Raiding Mechanics

For those of you smart enough to not browse through the sewer, papa @Makarios bravely trudged through the wastes and weighed in...

Xaden said:
Picking a team of raiders is delicate balance nowadays. You need a team that the defending party feels like they have at least a 50/50 chance to beat and that you feel you've a chance to win with.

Too much one way and you get no response and too much the other and you get slaughtered and can't get back in because people spam eye at gates, fly/block or auto-becalm.

I 100% don't believe it to be a mechanical issue because loss is so limited already: No XP loss after sanction and 99% of the time : One room lost, often in an out of the way place that nobody uses.

The real issue is that people are too bloody proud to take a loss, no matter how meaningless in an ultimately meaningless txt game. 

Unfortunately there's no cure for that. And relying on the Admins to handhold people through it will get us nowhere.

Solution: Everyone (myself included) needs to sack up and accept that you can't win all the time.
Kiet said:
The fact that loss isn't big is a good part, but the mechanics of tanks/sanctions themselves could use improvement.

As is, you can fight for literally an hour, win every defense, and the offending team can still get a sanction just through sheer hardheadedness. Then all it takes is for a couple of people to have to go to bed or work or whatever and all that defense was pointless.

This was something that came up during the war, a  lot. The best way to prevent a tank is to never defend. That's boring outside situations like the war, obv, but it highlights a core issue: defending has no real 'win' condition. You're just hoping for the other team to eventually get bored of trying.

If you look at other games with an attack/defend modality, the defending team always has a win condition that signals the attacking team can't keep trying. Usually, this is hindering the attacking team so they can't complete their objective within a certain timer. That might be interesting in Achaea, though there's other ways to do it, too.
Makarios said:
Kiet said:
The fact that loss isn't big is a good part, but the mechanics of tanks/sanctions themselves could use improvement.
 

This is one part of the mechanical side of things I agree needs improvement. After we've got the final few things for the upcoming release finalised and I've gone through the classlead backlog, this is on my list.

Kiet said:
Well, while we're at it, the other issue (that alrena reminded me of) is that the 'attackers' tend to have the defensive advantage. They already have the party set up, etc. and once you clear out your current room + maybe surroundings you're just entrenching. Entrenching in Achaea is way too strong with multiple room effects like vibes/hands/rites/distort/totem/etc.

It makes little sense for the people defending their own city to have to break an entrenched position to 'defend'. Guards balance this out in a way, but not vs silence (especially undampenable silences) or if your team wants to try to not use guards.
Makarios said:
If you guys are going to actually discuss this it might be worth moving this over to a different thread so it doesn't get lost among... well, this thread. This is something we have been looking at, so we're open to discussion on improvements.

Senseless posts not included, replies shortened for brevity. Discuss away!

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Comments

  • Adding a win-con to defense might actually be a big-fix to a lot of what people feel is griefing, if it's something like anti-sanction, I can see no need to nerf attackers being able to entrench themselves, so the first to land 5 Kbs in the city either allow a tank or bolster the city to prevent a tank.

    Otherwise, disabling a tank should end a sanction, the attacking team moved in, dropped it, prepared to help make it blow but failed. The defending team could now go on the offense, and go for a sanction themselves? I don't want to see pure restrictions placed so if you lose a tank, you can't raid again as a city. Raiding is immensely more enjoyable than shrine conflict IMO, so I don't want to hard cap raiding, but we definitely need a way for defense to basically put the flag down and come out victorious.

    i'm also still in favour of if you detonate/disable a level 2 tank you should get a small city buff for a while, to really promot going hard at defense or offense, but how tanks work would need to be changed so the attacking team can ACTIVATE TANK FOR <<level>> and add a handicap, with level 2 needing more kills and protection. I'm not a game designer though, so all my ideas are softballing and probably awful.
  • Make it so that every time a citizen of City-Being-Raided kills a non-citizen within city limits, tank % progression goes down (analogous to how raider kills of citizens progresses tanks).
     <3 
  • A system wherein the attackers start a timer in which the tank charges would be nice. It'd be broadcast all over the area, nice and clear, when it starts and when it closes.

    A window, of, for instance, 5 minutes, during which time a standard tank charges, let's say, 50% of the way. During that time, kills feed the tank more than it currently does, for the attackers, and defenders have an incentive to attack, because if they don't, they're halfway to a tank for free.

    Limited amount of these windows, let's say, 3 per tank. That makes it so that successfully wiping the raiders during these windows is an effective defence to kill passive ticking on a tank window is pretty solid defence. Tanks don't charge statically outside these windows, but kills still feed it. Cities uninterested in defending only have to put up with a raid for 15 minutes (a 5-minute cooldown from the end of the previous window seems prudent, gives people a chance to embrace/come back). The general sanction timer wouldn't be active while the tank window's ticking, of course.

    If the defenders attack the raiders during each window and fail, they're looking at an L2 tank being blown, the kills should definitely count for a lot while the tank's in 'charge' mode. That provides the attackers some incentive, too!

    For added interesting-ness, maybe there's a forestbinding-like effect while the tank charge window is active, making it impossible for non-citizens to enter it. City improvement kinda deal, eats up a ton of font power.

    Sanctions in general shouldn't be so long, as well!

    Would be fun to have more structure, and arrange it in windows so it's not a sprawling, dragged-out, no-end-in-sight affair for both sides.
  • Reyson said:
    For added interesting-ness, maybe there's a forestbinding-like effect while the tank charge window is active, making it impossible for non-citizens to enter it. City improvement kinda deal, eats up a ton of font power.
    If it works both ways, wherein they can't leave as well, sure. Forces them to stay and defend the tank if they mess up their plans, rather than just dodging in and out of the city with wings/portals/earrings, to disrupt tank disarm attempts while they find some way to focus again.
  • Can anyone attest to the effectiveness of the quake font effect (or whatever it's called)? Does it actually stop propping or just interrupt it every X seconds? Or does it even do that?
         He is a coward who has to bring two friends as backup to jump people hunting.

  • Alyxeri said:
    Reyson said:
    For added interesting-ness, maybe there's a forestbinding-like effect while the tank charge window is active, making it impossible for non-citizens to enter it. City improvement kinda deal, eats up a ton of font power.
    If it works both ways, wherein they can't leave as well, sure. Forces them to stay and defend the tank if they mess up their plans, rather than just dodging in and out of the city with wings/portals/earrings, to disrupt tank disarm attempts while they find some way to focus again.
    That would make Radiance even more potent than it already is, so probably not a good idea.
    image
  • Reyson said:
    A system wherein the attackers start a timer in which the tank charges would be nice. It'd be broadcast all over the area, nice and clear, when it starts and when it closes.

    A window, of, for instance, 5 minutes, during which time a standard tank charges, let's say, 50% of the way. During that time, kills feed the tank more than it currently does, for the attackers, and defenders have an incentive to attack, because if they don't, they're halfway to a tank for free.

    Limited amount of these windows, let's say, 3 per tank. That makes it so that successfully wiping the raiders during these windows is an effective defence to kill passive ticking on a tank window is pretty solid defence. Tanks don't charge statically outside these windows, but kills still feed it. Cities uninterested in defending only have to put up with a raid for 15 minutes (a 5-minute cooldown from the end of the previous window seems prudent, gives people a chance to embrace/come back). The general sanction timer wouldn't be active while the tank window's ticking, of course.

    If the defenders attack the raiders during each window and fail, they're looking at an L2 tank being blown, the kills should definitely count for a lot while the tank's in 'charge' mode. That provides the attackers some incentive, too!

    For added interesting-ness, maybe there's a forestbinding-like effect while the tank charge window is active, making it impossible for non-citizens to enter it. City improvement kinda deal, eats up a ton of font power.

    Sanctions in general shouldn't be so long, as well!

    Would be fun to have more structure, and arrange it in windows so it's not a sprawling, dragged-out, no-end-in-sight affair for both sides.
    I don't see what that achieves that just speeding up the current passive tank progression to level one wouldn't.
  • Making it a set of focused 5-minute windows would give the defenders an objective, rather than 'let's just run at them until the tank is charged,' or 'let's not worry about it,' I feel.

    Doesn't have to be that specific thing, but step-by-step instead of 'fight for an hour and get a bunch of kills or get wiped' seems like it'd make raids feel more rewarding to participate in. Having an objective, and all that.

    I've personally felt that the kind of super vague, unstructured form of sanctions and how long they last, at the moment, contributes to how often raids tend to drift towards the boring side.
  • edited November 2017
    Alrena said:
    Alyxeri said:
    Reyson said:
    For added interesting-ness, maybe there's a forestbinding-like effect while the tank charge window is active, making it impossible for non-citizens to enter it. City improvement kinda deal, eats up a ton of font power.
    If it works both ways, wherein they can't leave as well, sure. Forces them to stay and defend the tank if they mess up their plans, rather than just dodging in and out of the city with wings/portals/earrings, to disrupt tank disarm attempts while they find some way to focus again.
    That would make Radiance even more potent than it already is, so probably not a good idea.
    Lower radiance to mind crush/kai choke range when a sanction is in effect. That would have the outcome of
       1) Wanna be a pussy and just radiance bot people? Well you gotta be in range to get slapped.
       2) Don't wanna get radianced? Don't be a pussy and engage them, instead of entrenching and waiting for them to run at you.
  • Xaden said:
    Can anyone attest to the effectiveness of the quake font effect (or whatever it's called)? Does it actually stop propping or just interrupt it every X seconds? Or does it even do that?

    It unprops all totems in the area and makes totems unproppable for the duration.

  • (when it's not horribly bugged)

    Don't recall the duration off hand.
  • Morthif said:
    (when it's not horribly bugged)

    Don't recall the duration off hand.


    Elaborate? It appears to work fine for me.

  • I think the defenders can only ever have one of two objectives: engage the raiders and attempt to disarm (or capture) the tank, or ignore the raiders until they blow the tank and leave. They already have those objectives, so your suggestion doesn't appear to give them anything. Is there some other objective I'm missing that you think this will give them?

    The structure of raids really isn't "super vague" or "unstructured", from my perspective. Attackers come in, get sanction, place a tank, wait until they've either gotten enough kills or enough time has passed for the tank to be ready to detonate (at whatever level they desire). Under your proposal, the attackers come in, get sanction, place a tank, and wait until they've either gotten enough kills or enough time has passed for the tank to be ready to detonate.

    The only difference seems to be that there's an additional command involved and that the amount of time required is less. Just speeding up the current mechanics we have would achieve that second part. I think it may actually do a better job of it than your proposal, because if I only get tank progress from kills on defending army members during these five-minute windows, I'm probably not going to start that window until I know the defenders are going to fight (or enough time has passed to make it clear they will never fight).

  • edited November 2017
    Oh, should've been clearer. During the window, the tank charges, outside of the window, with time only, it does not. Deaths outside the window still charge tanks.

    I.e. if in the 5-minute window, or whatever, it gets to 50%. A second window makes it 100%.

    Since that's the window during which it charges, the defenders (if they have any incentive to defend) should get to it to keep it from charging, specially during its second window. If they're just gonna ignore it, then it's only two windows plus the cooldown in between and the raiders can hightail it with their easy win.

    Oh- probably this should only apply to L1's. To be able to charge an L2, the current system is fine. That way, a no-fight tank can only be L1, like now.
  • Makarios said:
    Xaden said:
    Can anyone attest to the effectiveness of the quake font effect (or whatever it's called)? Does it actually stop propping or just interrupt it every X seconds? Or does it even do that?

    It unprops all totems in the area and makes totems unproppable for the duration.

    In testing seemed to be 3 minutes exactly.
  • IMO the offending party having defensive advantage is something that would ideally need to be addressed, all these other solutions run into the same issue.

     A lot of these suggestions don't really fix the problem of the defending party having no real way to win, either, or at least not directly.

    The way to handle both of these, imo, would be to give the offensive party objectives of some sort that are 1) more interesting than sitting on a tank waiting for it to charge and 2) disallow entrenching.

    Going back to looking at how other games do it, generally the offensive team has to capture an objective in some way or another. This can be a control point, or something more like the counter-strike objectives. The point is that the raiding party would be the ones that have to take a location, whereas now the defending city has to assault itself.

    I'm not sure how to translate this to achaea, though. Randomly placed objectives (accounting for guards probably?) that the offending party has to get to? A special area like Alrena suggested where there's 'battlements' or something the offending party has to rush and take over?


  • MagentaMagenta Europe
    edited November 2017
    Reminds me a bit of the old UT 99 Domination idea. Though I gotta say I don't really like the idea of special areas, I always felt it was an integral part of "reality" in Achaea that actual rooms get destroyed (and incidentally also stop working, e.g. in the case of a shop).
  • edited November 2017
    Edit: TIL My idea was an idea of the past that didn't work out. Disregard this.
  • Wholly disagree with the above, for the reasons stated in my last post.  This is how tanks used to be, and it just made things even worse for the losers.  My point above should be taken as "things need to be made as interesting, rewarding and engaging for losers as possible."  Forcing the losers to do even MORE work after already losing is a great way to make them hate raids even more.  Extermination is not a good example, as anyone who had to deal with hundred-room exterminations and the subsequent rejuvenation can tell you was a horrible, horrible time for everyone involved on the green side.  There's a reason that system changed to auto-rejuvenate, to limit the number of exterminations, etc.
  • Makarios said:
    Morthif said:
    (when it's not horribly bugged)

    Don't recall the duration off hand.


    Elaborate? It appears to work fine for me.

    Oh sorry, it does work now but a while back it was bugged for a long time iirc. 
  • edited November 2017
    Penwize said:
    Wholly disagree with the above, for the reasons stated in my last post.  This is how tanks used to be, and it just made things even worse for the losers.  My point above should be taken as "things need to be made as interesting, rewarding and engaging for losers as possible."  Forcing the losers to do even MORE work after already losing is a great way to make them hate raids even more.  Extermination is not a good example, as anyone who had to deal with hundred-room exterminations and the subsequent rejuvenation can tell you was a horrible, horrible time for everyone involved on the green side.  There's a reason that system changed to auto-rejuvenate, to limit the number of exterminations, etc.
    While after re-reading my idea, and being enlightened a bit by people, it definitely wasn't that well thought out.

    I do think that 'being able to fix the damage' is better than 'having to wait for it to fix itself' in almost every situation. Forests auto-rejuv, but I can tell you there would be furious individuals if each room that was exterminated had to be left like that for 14 days before being fixed and couldn't be manually restored.

    Mass exterms are also a thing of the past, can't do it anymore.
  • Just curious on what people think of an item within the city (preferably linked to tank lore somehow) that is given charge each successfully killed raider? The charges don’t decay and hold over to the next raids and once complete either give a citywide effect or an effect that can summoned by citizens (ie place hand on -item- to get 1 day increased hits to help with the time they lose hunting by defending)
  • Kiet said:
    IMO the offending party having defensive advantage is something that would ideally need to be addressed, all these other solutions run into the same issue.

     A lot of these suggestions don't really fix the problem of the defending party having no real way to win, either, or at least not directly.

    The way to handle both of these, imo, would be to give the offensive party objectives of some sort that are 1) more interesting than sitting on a tank waiting for it to charge and 2) disallow entrenching.

    Going back to looking at how other games do it, generally the offensive team has to capture an objective in some way or another. This can be a control point, or something more like the counter-strike objectives. The point is that the raiding party would be the ones that have to take a location, whereas now the defending city has to assault itself.

    I'm not sure how to translate this to achaea, though. Randomly placed objectives (accounting for guards probably?) that the offending party has to get to? A special area like Alrena suggested where there's 'battlements' or something the offending party has to rush and take over?
    Unless the defenders have been warned in time to entrench themselves, I don't see how this will change anything. It just means we'll be setting up shop like normal in the battlements instead of wherever else we'd be raiding, unless you mean for the battlements to be "attackers don't get to use vibes or rites or totems or runes" rooms, which is sort of ridiculous. 

    The side that gets there first is the side that gets to entrench, and that's almost always going to be the raiders because they have the initiative. 

  • Let me preface this by saying that while I doubt things have significantly changed in the last year, I haven't looked at raid mechanics in awhile.

    I'm choosing to ignore the results of raiding and look at what, based on posts from all factions over time, makes people feel shitty about raiding in general. That's a good place to start.

    1) Sanction (or sanction attempts) can last ages. This means when people really want to they can raid for ages. Lose a tank? Have 4 more to go. Someone mentioned the whole sitting at gates attempting to prevent re-entry (which is almost 100% impossible vs even one competent raider to get the raid in). People who don't enjoy extended PK conflicts, or who only PK to help the city when it interrupts what they would rather be doing, end up getting tied up for even longer because now you're on alert. Think it's been 10m so you're clear and you start talking to whoever you were talking to before and get the conversation back to where it was, oops raiders are in again with a tank down. Even if they don't get a sanction, it's on the raiders to accept they lost and stop attempting to get a sanction while the defending city is tied up by the raid.

    2) It's incredibly easy for both sides to escalate. I don't see this as a problem for defenders escalating, they're defending their city. However, when raiders do it it can feel awful. You have 3-4 solid fighters and a couple newbs on your side, you see 5 raiders and think with home field advantage you have a shot. You have a close fight but because of bursts they just barely eek out a sanction, but hey you can probably win a fight given what happened. Wait, now the raiders have the rest of the city in with their tank and you've lost because you let them get a sanction.

    3) Entrenchment. As others have said it's kind of weird that the dynamic of raiding is that defenders have to attack the raiders entrenched position. With the way cities are now, in terms of layout, guards, shrines, etc, it can be very difficult to find a place that doesn't put you, as raiders, at an immense disadvantage.

    Another thing to note, I think, is that the reward for defending being 'more raiding' (via counter sanction type ideas) isn't an answer to the people that truly dislike the state of raiding. PKers will, in the end, enjoy the times they're able to pull off something impressive and get an otherwise super unlikely kill, and if they want to continue raiding they'll usually be able to get their city rallied to go and start a raid normally. The people who would rather be helping novices or stocking their shop or just talking to their friends aren't playing Achaea for that, at least not as often as the PKers are. If they successfully defend it still might be awesome for them, but they may have things they're looking forward to getting back to doing instead of raiding more.

    I have a handful of ideas about dealing with the above mentioned things but I don't want this post to go forever so I'm cutting it here, will post some of those ideas later.
    image
    Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

  • So I thought about how to make raids feel a bit more epic, while also giving defenders more win conditions.

    Battlement sieging
    The general idea here is to make defenders defend, and puts raiders in an attacking position. Well, technically it would switch back and forth to give defenders the option to sally forth and wipe out the raiders. Here's how it'd work!

    1) Sanctions are much like they are now. X soldier deaths sanctions a raid. RP wise it paints a target. If Defenders get a set number of kills, the city fortifies defenses and prevent the enemy city from raiding for an hour or two. That gives defenders a reason to attack pre-sanction, as wiping out the enemy group once or twice means two hours of peace. It's a clear win condition.

    2) Once sanctioned, attackers build a siege tower outside. Defenders can rush to destroy the siege tower if they prefer, or they can entrench on the Battlements, a special area that only opens up once sanctioned. No totems, no guards, several rooms so it's not a bottleneck either to default to adjacent ret strategies. It'll be on the attackers to rush, as they gain nothing sitting around. To deter them, passive damage ticks occur (think forest defs) that grow more damaging as time goes on. Can be represented by npc archers firing down on attackers. Might also only activate after X amount of time.

    3) If the defenders are defeated, there's a set amount of time to 'secure' the area. In reality it's a cooldown period to give defenders a chance to embrace, regroup and entrench in the next area. Attackers can choose to plant their city's flag and call victory here, or push on to the next area. First area victory would give small xp reward and looted gold, each subsequent area gives more (probably max amount of areas?)

    4) If the attackers are defeated, they secure their battlements and the next area is the surroundings of the siege tower. In essence, the defenders can push the attackers out of their city with a counter-attack. If they win again, the siege tower is destroyed and the raid ends. If the attackers win, they can make another push on the battlements. Defending soldiers also gain an xp bonus for winning engagements, to make it more attractive to participate!

    The raid would probably end after a maximum set of engagements, maybe only 3 to prevent it from taking more than an hour, with the option to declare an early victory for the attackers if they get nervous. The maximum amount of loss would only happen with three consecutive victories for attackers. Siege towers would replace tanks, putting a hard limit on how many a city can have, with the option to capture a siege tower if defenders push the enemy completely out of their city.

    Just a random idea, really.
    image
  • Tahquil said:
    Just curious on what people think of an item within the city (preferably linked to tank lore somehow) that is given charge each successfully killed raider? The charges don’t decay and hold over to the next raids and once complete either give a citywide effect or an effect that can summoned by citizens (ie place hand on -item- to get 1 day increased hits to help with the time they lose hunting by defending)
    I love this idea, personally. Something like a chargeable Shrine (old House Shrine maybe, and can be tuned by city leaders or MoW). Could even think of building on this using old Shrine mechanics somehow since @Makarios will have lots of free time after upcoming, right?

    Also, how about when a tank is stopped from exploding by the defenders (say after it’s cHarged at least 30% the defenders can work to destabilise it), it implodes and instead of damaging rooms said energy is used to raise an undestructible shield over (part of) the city under attack. I’m thinking a la the anti-extermination ritual.
  • KryptonKrypton shi-Khurena
    edited November 2017
    Alrena said:
    If Defenders get a set number of kills, the city fortifies defenses and prevent the enemy city from raiding for an hour or two. That gives defenders a reason to attack pre-sanction, as wiping out the enemy group once or twice means two hours of peace. It's a clear win condition.
    How would a peace condition get enforced? Mechanically a timer could deny raiders being able to establish sanction, but they can still come back in and fight for as long as they want, just without a tank objective.
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