After trying to distill several different conversations going on in other topics and other forums, I perceive that one thing that might help mellow out the current raid situation (primarily in Shallam currently, see: Karr's see-saw) would be to infuse a bit of role-play-esque restraint. In other words, if the raid-leaders and raid participants would form a set of goals pre-raid:

(Some examples)
*Kill 10 city defenders
*Identify and kill the defence leader
*Kill 10 city guards
*Kill a specific denizen
*Uproot a particular totem
etc. etc.

And then follow through on ONLY completing those goals or that individual goal, and immediately vacating the vanquished city (we know raid leaders such as Poergh are capable of controlling their troops, see: Trance's 'borrowed' log from Shallam) to drink it up at Fire and Spice... IF raids had a beginning and an ending... it would help to mitigate the frustrations of the defeated. Thereby making the next raid even more fun.

Now, some things to spin it around in even richer hues of psychodelia, you want to make the raid MORE challenging? Tell the defence leader ahead of time what your goal is. See if they can stop you. Want to make it less challenging (i.e. only could muster up three raiders) pick a single goal that is within reach, such as a single guard death.

The reason this is in this forum is that all of this can be done with appropriate IC flocking to make it fun for the raiders and the defenders. It's a game right, let's have fun. The more fun the players you're ganking have, the better likelihood of having another successful raid in another hour - instead of everyone QQ'ng. During your pre-raid prep-talk, tell your associates that several of the Guardian Djinns were reported to have been spouting curses and slander about the Archon, they must die. Or shout, for everyone to hear, that you have a vendetta against so-and-so who is currently standing at Fish Street - Shallam must form up a defence or face public humility. Then kill the intended target (assuming they agree to defend) and leave.

Someone in another thread said they didn't like the idea that they should be dictated to about needing to defend. As if the raiders weren't giving them a choice. Well tough. Your city's getting raided, either take a dump or get off the pot. There are hundreds of things that are dictated to you in this game... go with the flow. We aren't all playing in a vacuum. However, raiders please show some restraint as suggested above by setting attainable goals beforehand, accomplishing them, and then leaving for a while.

If anyone (unlikely, I know) actually follows this plan and does some outrageous raiding with pre-set goals... post a log here in this thread to brag about your organization, efficiency, victory, macro-bashing prowess. Boast, threaten, whatever... that will make this an even better approach to raiding in the future.

Cheers,
Gnaash

When you say, "assuming they agree to defend" are you suggesting that if they don't agree, the raiders should just drop it?

Not at all. If I was raiding and had called someone out in particular (most likely, I would have chosen someone who was capable of setting up a decent defence, to make it more fun for me) and they refused to show up at Skirting or whatever, I would enter the city, yell about how fat their mamma was, and then go to pre-determined goal #B: killing ten guards.

In other words, if a goal is undo-able for any reason (denizen already dead or whatever) have a contingency plan.

I believe he is saying if the person leaves the city, there is no need to raid it.

Ah, I see. I suppose that makes a bit of sense. On the other hand, if you shout that you're coming to get such-and-such a person, and they leave (esp. by qqing), it seems a bit contrived to then go, "Fine! We're going to kill ten gaurds then!"

Really, I guess I'm a bit uncomfortable with pre-broadcasting raid objectives in all but a few cases. I can see the value of setting them, and then not hanging around being jerks after you've accomplished them, but shouting that you're about to come kill so many gaurds and smudge so many totems and then you'll be satisified seems a little odd.

Well, no. A raid is not collecting a bounty on a notorious bandit. It's not a posse going after a disgruntled former citizen. A raid is an effort to strike at the heart of your enemy's city. Hit 'em where it hurts.

When you're raiding, it shouldn't matter per se if any particular individual is present or not. That is merely a mechanism for giving the raid (which, as I've been informed, may often simply be an alternative to bashing denizens) some flavour. If you wish, you may pick a different flavour. But as plainly boring as bashing denizens is - let's work together to make raiding never become so monotonous.



I agree. It would take some effort into making it entertaining and not overly contrived. However, this should only be done in few cases. The point was - much like the arena game where you have to kill one particular opponent to gain points - if the defence knows exactly who you're after, it makes it more of a challenge. Don't want a challenge, and wish to just farm player XP instead? Fine. Just establish your goal to be: every raider gets a kill (I call this one "the hack"), then we leave.

It also seems more than a little off to say something like, "The Shallamese are our sworn enemies. They stand against everything we strive for. Normally, we'd let all that slide. Today, however, we've got a grievance with some of their gaurds, so we're going to go smash some faces."

Everyone knows you're not raiding for some petty reason, you're raiding because they're your arch-nemesis. Dressing it up around petty things is silly.

Wars are waged in campaigns. You just have to take for granted that, if you're in a war, there are battles constantly being fought that you aren't participating in. A raid is your own personal campaign in that moment. It doesn't mean that you log in at Skirting, kill Shallamese until dinner time, log out, and then come back after The Simpsons to do it again. Yes, an Ashtani Chaote hates Shallam with a passion, sure, but they still pick and choose their moments.

Take a look at what's happening in the Seas in Achaea. There are supposed battles between triton factions, atavians, etc. that are "happening" even if you don't see them. Granted, those are not player-driven mechanics, but if you aren't EVER using your imagination when playing this game, you're missing out on a lot already.

Even a contrived excuse to introduce some OOC semblance of sportsmanship into a situation with no predetermined end and no IC reason to stop is a good one.

Right!

Idealistic, and perhaps laudable, but good luck establishing this. Many raid purely for enjoyment, not RP. A significant amount of the raiding I do is for my enjoyment, though I like to think that I have a decent RP reason about all of the time. The trick is not to get people to only smudge a totem and then leave, the trick is for the administration to create a more goal-oriented raiding or group battle system.

I think his goal is to make it enjoyable to for both sides. I admit that there have been certain raids that were a hellova lot of fun, and other raids where it had me (as a player) thinking "Jeez, just hurry up already, I have - to do. This is boring." This is as a defender, of course. I have no idea what the general attitude in Shallam is to this.

The idea is, because there really aren't any goals for raiding other than the lulz, this would give specific goals that defenders could possibly try to guess and/or defend, which makes it a challenge for both sides. It would give you a chance to "win" a raid, then go home and celebrate your victory and taunt the defenders. The defenders, meanwhile, would have to fend off the raiders, etc, and hopefully guess their goal.

Y'know, if the details were fleshed out, it would be nice to see something like hardcoded for a "war system" (I know, wishful thinking), but aside from that, I just like it as a player-driven idea too.

See, with all due respect Des, I think this is exactly NOT the trick. Asking for and waiting for a hard-code or PK-rule-related mechanism is going to take too long and, frankly, isn't going to happen. As the See-saw shows us, this has been going on for a long time. Laudable? Thanks! Optimistic? Yeah, that's me. But, heck, it's worth a shot to see if anyone adopts even a sliver of this kind of mentality before going on their next raid. To be honest, the RP components of the opening post aren't nearly the most important. The whole idea is to make raiding more fun and sustainable for everyone. We've known for years that raids or city military conflicts need an end-point or a goal. It may even be part of what led to the creation of Icons.



Yeah. Maybe. But for the moment, I (naively) hope that this is something for which the players themselves can provide the momentum. Asking Achaeans to do something more or less on an "honour-code" system is like pissing into the wind and believing you won't get wet. But I'm just feeling too damn good to care.

Mhaldor's groups almost always have set goals and battle plans before they go in. The raids anyone complains about anymore are all results of bored rogue or roguish Ashtani-affiliated groups setting up and killing. If you think you can get those people to yell something vaguely RP-related before going on their wanton killing sprees because of this thread, more power to you, but I won't hold my breath.

I have found Poergh to be, at a bare minimum, entirely open to conversation on matters that are constructive and well-presented.

I admit that I find it unlikely that several of the other Ashtani raid-leaders will take this idea seriously in any fashion, all yelling-out of plans aside. But I'm a strong believer in the power of peer pressure.

The Babelonians announced a raid and its goals ahead of time once, and it resulted in Shallam moving thirty guards to the location we were going to attack and camping it out. It was a lot more fun when we decided to just break in unannounced.

I also agree with Tiax in that I don't think it always makes IC sense to announce goals before a raid. Maybe if it was an army of Maldaathi knights or something, but for the less honourable/more stealthy types it just doesn't fit.

That being said, I do think raids have been extremely boring lately, and I do think that having better goals and more RP involved would make them a lot better.

Cheers! Thanks, Terra.
I do think people are latching onto the "announce what you're going to do" part, and understandably so. I threw that in there as a way that you could bump-up the intensity of the raid if you found (perhaps after the third or fifth successful raid) that the defence wasn't up to par.

I certainly wouldn't do: Tell Silas we're going to raid in ten minutes, entering from Jaru, expect three dragons, an occie, two serpents, and one infernal.

But I might do: Tell Silas Prepare to defend yourselves, you orphan-loving maggots! Pericles will be feeling our wrath this day!

I like the concept.

The only flaw I see in the plan is that, given Cyrene's lack of overall preparedness, any of these objectives could be easily accomplished by Poergh, alone. When she or whomever else has a raiding party assembled, they walk in, and accomplish the 'objective' in forty-five seconds, flat, I don't think that whole group is just going to say "Good game, guys" and head back to Ashtan. They're going to stay and gank their money's worth.

Basically, in order for this to work, we have to actually make Cyrene challenging to raid. That means forcing people to learn to take and follow orders in defense. Once we can actually present a consistent, capable raid defense, then this idea of planning missions and objectives stands a much higher chance of success.

Then there's always the obstacle of getting Ashtan to pay any concern for anyone else in the game. Good luck.

T mordanyconus

The real problem is that there is no outlet for PvP instincts in the game beyond city raids for the most part. Icons have been a terrible sponge for these instincts.

Without a PvP zone that is worth engaging in and can be accessed regularly then cities will always be the focus. I like the idea but I am doubtful that it would be adopted by those taking part considering the intent of PvPers in general.

This is what I can't understand. People are willing to live in a city and partake of the advantages of living in that city, but yet, they won't do a damn thing to defend their home when they are under attack. "But I don't know how to fight!" "I don't know what I should do!" Then learn! Most cities have some sort of clan for city defense, and there is always the Minister of Security. Ignorance is not an excuse. People are too lazy to pursue the proper avenues or just want the perks without having to give anything back.

Forum RP I know, but this is -part- of Rynn's IC reason for leaving.

Also, I've been around once or twice when Cyrene's been raided recently. It's pathetic. Cyrene needs some serious raid defense "practice" that isn't surrounded with unnecessary optimism and pride. The goal for these sessions should be "Hey, let's learn how to not get our asses kicked", not "Let's show the rest of the world how strong Cyrene is! Huzzah! x1000"

Some small masochistic part of me wants to go coach Cyrene. Hell, I'm not even an "experienced" raider/defender.

@OP: Some of those goals are either -way- too easy for the raiding party if they set their mind to it or some of those goals do not reward near enough for the raiders to risk dying so much (like the ten guard one). Really, there needs to be a new mechanism put in that makes raiding/defending worthwhile. I don't know what it should be, so I won't throw in any suggestions.

My post wasn't directed toward Cyrene specifically. I've seen it in other cities. However, I agree that Cyrene, among others, need more of this or even to at least start doing it.

I like the idea. I know way a while back where Mhaldor raided Shallam like almost every day, it was fun at first but then got boring quickly because all we do is stand around and wait and left when we got bored. So who really won? Did we win because Shallam was empty or did they win because we left their city?

I know the best time was when we were in Shallam and one of the people who were higher up, can't remember who begged us to leave. Then I felt a bit of accomplishment.

I know when I'm able to get back into the game and start doing raids, I will ask what our goals are or at least suggest some so that way we can say who won and feel that achievement.

lol.

no.

Haha.

I sent an OOC message to Ranzou once, sometime near hour 7 of the 8-hour raid that was staged, suggesting that since there were absolutely no defenders within 50 rooms of Shallam anymore that perhaps they might consider the battle won and leave. I was essentially told that he still had totems to uproot and that if we couldn't oust them, it was our problem.

Wulfen had some decent ideas for forced raid-enders a while back, but nothing ever really came of even the discussion.

I like the idea, every raid I've been on as of late has been serpents shooting and their targets shielding. That's it.

On a side note, I wish there was a way for other classes who don't generally get to, or can't, to be able to raid without spending credits on an artie bow and shooting meteors out of the ass.

I'm not saying don't pick and choose your moments, and I'm not saying don't set goals. I'm saying set your goals in the context of the larger war, not in the context of a rumor you heard about some guards mouthing off. Saying, "We're going to go kill x number of guards because it will aid Mhaldor in crushing its foes" is way better than "We're going to go kill x number of guards because they looked at me funny last week."

Putting RP justification on it is great, but if that justification is as transparent and petty as some of the examples you gave, it's not going to lead anywhere. People are just going to take it in stride as contrived, token RP and not take it seriously.

Further, there are plenty of instances in which it makes sense for the raid objectives to evolve and change as the raid unfolds. The only "raiding" I've ever done is solo break-ins to rob shops and enter house halls, so I'll give an example from those tangentially related areas. Take it as half metaphor, half example. Suppose I portal myself into an unmonolithed house hall, with the objective of mapping/exploring it. While there, I find a locked a door, and gem through it. On the otherside, I find one of those house storerooms. My objective is now steal everything there. It would be foolish for me to say, "Well, that's not on the list, so let's leave it for later."

On the other hand, the above could easily lead straight to the kind of 8-hour gank fests Hieyoko described a few posts back. I guess my point is that I think it's far more important that raiders just be good sports. Objectives and goals for a raid can help as guidelines, but it all comes down to just not being jerks in the end. Jerks are going to be jerks, with or without objectives.

I do a method similiar to what was previously mentioned, except, I come home, kill Shallamese until dinner, eat dinner, kill Shallamese until House comes on, then kill Shallamese the rest of the night.

I'd like a real raid/war system. Not this one though. Announcing your plans beforehand? No, stupid, sorry.

Killing guards/denizens or uprooting/smudging totems? No we already do that, not so much fun.

As it stands right now all raiders can do is kill guards, which can be replaced, damage totems, which can be repaired, Kill denizens which respawn all on their own in about an hour. Oh and kill players, who are clinically immortal and the only lasting damage you can deal to them is a loss in health, mana, stamina and willpower points and some lesson loss if you haven't spent them already. Really the only damage you can do is emotional damage to the player behind the character. That's cool and all. It's been like that since well the dawn of time almost and the Pentad is cool with that. Raids making people not want to log in. But don't you dare insult someone on the forums! Because if you HURT THEIR FEELINGS....

So ya ships are done, can we have a raid/war system? Just not this one

This isn't all of us. They give us just as many headaches as they do you, and dear Gods, there are days when I wish I could sic Metzger on the group that perpetuates that crap. I'd like to stab whoever started 'huzzah!' while I was dormant.

I like that this is a start at least to trying to find a solution. His specific ideas weren't direct suggestions, just examples. The whole point is to take the idea of roleplaying a goal or a point to raiding a city. Aside from the 'lulz', or something to do before House, heh.

The RP is always there. Side A does not agree with Side B. fighting ensues. Problem is the only way to hurt anyone is emotionally.

If you wanted raids to have an end point just go team deathmatch style.

Cities can form a special raid party with it's own channel like pt, when a raid party is formed a world emote like "city x is marshaling its forces" goes out other cities can then make a defense group (no indication as to which city is the target to keep things somewhat interesting)

When the raid group leader enters a city each side gets x number of points based on the total might of the raid group and the defense group. every time you kill someone in the opposit group they lose 1 point first side to hit 0 points loses.

If the raiders win they get ...something if they lose they get kicked out of the city and can't make a raid group for another 24-48 hours.

Defenders win they get something, they lose....they lose something I dunno.

You can't attack someone inside a city being raided if they are not in the raid/defense party so no more newbie deaths, no more login gankings everyone is happy. you want to defend your city you can, want to pick flowers instead? Sure, go do your thing in peace. Fighters get to fight, cowards get to flee and the clueless remain safe, everyone wins

*On retrospect, this first paragraph was unnecessary.

Brainstorming here. If this idea sucks, it won't surprise me.

World influence. Cities choose a single location in their city at which corpses, shards, and gold can be offered. When citizens offer at this room, their world influence percentage goes up, lowering other cities' percentages equally in the process. Citizens of other cities may "attack" a city's world influence by either offering said items to defile (like shrines) or by attacking it with a bash-like command that would affect the city's influence less than offering. The city gains better prices in denizen owned shops and commodity shops if their world influence is high, and slightly (not crippling) worse prices if their world influence is low. Also, depending on the city's influence, their base guard count will be higher by somewhere between 1-10. Base guard count will not go lower than normal depending on influence.

Why is this good?
A world scoreboard that all of Sapience can be competitive about.
A new purpose in raiding.
Benefits to participating.
Does not necessarily require PK (though individual raids should be able to affect influence quicker than any other method).
All levels/types can participate.

Problems:
Will be hard to find a balance in how influence is affected by what actions.
Aggressive cities may have an advantage (but then again they have more influence to the world typically anyway).
Could be a chore to some people. In this interest, having incredibly low world influence should never -harm- the city.

Tired of thinking. Am I thinking along the right path? If not, where'd I go wrong?

Potential problems:

Any system with visible points is guaranteed to promote the most cheap tactics available in order to ensure that one side's numbers look better than the others. Raids would likely be coordinated over AIM or something for known off-hours for defenders, resulting in constant headaches for the few people who play at that time that want to do other things. An idea that directly encourages unsportsmanlike conduct on a consistent scale is likely to not be very popular with the playerbase, regardless of how magnificent the effects are.

Balancing the effects is difficult, and would likely be worked around anyway. If Ashtan had 100% of the total influence and so Rurin sold them widgets at 50gp instead of 100gp, then Ashtan's widgets would get sold out very quickly at every restock and other people would simply resell Ashtani widgets at 75gp to outprice Rurin but still have a supply going.

Cities may choose to stick their location directly on a guard stack or, if this is forbidden, one room away from a guard stack to allow for easier guard movement. Preventing guards from being in the room makes that location guaranteed to be raided at every opportunity (almost like a safe room, or like the current rooms that are so far away that the fairly useless guard setup currently can't ever be expected to reach them), but allowing guards into the room would effectively prevent the score from ever changing. Making some form of "time limit" for guards to be in the room would require additional coding and would probably be buggy since it would involve recoding how denizens work.

This idea inherently favours larger Cities over smaller Cities, which could result in a diluting of ideals to attract more people - similar to how House Influence and City seats led to a dilution of House ideals.

The guard numbers better benefit smaller land-size Cities like Eleusis and Mhaldor over larger Cities like Shallam and Cyrene. Coincidentally, this has almost always been the case, and proposals made to remedy this in the past were dismissed or ignored (iirc).


That's all I can think of for now.

Final obstacle noted and given its due regard. But ain't nothing gonna change that.

To your prior point: this evidence (if true) clearly puts Cyrene pretty low on the "how challenging was your raid goal" scale. If the Poergh-bot only has a few minutes, tackling Cyrene would be a perfectly good idea. If the nuclear power core is charged TO THE MAX!!! it may decide to decimate Shalleusis. Who knows? It doesn't change the proposal that much if a defending city is weak or strong. The impetus has to come from the raiders.



Can you shed some light on those intents to help me modify my ideas?



This is systemic of a larger problem in player identity. Players forget that we are all ADVENTURERS. We are a caste of Achaean citizen that is supposed to be dedicated to high adventure including combat, exploration, etc. Many people play like they are part of some other caste... and it's turned out that we accept it, to some degree. There isn't enough visibility of denizen merchants, farmers, lolligaggers, to make players feel like that niche is already filled. But I don't mind too much. Cyrene, if anywhere, should be allowed to have some citizens who sit around doing nothing. But I laugh at the proposition that they're of the adventurer caste.



I respect your opinion Rynn, and I empathize with your University computer connection plight, but if you say "this is wrong" and then "I don't have any suggestions for what would be better" I'm likely to just ignore you. Use your brain. Give me something better.



That makes my day.
I really hope you do. And I hope that others will ask this question as the raid preparation commences. Thanks Vlad.

You're totally right on both points, Tiax.
My RP examples were poor at best. I was just trying to give some flavour to the suggestion. But having a more legitimate paradigm-based rationale for raiding would be far superior to frivolous "insult-cause" aggression.
Flexibility is important, and really the idea is just a mechanism or a platform from which raiders will (hopefully) begin to think about WHY ARE YOU RAIDING and what's the objective? And then leave when they've done that.



We know, Santar.



Fair enough. A hardcoded reward system for raiding would be swell.
But that has nothing to do with this topic.
This is not a proposal for a raid/war system.



I actually think that was Neraeos via Duke Phormio and the city guards. But when they say it, it sounds cool. Just like the R-word, it gets overused and is now "not cool".

I won't address any of the Raid/War code ideas, since those probably belong in the Dais.
But I will respond to any other posts about how to increase roleplaying and goal-oriented restraint into our current raiding "system" (if a non-system can be called a system, which, frankly, it can't).

I posted an idea after the fact, Gnaash. I see now that you you want to generate new goals/purposes without making any code changes though. I don't know if that's possible. Currently, there are few RP goals worth striving for in a raid. It's easy and still RP (whether people like it or not) to bash people for being on the opposing team. Really, if you're uprooting totems or killing guards, you're just doing it to be a pain in the ass. Since, odds are that by the time you decide to raid again everything will be fixed up. My point is that with the current raiding system or lack thereof, it is actually difficult to have any RP reasons or goals beyond "You are bad, die."

It'd be nice if Gods in general tried to actively participate in as many raids as possible. Not directly of course--just through controlling denizens or creating and maintaining temporary objectives for raiders and defenders. Still, I think I know how much of a burden this would be, and so I wouldn't put that on them.

Ultimately, people just won't be nice. If the playerbase wants to support guaranteed raid-enders, Wulfen's old ideas about how the City could forcibly do so after a certain period of time should be dug back up and reconsidered.

I think they were on Leaders, though.

As a response to both of you:
I agree that from a population standpoint, the epidemic of FAIL will probably pervade any attempt to change the mindset of raiders. From a population standpoint, asking Achaeans to consider their opponent in any way other than as a cash-cow, xp-cow, lolz-cow, etc., to be milked - is a losing proposition.

But, honestly, you know how these things work. The more you talk about something and get just a couple of people on board, the more it infects the mindset. If some raid leader withdraws earlier than they normally would have - or even starts to establish a goal before raiding, and then the next generation starts to do it, eventually it could become the norm.

I laugh in the face of defeatists. Always have. Maybe my glass is always half full.
(But generally, no. It often needs to be refilled.)

Actually, I don't have to convince the majority of the population. Just the ones who everyone else emulates.

Just a few thoughts, perhaps a little all over the place, but necessary all the same.

First: The soldier system needs to be fixed. There's no real reason to be a soldier, as there's no wars, ever, so, it's pointless. We have 18 year old kids enlisted as soldiers, and that's just silly.

Perhaps we don't need to announce targets for our raids, but maybe limiting or focusing the point of raids can be useful. For instance, let's say that slaying a non-soldier on a City's defendable gives more infamy. Or maybe it doesn't give experience. Or maybe there's a limit to how many guards a City can buy every month, depending on the quality of their barracks. Or maybe it takes a little time to buy guards, rather than getting them a second after you purchase them. Maybe the raiders can demand "ransom" for leaving the City, a formal word contract that the defenders can either refuse or accept. If they refuse, everything's fair game. If they accept, the terms can't be stupid, like "All your gold, virgins, and baked goods." (That, I'm sorry to say, is a blow to Cyrenian morale ) Perhaps this will create a more clear-cut set of parameters for raiding. Also, whatever happened to just fighting other people? House Wardens challenges House Ashura to a battle at <place>. They both show up, beat each other up, go home with their wounded. It seems to me that that would be preferable to just hitting a bunch of denizens at 4 in the morning, and might be more productive.

I understand the reasons behind raiding, it's to punish the enemy for x offence. And that's fine. I'm just saying, if the defenders who help Shallam aren't -on- at 4 am, then what's the point? Beating up the kids of the City and the people who can't defend for... what exactly? If it worked, the situation would've changed. It hasn't. So obviously it needs to be fixed, no?

As for Rynn's comment, I'm sorry to say, as MoS, I never saw you do much for Cyrenian morale and/or training. Maybe you did, maybe I'm biased, but I don't know. All I know is that a person teaching raid defence can't be a) afraid to die outside the arena/fight everywhere, and b) expect people to love combat unless you promote it in a good way. Why do we yell "Glory to Cyrene!" "Glory to our Patron!"? It's because no other incentives work. Cyrene is not hurting for money, entertainment, direction. We can't force them, the government doesn't work that way, and paying them is pointless- the ones who can learn, who don't want to, are all filthy rich to start with. I'm not attacking you personally, it just strikes me as funny that people get angry at Cyrene, then quit Cyrene. That doesn't fix anything, so, when you left, I'm quite confident you lost your right to complain about it.

Sorry about the verboseness!

I'll take that criticism, because it's probably true. I did the mundane tasks expected of me and pushed a few papers. I didn't do my job in organizing practices et cetera. I'd probably make an excuse about here, but there's no point. I could have been a better MoS, but I wasn't. Still, MoS taught me two important things: 1) Have confidence in myself and be decisive in leadership and 2) I don't enjoy having a desk job in a game.

Oh, and I complained, I complain, and I will complain, whether I have the right to or not. It's part of me!

ok srsly no mo' 'bout me.

@Gnaash: I don't mean to be pessimistic, and I think it'd be awesome if Achaeans could show some respect for the other -players-. It's just that I think a better way to do this involves coding. Of course, a change in the Achaean mindset would be great and definitely a step in the right direction. Wouldn't it be nice if we could prove that we are capable of being responsible and showing good sportsmanship on the internet?

I disagree.

Two major raid-related changes have been successfully pushed through: no issues for raids and no subdivision raids.

The first one was attempted as a player-driven movement, shot down by the Admin as being OOC, then the Admin changed their policy on how they rule issues. It wouldn't have been successful without the Admin policy change, since there really wasn't a good IC way to enforce it.

The second came about because guards got completely and totally nerfed to hell, so raiders can comfortably sit 3+ rooms away from guards (or on the complete opposite side of the City) and never have to worry about them. This was driven by player complaints about how they functioned (bring back phased guard movement/following prz) and enacted solely by the Admin after quite a bit of Leaders debate

Asking people to raid less, or raid for a shorter amount of time, or be more responsible during raids, or voluntarily end raids when the entire City has lost its totems and guards and nobody is even logged in anymore and you've killed all of the denizens fifteen times won't work without some sort of Admin intervention, partially because it's not terribly sensical (or people will claim it isn't) from an IC viewpoint, and partially because most people don't even care. Without some sort of Admin-led or hardcoded change, raids will always end when the raiders are either routed or bored out of their mind.

There are a number of people even now who voluntarily stop raiding when their side has clearly won, but clearly unbalanced and overdrawn raids still happen with notable frequency. I don't forsee it changing.

The problem with your intention and op, gnaash, is that you are relying on player restraint and sportsmanship, which is almost non-existent.

With dethea's "no continent wide summons into city defs" ooc treaty, there was general agreement, but still some non-adherents. The problem that this idea solves is far less obvious than dethea's, and there is(will be) substantially less agreement. Realistically, this proposal/idea will achieve little.

Yeah. You are right. And so is Hie, I suppose.
Okay! I give up.

Achaean player-base FTW.

Rukimoro's ever-present optimism inspires me.

The whole point of Gnaash's comment was to be idealistic, something worth working toward, not realistic. Eight times out of ten, being 'realistic' is just being pessimistic in disguise.

That's sad. I knew I was right but stalked this thread for days hoping for an eloquent dissemination of my points

I was holding out for a comment from one of the people who could actually initiate the kind of change I was talking about. It could have been a positive or negative comment, really, but I didn't garner the attention of Poergh, Santar, or even Shecks. Epic fail.

That's not to say I don't appreciate the comments this thread did get.

I think one complicating factor was putting it in the Theatre instead of the Arena. Some of the aforementioned see the word "roleplaying" and hastily look the other way.

-Addendum: disseminating your points, while fun, wouldn't have brought me any closer to Victoly!

:\ I really do like the idea behind this, but yes, playerbase ft"w". Still, it is possible to coerce the playerbase into showing better sportmanship. You just need to have some coding put in that at least tricks them into thinking they "won".