find Antioch in your face every raiding period.
"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."
You're entitled to that opinion, of course. You'll note Celidon doesn't seem to be having problems though. I think you'd find us surprisingly receptive to discussion, but we probably shouldn't go off on that tangent in this thread more than we already have.
Defenders can't be retaliated against after a raid, and raiders should always expect a bounty. There's no need for this kind of thing. I mean, a bounty is one death and it doesn't even cost experience.
I'm firmly opposed to this. You shouldn't be able to just opt out of a conflict system. If you really want to avoid fighting it out, just don't resist the raiders and let them have it unopposed."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."
You can assume all you want. Like I said, we can discuss it in game or not discuss it at all. I'm absolutely fine with either.
It doesn't have to be a chargebomb, really. The important thing is that the system is creates a definite raid window that prevents the "raiding all night" problem. Myself, I like having a big divide between "regular defenses" and "raid defenses" because it lets you design the normal defenses around normal anti-infiltration things without having to worry about how it plays into the raid system, and it lets you design a raid system that doesn't have to worry about city defenses. Instead of a shardbomb, maybe your city has your troops attack at the same time you do, and their telepaths and archers are busy handling that. Just something that lowers the general defenses to open up a PvP objective.
As for the objective, maybe do multiple objectives, but only let the raiders pick one to capture. Giant chunks of PK experience for attacking their arena. Steal widgets from their refinery to temporarily decrease your refining costs. Steal food stores so that feeding your guards is cheaper. Vandalize their main gathering point for a morale boost that gives the city an experience bonus. Hit up the armory for a city-wide PvE damage boost. Throw up a bunch of things, people will want one of them. Just don't make the bonuses directly combat related or too powerful, and don't make punishments something that will directly affect the playing experience of individual citizens.
I think the city that was raided should take some kind of a hit, so that they don't get to roll over without losing something. There should be an incentive to defend. Maybe include partial victories towards this end. We still won, but your resistance means that we only stole 75% of a load of widgets instead of 25%, so the defenders take less of a hit and the raiders get a worse bonus. I also think that the defenders should get a PK experience bonus relative to the strength of their defense so that a successful defense actually gains them something.
"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."
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
This is why I like the idea of a window that can only open every few days. It's hard to realistically claim "But we can't use our guildhalls" or "we can't use our houses" when the raid window is something like one hour every three days and the goal of the raid is to occupy and hold a non-guildhall location.
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.
And I still feel that it's important for conflict to hit the cities occasionally. With all player/player conflicts sandboxed into external systems, it's far too easy to end up with a city that just ignores conflicts entirely and that's not good for the game or the organization, because the zero-conflict organizations lose citizens and their new players get disheartened when they realize that their organization's just gonna sit back and watch during every event. Just look at it. Antioch snapped up a ton of magickers during the Shade event because it turns out that people like it when their organization does things.
So. Thinking on that, here's what I say. 1 hour raid windows with a 3 RL day cooldown. Allow for partial victories/defeats, so that defending is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Give defenders solid rewards for successful defenses. And start out by making raiding ballbustingly difficult. Raiders should feel good about getting out with a 33% victory, and defenders should get enough reward from a 66% defensive victory so that they feel good about their 'win'. Maybe don't even give the city a penalty unless they have more than a 50% defensive loss. The idea here is to make defenses rewarding enough so that people feel that their participation is gaining them something.
I think that cities need a touch of conflict in their lives. Making it possible to just ignore conflicts is how you get those events where everybody in the world decides to team up and there's no conflict at all.
"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 root issue with your ideas is that it won't be fun for both sides. Just like now, it'll devolve to side A attacking when side B can't defend. All this does is forces defeat on side B. It will also devolve to side B simply logging out for the duration, which isn't going to be fun for side A.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
With the advent of so many opt-in systems, PK is more accessible than it's ever been. People are fatigued, though, from having it be forced down their throats at every turn, as virtually every event or interaction lately has come with the caveat of "well, Antioch is probably going to attack us for whatever reason". Drawing clearer boundaries and focusing on attracting a larger variety of players can only serve to spur interest when you have a battle-worn population.
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
I've been on every side of the game and, in my experience, every person complaining about combat here has been happy to participate in it when we were winning, and most of them are happy to come out now when the odds are pretty favorable for them. Similar to Septus' maxim of "Everybody's sorry after the issue", this really sort of seems like "Everybody dislikes combat when there's a chance they might lose", and I think that' because in most PK here the loser just loses.
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.
Fighting in these games is fun and most people will have fun if you prevent them with a combat scenario that isn't just "you get stomped on and gain nothing". This is why WoW battlegrounds give the losers honor, and why losing an LoL match still gives IP, and why you can get the first win bonus off of stomping bots. The problem here in Imperian is just that is that most PvP scenarios are set up so that losers gain nothing and so have no incentive to fight when they know they'll lose. If you give a reward to fighting in general and not just winning, you encourage more people to fight even when they think they'll lose.
TL;DR: Reward people for participating(even if they lose) and more people will want to participate(even knowing that they'll lose).
"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."
So far what I've seen and talked to people, almost everyone who is new or old in the city, was it older character or a new one, wants to PK and/or raid.
When you get down to it Imperian is a game of conflict between the six cities and/or three circles. Some sort of raiding or direct assault is necessary so that it doesn't end up turning into something like "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!"
In a world like this you need some way to take direct military action against your enemy city-states, otherwise conflicts in the world become toothless and ridiculous.
"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."