City Destruction

Silas

While the city destruction mechanic leaves a lot to be desired in general, it's intended to be a conflict generator. At the moment, it's most rewarding if you avoid conflict entirely, raiding when the target city has nobody around to defend so your group can soak up the juicy textp. To rectify this, since you need five soldiers to sanction a raid, could we change it so that there also has to be five soldiers around from the city you choose to raid before a raid can be sanctioned?

Perhaps, to avoid scenarios where cities would encourage their soldiers to quit the military to avoid the chances of them ever being raided, make it so that raids can be sanctioned if there are, say, seven or eight non-soldiers around as well.

Jovolo

"In the city" could and probably should be changed to "Logged in" somewhere, otherwise meh.

Silas

Yeah, meant that. Edited for clarity.

Sena

The rewards could also scale to the number of soldiers/citizens logged in when the raid is sanctioned. So it's more rewarding to raid when the city has a large number of potential defenders, and even if you can raid a nearly empty city, the xp/gold you get would be negligible.

Sothantos

I'd say 5 soldiers or 10 total citizens.

Tirac

This is a bandaid fix that still results in PvE entrenchment. I'd rather see a PvP system.

Sylvance

Tirac said:

This is a bandaid fix that still results in PvE entrenchment. I'd rather see a PvP system.

@Tirac - could you please articulate this?

Mishgul

basically, if people fight other people, and gain XP,

Jonathin

So uhh.. you want to go back to the old system?

Tirac

Sylvance said:

Tirac said:

This is a bandaid fix that still results in PvE entrenchment. I'd rather see a PvP system.

@Tirac - could you please articulate this?

The war system is designed in a way that encourages the aggressor to attack with overwhelming numbers and fortify somewhere that is difficult to reach. The more people you bring and the less they have, the more likely it is for you to destroy rooms. Even if you tweak the numbers a bit by requiring 5 defenders, all the same motivations are there and now you've added a metagamey way to avoid a raid.

This mentality will exist as long as the war system involves afking in 5 different rooms (PvE) while non-dragons watch their exp meters and hope that nobody comes to disturb them. Personally, I prefer PKing.

Mishgul

The system in place is currently fine for the non PvP party. For the PvPers it's not very exciting or intuitive.

Sothantos

It's true that the PvE element of the system will still remain, but I can't see how that's an argument for why this shouldn't be implemented. It seems fairly simple and straightforward -- even if it doesn't solve everything, it's still a step in the right direction, and can only be an improvement.

Mishgul

your city is dead when the people who are bothered about city raiding are around on our team. Recruit some active australian players and it will be fairer. You can't ask them to change when they log in, these guys have jobs/lives/commitments. 

Sothantos

I don't think it's that significant a problem. I see the Australian/Asian raiding party from Mhaldor around during times when Targossas has 5+ people a fair bit, so I don't think timezone issues would be as much of an issue as you think.

Mishgul

Even if it wasn't, it wouldn't make a difference to the current climate at all. Make it 20 people online.

With at least five veils to make it fair.

Ruth

I would not mind decreased gains when raiders attack a city which has little to no defenders. Tirac did cover my concerns about the suggestion in terms of tweaking the city destruction conditions to include a minimum no. of citizens

I would like more to be added to the "war system", because city destruction is a very linear and ultimately unrewarding mechanism (satisfaction-wise). If anything, I think perhaps something like Aetolia's current war system (isn't that what our old war system was?) which revolves around leading divisions to capture land for comms and territory expansion, and city soldiers defending their divisions might produce a more meaningful conflict.

Of course, that is simply wishful thinking for now.

Melodie

For Cyrene, you might need to add in people who can flag themselves as "I give a crap about combat" to make much of a difference with our population of I-don't-give-a-damns. :-<

In seriousness, though, while this seems more of a band-aid, that's not a bad thing, as long as its acknowledged as a band-aid, and not a true "fix" by the admins.

Rangor

Having a population that does not give a damn, is and should be a problem for the city.

Arditi

Melodie said:

For Cyrene, you might need to add in people who can flag themselves as "I give a crap about combat" to make much of a difference with our population of I-don't-give-a-damns. :-<

This is a problem that should be addressed within your city by its leadership, not the admins, simply because Lake Muurn probably isn't big or deep enough to sink Cyrene into and we already killed Bal'met.

Melodie

I guess I didn't make it clear in my 4am typing - the first was utterly a joke and not meant in any real way at all. It should be regarded in the same way the Serupid classlead was.

Bonko

Sorry that we keep getting sparks despite your spawn killing of Jeramun.

Sylvance

Arditi said:

Melodie said:

For Cyrene, you might need to add in people who can flag themselves as "I give a crap about combat" to make much of a difference with our population of I-don't-give-a-damns. :-<

This is a problem that should be addressed within your city by its leadership, not the admins, simply because Lake Muurn probably isn't big or deep enough to sink Cyrene into and we already killed Bal'met.

I just don't see how the leadership is going to address this when Cyrene is known, on both sides of the keyboard, to be one of the two Cities you join if you don't like combat. 

+1 to Bandaid.

Sabiru

War system's awful for so many reasons that aren't this.

The population of Australia (and apparently, UK/Europe and wherever Tirac is) have long-since accepted that this war doesn't actually involve any PK - I don't really know what's taking you so long. I could have sworn this was what you wanted

But on topic, I agree with Tirac. You all already sit on ship when your whole group isn't online. If this were implemented anyone who joined off loom and needed help would be genuinely fucked.

Echald

I blame the population of Australia, UK/Europe and the Isle Of Tirac for not getting to the edge of their respective landmasses and paddling it toward the center. We aren't getting that Pangaea back unless you start putting your backs into it.

As for this idea, prop it up to 30 citizens so only Cyrene can be sanction raided.

Mishgul

Echald you have replaced Terra as my favourite Targossan

Bambizlo

I definitely agree with the presented problem and the concerns listed by Tirac concerning the proposed solution. Perhaps there's another choice, however. The main means to promote conflict, I feel, requires both sides to feel they have something significant to gain which lacks a bit in the current system and is exacerbated with the current war system (all soldiers have cause against each other but death and gain incur reduced xp loss). As such, I think a few changes could be made:

1. Remove the pvp-related xp loss from attacker deaths/gain for defender kills reduction between warring city soldiers when in defendable. The no-xp loss deaths for defenders in their own defendable would remain as it is currently.
   
2. Give a flat xp reward to defending city soldiers standing within their own defendable if the invading city withdraws before destroying a full 5 rooms. The reward scales upward if the offenders are extradited quickly. Additionally, the bonus is increased if the number of attacking city soldiers far exceeds the number of defending city soldiers, calculated at the beginning of the sanctioned raid.
   
3. Have the xp bonus for destroying a city room scale with the number of defending city soldiers present in the realms when when a sanctioned raid is initiated (this bonus would not change during the duration of the sanctioned raid once set).

This hopefully would allow for a higher risk - higher reward mechanic that encourages both sides to participate in the conflict (which is loads more fun for everyone involved). XP bonuses are calculated only at the beginning of a sanctioned raid for both sides to help combat people "laming" out and just quitting to stop/hinder the invading party from getting rewarded.

Echald

That all sounds pretty nifty, although the number of offenders would probably have to be updated during the battle, otherwise you'd see people sanction with five before gating in the other fifteen.

Bambizlo

Well, I figured it would just count all the soldiers logged in for both the attacking and defending org, not just those present at the sanctioning. Granted, folks could try to game that system by just stay logged out until after the sanction, but if that is the case, could just make it so folks logging in after a sanction is put in place do not receive the bonus XP, only the base amount.

Jarrod

There should be a gamble system involved, obviously.

SANCTION RAID FOR <1-5>

Pick a higher number, the final XP is better. Only get xp after you destroy the decided number of rooms. With a higher chosen number, the amount per room increases (sanctioning for 5 is worth more than 5x as sanctioning for 1). Forcing the enemy city to withdraw gives the defending city soldiers who are inside the city XP based on the number of unfinished room. Once the number of rooms is destroyed, you can't summon any more sparks until the next sanction (see below).

Combine this with requiring a certain number of citizens present in realms and a cooldown so you can only declare a sanction raid every 2 hours or so. Something to prevent farming a city with no defenders, encourage active conflict defense more, but without allowing a city to simply sanction for 1 over and over again.

Echald

I don't think some cities will appreciate having to repair the 30 rooms a day a two-hours sanctionned raid reset would bring.

 

Special under-post edit: Oh, that does sounds good, although that system would still encourage bringing the maximum amount of people for the minimum possible, unless you start getting in some funky ratios.

Jarrod

You clearly misunderstood. You wouldn't get any more sparks, the sanction raid reset would only prevent the cities who sanction, get pushed out, sanction again, get pushed out, sanction again, etc.