Tank Changes

Antidas

I don't understand why everyone thinks veils have anything to do with this. They don't. Strata is the one who brought up the points about veils to begin with, not me. I hate veils as much as the next person, but they have absolutely -nothing- to do with the fact that its possible to place a tank on one side of a city and fight on the other side. Its just as much of a problem when placed there by a non-veiled person as it is by a veiled person.

Would love to get some feedback on the matter

@Tecton @Sarapis @Cardan

Cathy

I'd just like to say that I'm not veiled, and I was raiding for at least part of it, so you had someone you could have used to pinpoint us.

Arditi

Have tank energy *quickly* decay if there are no soldiers from the raiding city within the one being raided. This would include phase/astralform/blackwind, so I can't just sit phased somewhere else in the city and keep the tank charged while the rest of Mhaldor and, say, Cyrene dies to @Hasar's retardation.

You can then cut down on the "Raid by attrition" nonsense where one city gets completely pushed out multiple times but still manages to detonate a charged tank because the energy doesn't decay fast enough and/or someone goes nearly untargetable to serve as a portal/earring target, while also encouraging defenders to actually defend, knowing that if they can eliminate the defenders, they'll negate a good deal of progress on the tank.

Daklore

I think tanks should yell, "Kaioken!" before blowing up... but, yeah, playing city-minesweeper for a tank that could go active during a follow-up raid seems silly.

Well, I also think raiding in-and-of-itself is silly, but no one cares what I think on that front :P

Silas

You forgot to tag @Makarios.

Makarios

We're trying to come up with an acceptable compromise with the weaken font power. We're aware of the issues there but do want to keep it as a way to drive out long duration raids. Obviously that's a difficult balance to strike.

Tanks... eh, kind of on the fence with this. If you drive out the raiders you should be dismantling or capturing the tank to remove it as a threat. We don't really want to promote more stalling tactics there, so waiting out the sanction isn't really something I expect we'll put in as a way to drive out raiders.

I can see how having to sweep the city "just in case" there's a tank might get frustrating. I don't see a reason we can't have a message at tank deployment to see how that goes (a very generic one, just so you know there is one ticking).

Strata

Weakning font power is a good idea. Here are some other possibilities: (@Antidas note how font and tank are seemingly related here)

1. As the font increases, the tank charge time also increases. So essentially, the defending city has to make a strategical decision as to when it is appropriate to activate the font. And once activated, they have to act quickly.

2. Tank capturing or disarming should require equivalent effort and time.

3. Tanks being activated could be announced - but not their exact location.

Currently it's too easy for the defending side to huddle in a corner while the font builds. Then once the font has reached a high level, the defenders go into berzerk mode and rush the raiders (usually at least 2 to 1), and either kill most of the raiders or run them out of the city. And then tank is disarmed before many of us are finished embracing. On an individual basis, only the first few to get kills before sanction gain experience, and then the rest are left with nothing but lost experience since the goal (detonation) was not met. Meanwhile, the defending side (as far as I know) gets experience for each individual raider kill, as well as experience from successful capturing or disarming of the tank.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but this system favors the defending side entirely too much.

Instead of simply weakening font power, the font -should- be linked somehow to the enemy tanks so as to give the defenders a perceived ultimatum to actually engage in melee or risk imminent destruction when they activate the font.

My opinion regarding the so called "waiting" tactic that has been used -most- of the time - is that if ideas aren't discussed and possible solutions tried, eventually raids could take a shift more toward what recently happened when Targossas "won" the shrine war in Hashan. Personally I'd rather just go hunting and not PVP at all if that were the case - as there really isn't much difference other than "hey we're behind enemy lines." or something.

Slanderous WTFs and Abuse flags go below this line: ___________have_at_it_plz_bury_me___________________________________

Jinsun

@Strata you done pissed off the hive mind that is Targossas.

Jinsun

Antidas said:

I don't understand why everyone thinks veils have anything to do with this. They don't. Strata is the one who brought up the points about veils to begin with, not me. I hate veils as much as the next person, but they have absolutely -nothing- to do with the fact that its possible to place a tank on one side of a city and fight on the other side. Its just as much of a problem when placed there by a non-veiled person as it is by a veiled person.

Would love to get some feedback on the matter

@Tecton @Sarapis @Cardan

Considering that most of the people commenting referenced veils inhibiting their ability to find the bomb, I'd say at least some of them think veils are related. You may have not referenced it, but it is certainly germane to the topic.

Davio

The font is fine. Make the tank announce, without saying the room, when it's activated and that'll be enough, too.

If we don't have a useful use of the font, we're still not going to engage you 18v8 when you have 85% of your best players and we have 2 of ours plus 6 people we're trying to train up.

I know you assume this is because we only go when we think we can win 100% but, more or less, it's because we're not here for your entertainment. If you want to farm us for xp, that's fine, we've got years of experience on ignoring annoyances like that.

I'm all for constructive growth here, but let's not get into a pissing contest. The amount of times we legitimately have 2:1 odds and wait for 30 stacks is far from "usually".

I don't need to explain the math here, but if you bring Jhui, Dunn, Nemutaur, Hirst, Kross, Strata, Jarrod, Triak versus Carmell, myself, Niraaeth, Will, Iskla, Seralle, Araeus, Garis the numbers are not even. And on top of that, 80% of the raids in the last month have been a core group similar to that and tack on an extra 10 or so filler names. (upwards of 25 of yours versus 13 of ours)

I'm not even trying to complain, or to tell you you're stupid, or to be upset - but that's the harsh reality. It's not wrong that you have such a deep roster of willing, capable, and artied individuals who work well together. It's not a surprise, in the least, that you win most of your engagements. That you can get thrown into a guard stack and still try to pinchaura cloak. It's not because you're awful people, it's because you enjoy this and you've worked at it. We do not have the people to deal with that, font stacks or not. We will, however, find our ways to ignore you when you bring in more than we can handle no matter what the font is at. If you think changing the font is a fair balance for something that is already heavily in favour of Ashtan, that's fine. It's not because of the system, the game mechanics we rely on, or any sort of attempted admin balance that the conflict Targossas finds itself in is unbalanced, it's the fact that we're still trying to get our feet wet and you guys are well coordinated, often used,  and those core people are almost always together.

You may argue, then, that we should just go lose and let you get your room. Well, that's a stupid thing to expect us to do. We're not afraid to lose, we don't have to win, but we're sure as hell not going to be pants on head retarded and run in versus the odds you typically bring (look, I'm pissing now).

Katzchen

Makarios said:

We're trying to come up with an acceptable compromise with the weaken font power. We're aware of the issues there but do want to keep it as a way to drive out long duration raids. Obviously that's a difficult balance to strike.

Tanks... eh, kind of on the fence with this. If you drive out the raiders you should be dismantling or capturing the tank to remove it as a threat. We don't really want to promote more stalling tactics there, so waiting out the sanction isn't really something I expect we'll put in as a way to drive out raiders.

I can see how having to sweep the city "just in case" there's a tank might get frustrating. I don't see a reason we can't have a message at tank deployment to see how that goes (a very generic one, just so you know there is one ticking).

There was a raid the other day on Mhaldor, where we had crap all defenders, and Eleusis put an Artemis shrine on the tank, and proceeded to worldburn constantly... Short of going out and hunting, and hopefully not getting ganked long enough to gather corpses to drop the shrine instead of defending the city, we had no way of taking it down at all, even though the enemy were killed/routed a few times by guards. Not sure if this was an intended possible combination, or an oversight.

Tahquil

As it is, is there any decay on tanks or if a group was sneaky enough could they secrete one away, raid, leave for 24 hours come back and start up again like nothing happened?

Katzchen

Tahquil said:

As it is, is there any decay on tanks or if a group was sneaky enough could they secrete one away, raid, leave for 24 hours come back and start up again like nothing happened?

Currently should be able to do that, but odds of it getting discovered would be pretty high over that sort of time.

Jarrod

@Makarios @Everyone I think one of the main issues with reducing anything currently is the fact that everything is so clearly stacked towards the defenders, which just makes it over the top when combined with the tactics being used currently. Targossas has a relatively low density of soldiers in their average defense group. This is gradually changing, but the majority are still AR1 or not enlisted. All this means that charging the tank is effectively impossible to do via kills for Ashtan, and not even winning one of the stacked fights is enough to put the tank to level 1. This means we have to plan to wait 15-20 minutes for font to stack, survive an outnumbered (no idea where the balance of artefacts etc lies, impossible to tell when the groups get as big as they do) fight with 120% damage taken, and then wait even more time before we can detonate the tank. When things are this stacked against us mechanically, that's when hiding tanks comes into play to try and even the odds a little.

The above is why all my suggestions here have been suggestions that encourage, at the very least, enlistment. My two primary suggestions for tank/font are:

1) Add some mechanic for defenders, a citizen sweep or something. Whenever a city soldier kills a raider during a sanctioned raid, it helps build morale for the citizens. Once morale is high enough, and there are less than some specified number of raiders in the city, you can call for the sweep. 15-30 seconds later you'll get a report on CT about the locations of any tanks in the city.

2) Change font weaken from a debuff on all raiders to a flat 10% damage buff on all defending soldiers. This means that random huge group spam loses the effectiveness of straight bashing without adding the minimal risk of at least enlisting the defenders. The contribution of a AR1 member to the tank is minimal, but it provides some instead of none. Auto-advancement also means that the 'non-coms' (relative, there are almost none in Achaea anymore) will eventually be worth points as they regularly defend, instead of constantly being worth nothing for the raiders to kill post-sanction.

The important part of both suggestions is that being a non-soldier defender should make you inherently worse for the defense group. Sure, you can participate and have an impact, but you will be doing mechanically less for the city than a soldier will. Citizens are less likely to believe you when you tell them you're clearing raiders because you're not a soldier. The buff of the font saves power by only affecting the important (soldier) defenders.

It would still be possible to game the system and have a relatively low percentage of soldiers in the defense group, but the group will lose the benefits of soldiers, and that's a worthwhile tradeoff in my opinion.

Arditi

A flat 10% damage buff means absolutely nothing against heavily artied people such as, say, Jhui, Penwize, Nemutaur, Rangor, etc, etc. Yay, city soldiers have now canceled out <insert heavily artied Dragon here>'s algiz rune. They still have over 7,000 health, sip for ridiculous amounts, have access to any number of quick travel skills to run away, heal up, and come back, and if push comes to shove, half of them have lyres. I can't wait for my 1200 damage garrote on Rangor to do...um. 1320 damage. Yes. That will definitely turn the tide.

If you want people to defend, you're going to have to do something about rebalancing the ability of the attacker to negate every form of defense the defending city can muster save the font. With the number of dragons in the game, guards die unless you're bringing in double digits, shrines might as well not exist because they can be dropped nearly instantly and replaced with raider-friendly shrines, and any deaths on the defender side only bolster the tank, while the raiders can be killed and driven out multiple times so long as they make it back before the tank is disarmed.

I don't fault anyone for QQ'ing when there's 3 to 1 numerical superiority, shrines are gone, guards are dead, and totems are being smudged/uprooted, because they have no chance of winning at that point. Replacing the font with a piddly damage buff for city soldiers isn't going to do anything but reinforce that.

You want people to actually defend? Give them a reason to go out and try and fight the aggressors. Make the tank drain <x> times as much for a raider death as it gains from a defender death. Make the sanction automatically end if the raiding city is fully dislodged. Do something about the ability to replace shrines and worldburn, or artied dragon squads that slaughter guards by the dozens.

Your suggestion pretty much just makes winning a raid inevitable, which is the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Raiding shouldn't be the "Show up, gank a few people, get experience and money and bragging rights" experience that it was. It should be difficult because cities are supposed to be fortified. If that means that the difficulty needs to be cranked up and the rewards adjusted to promote trying despite the difficulty, do it. Don't gimp the one equalizer that the defenders have just because the A-team can actually die if they build up double digit stacks of the font and get zerg rushed by a bunch of midbies who have no other means of dislodging the raiding party.

Wynedere

I disagree with the mindset that raiding needs to be made harder. I don't have a lot of experience with this new war system, granted. But, conflict will always be the driving force of Achaea. Stifling the conflict is generally a bad idea. When I played on the "losing side", I still loved the raids because they were fun. We got our teeth kicked in and I had a ball dying. It's the conflict. Raiders already have to deal with quite a bit of a handicap with loss of xp, while defenders don't if they're in the city (or, this is how it used to be. Was this changed?). They don't need more incentive to stop raiding and effectively killing a large part of group conflict.  

Sena

I like the idea of changing the font to primarily benefit soldiers and not unenlisted defenders. That can also still be done without removing/changing the stacking effect on the raiders; just make the increased damage only apply when taking damage from a soldier (or guards, and whatever else is appropriate).

Arditi

I refer more to the "Drop shrines, raise new shrines, kill guards, have a campfire on the battlements while the defenders can't touch you" style of raiding which is becoming more and more common nowadays.

Are raids enjoyable when the defenders can win if they coordinate? Absolutely.
Are raids enjoyable when the aggressors are outnumbered and have to think strategically to win? Absolutely.
Are raids enjoyable when the defense absolutely cannot hope to win? Not for the defenders, and I personally don't enjoy the sort of teabagging that happens when one side's outnumbered three to one.

If you want to win at all costs, bring in overwhelming force, and completely destroy any chance of losing, be my guest. If I wanted a single player game that I couldn't lose, I'd fire up the Super Nintendo and break out the Game Genie. If I want a multiplayer game where there's conflict and the chance of losing, I'll log in.

Kinilan

Flip the stacks.

Instead of a growing malus against raidiers that punishes them heavily with no risk to the defenders switch it to a growing damage boost on the soldiers that builds only while they are INSIDE the city.  Defending soldiers could still sit at standoff ranges and let their advantage grow over time but not without risk. As opposed to the current system that rewards activating the font and waiting while also rewarding non-soldier defenders.

The rate at which the stacks ...stack would need to be adjusted to fit the new risk/reward balance. Could even have them wear off over time spent outside the city or on death. Or let them remain as long as the font is active but also provide extra "boom juice" to the tanks when a defender is killed based on their number of stacks.

The end result of defenders doing the crazy damage they feel they need to win the fight remains the same but it comes at the cost of maintaining a presence within the city and gives no benefit to non-soldiers. You've now got a strong reason to join your city army with a reward that maches the risk of contributing to a tanks charge and defenders are no longer rewarded for sitting and waiting with no risk.

Jarrod

Arditi said:

I refer more to the "Drop shrines, raise new shrines, kill guards, have a campfire on the battlements while the defenders can't touch you" style of raiding which is becoming more and more common nowadays.

Are raids enjoyable when the defenders can win if they coordinate? Absolutely.
Are raids enjoyable when the aggressors are outnumbered and have to think strategically to win? Absolutely.
Are raids enjoyable when the defense absolutely cannot hope to win? Not for the defenders, and I personally don't enjoy the sort of teabagging that happens when one side's outnumbered three to one.

If you want to win at all costs, bring in overwhelming force, and completely destroy any chance of losing, be my guest. If I wanted a single player game that I couldn't lose, I'd fire up the Super Nintendo and break out the Game Genie. If I want a multiplayer game where there's conflict and the chance of losing, I'll log in.

Maybe these raids are the norm for you, but at least 80% of our raids are initiated with fewer raiders than there are defenders, with bringing in more as more defenders login/disembark/un-journal (this is not a complaint, numbers will always go up in raids because less people are leaving and people will steadily login, etc).

Also, if you don't think 10% is a lot you're sorely mistaken. Having been in raids with fights at a large variety of font levels, 10% is huge. Sure, it's not as big as the potential 40% stacks that happen currently (holy shit being bitten for 70% max health what), but the idea of waiting for 40 minutes to fight is such a toxic mindset to an enjoyable raid system. 10% on activation means 10 minutes sooner you have the power to swing the fight.

Maybe you need to reassess how your city initiates raids, and maybe raiders will change how they initiate raids against you. You'll never get out of the loop of 'bring overwhelming numbers' unless you're willing to play differently as well.


Edit: Any solution that involves stacks is an inherently bad solution. Encouraging waiting while bonuses accrue is a bad mechanic. It is boring for both sides and nobody wants to sit around doing nothing for 10-30 minutes while things stack up. Finding a reasonable bonus that is applied immediately is significantly better for the game.

Sena

Jarrod said:

Edit: Any solution that involves stacks is an inherently bad solution. Encouraging waiting while bonuses accrue is a bad mechanic. It is boring for both sides and nobody wants to sit around doing nothing for 10-30 minutes while things stack up. Finding a reasonable bonus that is applied immediately is significantly better for the game.

It seems to me that the point of the stacking is to put a soft time limit on raids, not just to give the defenders an advantage. Instead of scrapping that entirely, it would be better to find a way to discourage or prevent the waiting while keeping the stacking effect.

Accipiter

The system doesn't favour defenders by accident, it is by design. Unless the cost of raiding is increased for the attackers to compare to the cost of losing a room, they should be mechanically favoured.

Jarrod

I can understand the desire to put a limit on raid length via font power. A possibility would be to keep the stacking effect but only on city guards. This would mean raiders could technically raid for extended periods of time, as they can currently if they have enough people, but if they try to take important objectives with level 1 tanks (meaning in-room, no defending force) the guards will eventually be able to crush them alone. This wouldn't affect the 'smaller' raids that occur currently, since guards are rarely in range normally of the raiding group.

Accipiter said:

The system doesn't favour defenders by accident, it is by design. Unless the cost of raiding is increased for the attackers to compare to the cost of losing a room, they should be mechanically favoured.

Obviously the design is to favour the defenders. My solutions don't change the favour being placed on the defending city -soldiers-. It removes the opportunity for a city to maximize its defensive odds by not enlisting soldiers while maintaining 100% benefit. There is a balance to be found between favouring defenders enough to slightly overcome the benefit of choosing to initiate, without making it a necessity to bring overwhelming odds to overcome the mechanical benefits the defenders have.

Accipiter

My point was that the reward/punishment in the system is tilted towards the aggressors. Aggressors get rewarded for destroying a room, the defenders get punished for it. It has to be that way to encourage people to raid, but the defenders need to have a mechanical advantage because there is no mechanical reward for them defending, just an punishment for them not. Saying it isn't fun is fine, saying it isn't even isn't unless you are also proposing that the agressors get mechanically punished for failing the attack the same way defenders are mechanically punished for failing the defense.

Nemutaur

Accipiter said:

My point was that the reward/punishment in the system is tilted towards the aggressors. Aggressors get rewarded for destroying a room, the defenders get punished for it. It has to be that way to encourage people to raid, but the defenders need to have a mechanical advantage because there is no mechanical reward for them defending, just an punishment for them not. Saying it isn't fun is fine, saying it isn't even isn't unless you are also proposing that the agressors get mechanically punished for failing the attack the same way defenders are mechanically punished for failing the defense.

If they disarm a tank everyone in the room gets experience, not sure if they get more experience for capturing the tank too if they have less than max tanks ready. So there is a mechanical reward...

[Deleted User]

I think I was standing in the room when a tank was disarmed recently, I do not remember getting experience from it. Maybe I am mistaken?

Nemutaur

Szareine said:

I think I was standing in the room when a tank was disarmed recently, I do not remember getting experience from it. Maybe I am mistaken?

Would help if you're a part of your army, eh?

[Deleted User]

Oh! I forgot about that. :-$ Is it a lot of experience? :ar!

I have been under the impression that joining the Army was not compulsory unless you were really full on into sanctioning and the like. But defending is socially and morally an obligation (depending in the city you belong to). The overlap and use of city soldiers who are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of War (offense) and the Ministry of Security (defence) is one that I still find a little strange. It is a convenient doubling up of roles but not accurate in their function. As far as I can see, every citizen is a guard and defender of the city walls, but not every one of us is going to be charging into enemy cities with bombstanks strapped to our chests.

Under the circumstances, I can see how this can be construed as 'gaming the system'.  I do not actually see a problem with non-soldier deaths charging up the tank, albeit at a slower rate. Not enough to make them worth targetting at a distance (an issue now mostly negated by changes to ranged combat), but enough that raiders will still benefit from taking them out if they are getting rushed (as opposed to now where non-soldiers can just act as bullet-wasters / meatshields).

When you look at it from a half-RP/half-mechanical POV, any adventurer may be considered a step up from the regular (denizen and unseen) citizenry of a particular city, we are not ordinary people.

On the other hand, since the soldiers are considered the universal catchall for all things alignment pk, I wonder why all citizens are not simply enlisted by default (maybe around level 50+?) with the option to quit the military if they really feel it is not something they wish to be involved in.

Joining an aligned city is in itself a declaration of intending to be involved in the conflict in one way or another (by defense or offense). I mean, you would not join say... Mhaldor because you just want to wear black leather and eat babies and not get involved with the higher purpose of the city, right?

Quitting the army will therefore be a conscious and rather public decision that you do not want to be involved in it at all (something that I think is quite possibly also a little more inline with the spirit of the PK guidelines here: less 'one-size-fits-all, you can't touch me, it's the RULES' and more 'I am going to use my discretion to decide if and how I am going to smash your Light-loving face into the curb and you know I am justified in doing so'.). Plus, it comes to me that people take less notice of an enlistment than they would of a withdrawal. In a more militarised city, it may come with IC consequences (shafted for city promotions, etc)

But I am digressing... Tanks! Yay! Tanks! Boom! Carry on!

Makarios

I ran some checks since I was pretty sure no one is gaming the enlistment system. It seems perfectly fine (Hashan may be slightly lower than we'd like, but that's likely not intentional).

Targossas has the highest percentage of citizens over level 50 enlisted, second highest when restricted to over level 80, and third highest when restricted to dragon and up. It is very close in most cases (noted exception below). They have a smaller army than the other two top cities (Ashtan and Mhaldor), but their general population is also smaller. Nothing looks at all questionable here (except the fact that Mhaldor is making you all look like wimps in the post level 80 brackets!)

Jhui

percentage-wise if anyone's gaming the enlistment system, it's Ashtan.  We don't get raided, so we don't get to exploit it though

mechanics-wise...well..we all know who's gaming the system (not purposefully, I'll add) but that'll be fixed by Jarrod's enlistment benefit suggestions.

Vote for Jarrod 

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