Crusades

Micaelis

I've talked to @Makarios and he said that he is open to the idea of a discussion regarding the actual mechanic of Crusading.

I can't speak for anyone else, other than the people that I know feel the same as I do, but I hate the way Crusades currently work. Here are my main complaints:

1) There is rarely any conflict associated with them, as a result of further points.

The vast majority of Crusades are about an hour of waiting and another hour of mindlessly boring yourself to death looking for the splinters. This may be fun for, like, a hound dog or something but I find it to be quite possibly the worst hour of my life.

It is very rare that another 'team' will jump into a Crusade. I think I've seen Eleusis in 1 or 2, Ashtan in 1 or 2, Hashan in 2 or 3, and every other one has been Mhaldor or Targossas. Perhaps people just aren't interested in them, which is more a testament to how they work than anything else. The end result, however, is just a snooze fest. 

2) There are only two types of Crusades: The EST time zone "pk crowd" or the EST time zone 4 AM "I don't want to fight" crowd. 

Most Crusades have a start time that is specifically geared towards one of these two reasons, but half of the former ends up resulting in nothing, and almost all of the latter always results in nothing. So the end result is the vast majority of the Crusades taking place during times when a lot of Achaeans can't participate, if they wanted to, or at times when there aren't enough people around to participate if your small little European group -does- want to participate. 

3) The actual end-result of Crusades.

The actual purpose of a Crusade, affecting the "attacking" group, is Avatar. Avatar is fine and dandy and you can have some serious RP fun with it (See: Deucalion/Ashtan), but for most groups the end result is just Avatar. That's roughly 5 Crusades, assuming a 100,000 sweep, which equates to 10ish hours of mindlessly gathering splinters so that one single individual can be buffed for a limited period of time. Now, at present, there aren't many avenues through which to take advantage of an Avatar. The Mhaldor/Targossas war is one example (rare), but the combat situation with the highest potential would be...Crusades, assuming they meant something. So...no real point other than a little flair. 

4) The actual end-result for the defensive side of Crusades.

If your Order is hit by a Crusade, and you decide to do nothing as a result, then your life doesn't change in the slightest. If I recall correctly you can't raise shrines for a small period of time, can't defile, can't world burn, but these are all so limited in scope that the chances of it actually affecting any Order besides Aurora/Deucalion/Sartan is effectively nothing, and the chances of affecting those three is still so low that it's not even worth worrying over. 

So what I'd like to do is open up the floor for ideas to solve the Crusade problem.

How can it be made more fun? How can the results be made more worthwhile, and the consequences more dire? How can you solve the "time zone abuse" that most people hate about things like this? All in all, how can Crusades be changed to accurately reflect the potential of them and the weight the term "Crusade" actually holds?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Salisa

Instead of shrines, replace them with something else, for now let's call this hypothetical object an icon. They could be tied to houses instead of orders, and let people use shards to empower them since shards are useless right now. You could even have the icons attuned to benefit house members in various ways.

Frederich

I giggled @Salisa

But seriously.  Crusades are roughly 3 hours of waiting, and then, if you start immediately, about 1 hour of playing fetch with shrines.  If you have at least 2 order members, you can get shards in a timely manner so that you are never behind.

Every 6~ minutes or so, you run back to shrine of your choosing.  Put them in.  Wait for the next fall.

Rinse and repeat 10 times until all 100k essence is yours.

Most of the last good few crusades Targossas has gone on have been unhindered by enemy activity.  Proficy was even around for the latest!  Instead of actually contesting with his much larger Mhaldor group (to our group of like 7 or 8??? with mostly newbs)... he ended up just going to defile Aurora's shrines (to which he died, then we took his corpses to defile Sartan)

Except... the consequence for losing a crusade is roughly 30~ minutes that you can't raise a shrine (it might not even affect defiling).  After which you can just raise to your hearts content.  All of your order shrines down and you just got hit by a crusade?  No worries!  Just re-raise in 30 minutes (midway through the gathering) and you're good to go.

I don't want crusades to be super hindering.  However, I would very much like if the damn regeneration rate of essence took longer than half an IG day before you can raise shrines again.

Though, that still doesn't really fix the issue with stolen essence.

You can


A ) Revive someone (from the order) if you have 2 order members (of sufficient rank) and use some stolen essence to revive a soul!  (Shaman does this better, without the requirement of having it restricted to orders)

B ) Fervour, increase.. uh... your offensive shrine powers.. so you can... uh.... worldburn.. better?  Custom deathsights ?????????

C ) Veneration, custom deathsight for Order Dragons.. and an increase in crit rate vs things you can hunt in areas with sovereignty.  That's.. uh... cool??? I guess???????? Better for people who put shrines where they hunt, useless for pretty much everyone else.

D ) Elevation.  Oh hey, requires 500k (but depletes all) gives lots of stats for 1 order member for roughly 5+ hours of work (with an additional 15 hours of waiting), not including the wait time for your shrines to get up to the 4 million essence needed to start a crusade.


Out of all of those.. well.  Avatar is the only one that seems even remotely useful, and even then, you're kind of kicking everyone else in your order in the dick by saying "Lol no me"

Armali

The real issue is that there's a Targossas is top dog at the moment and they can rarely be contested when they get everybody going in a big city event like this. And since we like to win, if we can't realistically win, we don't contest. It's really that simple. You get outliers here and there, but that's what the prevailing attitude is going to be imo.

Torinn

Interesting.  Have it tied to city perhaps?  I would also like to see shrines that are emptied of power -not- regain their essence back over time.  It may be harsh, but Orders that can't muster together people to defend often enough to even retain a little power for their Divine shouldn't be able to raise shrines on Sapience.  Babel's Order can't get the Ashtani to rally enough to defend Babel's shrine?  Well sorry, that just sucks.

Micaelis

Armali said:

The real issue is that there's a Targossas is top dog at the moment and they can rarely be contested when they get everybody going in a big city event like this. And since we like to win, if we can't realistically win, we don't contest. It's really that simple. You get outliers here and there, but that's what the prevailing attitude is going to be imo.

That might explain a reason why certain people won't contest a Targossian Crusade, but it doesn't explain why no one else Crusades but Targossas anymore. 

EDIT: Not that people used to Crusade anyway, was mostly just Proficy/Sartan and I think Kasa one time.

Armali

How doesn't it? Targ comes in, stomps everybody, you lose. It makes perfect sense and explains it perfectly well.

Calira

Needing an Order-member to even consider participating is a non-trivial barrier to entry when your faction-defining Order is secret and @Kasa is on one of his many hiatuses

Micaelis

Armali said:

How doesn't it? Targ comes in, stomps everybody, you lose. It makes perfect sense and explains it perfectly well.

That's a purely hypothetical situation that has literally never happened before, first of all. Secondly, as Frederich so eloquently stated, we've started Crusades multiple times with lesser numbers than many factions. So this idea of "I'm a sissy and I will only start a Crusade that I know I can win" is half the problem here, so that mentality you call "We want to win" is really just "we want to be bored out of our $%#^ing minds".

We purposefully start Crusades, at this point, where we're outnumbered or entirely outmatched since that's the only way to really draw the snowflakes out, it seems. 

Calira

Micaelis said:

stuff

Leaving your needless condescension aside, how are people in other factions supposed to know 3 hours ahead of time that Targ somehow doesn't plan on bringing their A-game and also won't just show up with more numbers if they lose?

Jonathin

The attitude that people that don't want to participate in crusades are snowflakes is dumb and crusades are dumb in general. Having to follow someone in an order (if said someone is even around) just to get to Nish is dumb. Standing around and waiting for shards to fall is dumb.

I liked it better when shards fell on the mainland and I could just walk over and start participating when I wanted to, not when the stars aligned so that there was a single way into the area.

Micaelis

Calira said:

Micaelis said:

stuff

Leaving your needless condescension aside, how are people in other factions supposed to know 3 hours ahead of time that Targ somehow doesn't plan on bringing their A-game and also won't just show up with more numbers if they lose?

You...don't, and neither do we when we respond to Mhaldor's Crusades. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But I am 100% certain that every Targossian enjoyed every loss we've ever taken to Mhaldor during Crusades more than the borefest that is a 100k sweep with no opposition. 

Micaelis

The "snowflakes" was in relation to the comment by Armali that her people (I assume) only want to Crusade if they know they can win, and don't want to risk a loss. A loss that, mind you, means absolutely nothing. @Jonathin

Armali

People in general want to win. Don't even try to dispute this. See Mhaldor - Targ war where the terms broke down because people played to win. This applies to all competitive endeavors, Crusades included.

Jonathin

I mean, if I could actually get to Nish, I might actually want to participate, win or lose. The problem is that Hashan has 1 active Order with like 2 members and as far as I can tell, there aren't that many filling the spots that were emptied.

Micaelis

But all this is under some assumption that people would start caring and responding to Crusades all of a sudden. I understand why people don't care or respond to Crusades, hence the entire topic of this thread. Targossas responds and does Crusades in the off chance we get to fight people, since we like to fight people, and also the whole RP reasoning which is obvious.

The question is how to make it more inviting or "important", to the point that involvement would be fun and necessary, or some variation of that, so that people like Armali or Calira would outright want to get involved, and also how to make it more inviting so that they're not restricted access because of a Hashani/Twilight issue as she also said. 

Micaelis

Armali said:

People in general want to win. Don't even try to dispute this. See Mhaldor - Targ war where the terms broke down because people played to win. This applies to all competitive endeavors, Crusades included.

I think in general this is true, but I disagree that it's the paramount factor. I think people want to win contested disputes, yes, but I think people would rather lose a contested dispute than have something like a raid or Crusade go unanswered.

To be more specific, I would rather raid Ashtan and get stomped into Oblivion than have no one respond. Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like most people would agree with that. Yes, people would prefer to win, but not at the expense of fun imo. 

Micaelis

Jonathin said:

I mean, if I could actually get to Nish, I might actually want to participate, win or lose. The problem is that Hashan has 1 active Order with like 2 members and as far as I can tell, there aren't that many filling the spots that were emptied.

What if there was a...portal, or perhaps "portals" so one team couldn't lock it down and prevent access, that would open during Crusade periods so that anyone could enter Nish? 

(This would also solve the annoying problem of Aurora's Master Shrine being on Polyargos )

Calira

Micaelis said:

Calira said:

Micaelis said:

stuff

Leaving your needless condescension aside, how are people in other factions supposed to know 3 hours ahead of time that Targ somehow doesn't plan on bringing their A-game and also won't just show up with more numbers if they lose?

You...don't, and neither do we when we respond to Mhaldor's Crusades. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But I am 100% certain that every Targossian enjoyed every loss we've ever taken to Mhaldor during Crusades more than the borefest that is a 100k sweep with no opposition. 

Well, that's sort of the crux of your argument, isn't it? If Targ is top-dog and nobody can really compete with them when they try and it's difficult to motivate people when they know they'll just get stomped over and over again, then why would people bother? Saying that Targ puts in effort to respond to Mdor's Crusades is entirely irrelevant.. Targ always stands a chance, no matter how many people Mdor or Hashan or Eleusis bring.

Kiet

Idk if any faction has responded to every crusade ever, so that's a weird argument to get into, even tangentially by implying it's the 'other' factions that don't respond. The idea no one else crusades is also wrong, Rangor tries to crusade but his timezone is awful so most people don't find out.

On topic though:

Crusades are incredibly boring. It's a lot of sitting around, if you die it feels like shit unless you're an order member, some factions have advantages in having more than one way to get to nish (which is only a problem because you can camp entrances, as Mic said).

The three hour announcement is just the worst of every world. It's too short to plan for, really, and too long to really... be relevant to the people who see it come up. The most you can do is be like 'oh, guess I'll stay logged on for three hours' and that's hardly compelling gameplay.

Making crusades something more impromptu fun would go a long way, emphasis on actually making it fun. That'd mean that people would need to not feel trapped on nish and screwed if they die, for one. Orders with few/secret order members are especially screwed here, obviously.

@Calira is pretty right, though. It's not really fun to fight the city with 5000 people, half of them artied dragons and with enough rezzes to multiply this. Personally, I decide what I do with my time based on fun factor, so if it's not fun I go do something else.

Kiet

I mean, case in point: I'm currently AT a crusade and I've died like 3 times because I'm not paying attention due to pure boredom--this is not something that happens with any other form of PK for me. Running around on a maze-like area just trying to collect shards is probably the single most boring form of conflict I've experienced in an mmo, and I've played dozens of free to play asian mmos.

The basic issue of crusades extends to the very design of the core mechanic, imo, along with the design of the arena.

Granted, updating my map would help probably, but that doesn't help with the 500 rooms with the same name. There's also very little motivation to care about nish if you don't care about crusades, so it's a cyclical problem.

I don't like just being negative about game features, so I'm trying to offer specific criticisms, but it's difficult because of how much I actively dislike this system.

Micaelis

I feel you and I think a lot of people agree with a lot of your points. The question is how can we change it, on any level, so that it's actually fun?

Micaelis

Even if that requires a stripping of it down to its core. If you imagined a Crusade that was actually fun and worth participating in, what do you see?

Armali

Forced even teams. There's really no way around it. The most fun both sides have is when teams are even (when odds are skewed one side obviously has more fun than the other). Not even numbers, EVEN.

Of course, that's impossible, so that's why we end up scrapping nearly every conflict mechanism over the years and trying to rebuild them, because we're chasing an impossible (with Achaea's design) dream.

Kiet

The first thing, I think, would be to actually make it feasible for people to GET to Nish during the crusade without relying on a small number of order members. We never had this kind of restriction with icons--on the surface, it's similar since it required a guildmember, but guildmembers are a lot more common than ordermembers except for some of the orders that let everyone in.

Truthfully, I'm not convinced we even need to use Nish. Is Nishntaoba particularly interesting to people? It's hundreds of rooms of uninteresting landscape, repeating room names, maze-like layout. Is this really conducive to interesting fights? Most other forms of conflict are restricted to smaller areas because that's more interesting, though I suppose it's a way to limit entrenching (and yet, this is countered by the ability to just camp the entrance).

Maybe most important is to actually make the main objective interesting. Running around gathering little shards is incredibly uninteresting, especially since it takes like a full hour even if there's no opposition at all if you only have one order member. Orders shouldnt need to relax their RP requirements to participate in conflict at all.

Frederich

@Daeir

Oh god are we going to have to have a laning phase too?  I just wanna rotate and gank.

Krypton

Every 1st of Sarapin, all Orders should be sapped of all their essence, and there will be a 30-minute egghunt for Orders to reclaim as much essence as they can that has fallen across the land as eggs.

Farrah

Calira said:

Micaelis said:

Calira said:

Micaelis said:

stuff

Leaving your needless condescension aside, how are people in other factions supposed to know 3 hours ahead of time that Targ somehow doesn't plan on bringing their A-game and also won't just show up with more numbers if they lose?

You...don't, and neither do we when we respond to Mhaldor's Crusades. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But I am 100% certain that every Targossian enjoyed every loss we've ever taken to Mhaldor during Crusades more than the borefest that is a 100k sweep with no opposition. 

Well, that's sort of the crux of your argument, isn't it? If Targ is top-dog and nobody can really compete with them when they try and it's difficult to motivate people when they know they'll just get stomped over and over again, then why would people bother? Saying that Targ puts in effort to respond to Mdor's Crusades is entirely irrelevant.. Targ always stands a chance, no matter how many people Mdor or Hashan or Eleusis bring.

I'm not sure which world you live in, but Targ has lost crusades before - gotten utterly slaughtered in them before. Why would other factions feel that Targ always stands a chance and they never do? It doesn't really make sense. Maybe for present Hashan, but not for Mhaldor, certainly. And even for Hashan, it's still a very negative attitude to have. Every faction "doesn't stand a chance" until they decide to do something about it, and that's what makes the game so fun. Targ was at the bottom not too long ago. People only get better by trying and failing. The goal isn't to lose, but to eventually win rather than choosing not to fight at all.

The Mhaldor-Targ war (to hit Armali's point) isn't even a remotely reasonable comparison given the stakes of it. Most factions do not act that way normally. It's like dueling. If you never lose, you'll never become the best.

I think Crusades should have a 24-hour announcement beforehand rather than 3, though, to encourage more participation, and that non-order members should be able to both get to Nish and subvert essence and give it to a god.

Mathilda

Hmm, it really all boils down to the people -- actually, usually a charismatic leader who's able to pull people and make an attempt. I remember during the Darkenwood 'war', even during defilements wherein Hashan had fewer people than Eleusis, @Kasa would manage to grab a handful of folks willing to duke it out with @Rangor and co. for one or two rounds. We even won a few times!

Trying is a lot ore fun than not trying...

Jonathin

Reading the first couple bullet points, all I can think of is a moba. Lol

Makarios

My initial inclinations are:

- Allow any shrine erected within your city to function as an access point to Nishnatoba during crusades. We could make this patron only, but I personally lean towards any shrine as it opens up more potential access points and makes it harder to camp entrances.
- Increase the windup to 24 hours.
- Halve subvert splinter time.
- Make the splinter check happen every minute rather than every five minutes so people are sitting around less.

We've not talked these over at all yet, but this is the direction my thoughts are going in.