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Raiding Mechanics
For those of you smart enough to not browse through the sewer, papa @Makarios bravely trudged through the wastes and weighed in...
Senseless posts not included, replies shortened for brevity. Discuss away!
Xaden said:Picking a team of raiders is delicate balance nowadays. You need a team that the defending party feels like they have at least a 50/50 chance to beat and that you feel you've a chance to win with.
Too much one way and you get no response and too much the other and you get slaughtered and can't get back in because people spam eye at gates, fly/block or auto-becalm.
I 100% don't believe it to be a mechanical issue because loss is so limited already: No XP loss after sanction and 99% of the time : One room lost, often in an out of the way place that nobody uses.
The real issue is that people are too bloody proud to take a loss, no matter how meaningless in an ultimately meaningless txt game.
Unfortunately there's no cure for that. And relying on the Admins to handhold people through it will get us nowhere.
Solution: Everyone (myself included) needs to sack up and accept that you can't win all the time.
Kiet said:The fact that loss isn't big is a good part, but the mechanics of tanks/sanctions themselves could use improvement.
As is, you can fight for literally an hour, win every defense, and the offending team can still get a sanction just through sheer hardheadedness. Then all it takes is for a couple of people to have to go to bed or work or whatever and all that defense was pointless.
This was something that came up during the war, a lot. The best way to prevent a tank is to never defend. That's boring outside situations like the war, obv, but it highlights a core issue: defending has no real 'win' condition. You're just hoping for the other team to eventually get bored of trying.
If you look at other games with an attack/defend modality, the defending team always has a win condition that signals the attacking team can't keep trying. Usually, this is hindering the attacking team so they can't complete their objective within a certain timer. That might be interesting in Achaea, though there's other ways to do it, too.
Makarios said:Kiet said:The fact that loss isn't big is a good part, but the mechanics of tanks/sanctions themselves could use improvement.
This is one part of the mechanical side of things I agree needs improvement. After we've got the final few things for the upcoming release finalised and I've gone through the classlead backlog, this is on my list.
Kiet said:Well, while we're at it, the other issue (that alrena reminded me of) is that the 'attackers' tend to have the defensive advantage. They already have the party set up, etc. and once you clear out your current room + maybe surroundings you're just entrenching. Entrenching in Achaea is way too strong with multiple room effects like vibes/hands/rites/distort/totem/etc.
It makes little sense for the people defending their own city to have to break an entrenched position to 'defend'. Guards balance this out in a way, but not vs silence (especially undampenable silences) or if your team wants to try to not use guards.
Makarios said:If you guys are going to actually discuss this it might be worth moving this over to a different thread so it doesn't get lost among... well, this thread. This is something we have been looking at, so we're open to discussion on improvements.
Senseless posts not included, replies shortened for brevity. Discuss away!
1
Comments
Otherwise, disabling a tank should end a sanction, the attacking team moved in, dropped it, prepared to help make it blow but failed. The defending team could now go on the offense, and go for a sanction themselves? I don't want to see pure restrictions placed so if you lose a tank, you can't raid again as a city. Raiding is immensely more enjoyable than shrine conflict IMO, so I don't want to hard cap raiding, but we definitely need a way for defense to basically put the flag down and come out victorious.
i'm also still in favour of if you detonate/disable a level 2 tank you should get a small city buff for a while, to really promot going hard at defense or offense, but how tanks work would need to be changed so the attacking team can ACTIVATE TANK FOR <<level>> and add a handicap, with level 2 needing more kills and protection. I'm not a game designer though, so all my ideas are softballing and probably awful.
This is one thing (definitely not all) that we will almost certainly do.
A window, of, for instance, 5 minutes, during which time a standard tank charges, let's say, 50% of the way. During that time, kills feed the tank more than it currently does, for the attackers, and defenders have an incentive to attack, because if they don't, they're halfway to a tank for free.
Limited amount of these windows, let's say, 3 per tank. That makes it so that successfully wiping the raiders during these windows is an effective defence to kill passive ticking on a tank window is pretty solid defence. Tanks don't charge statically outside these windows, but kills still feed it. Cities uninterested in defending only have to put up with a raid for 15 minutes (a 5-minute cooldown from the end of the previous window seems prudent, gives people a chance to embrace/come back). The general sanction timer wouldn't be active while the tank window's ticking, of course.
If the defenders attack the raiders during each window and fail, they're looking at an L2 tank being blown, the kills should definitely count for a lot while the tank's in 'charge' mode. That provides the attackers some incentive, too!
For added interesting-ness, maybe there's a forestbinding-like effect while the tank charge window is active, making it impossible for non-citizens to enter it. City improvement kinda deal, eats up a ton of font power.
Sanctions in general shouldn't be so long, as well!
Would be fun to have more structure, and arrange it in windows so it's not a sprawling, dragged-out, no-end-in-sight affair for both sides.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Doesn't have to be that specific thing, but step-by-step instead of 'fight for an hour and get a bunch of kills or get wiped' seems like it'd make raids feel more rewarding to participate in. Having an objective, and all that.
I've personally felt that the kind of super vague, unstructured form of sanctions and how long they last, at the moment, contributes to how often raids tend to drift towards the boring side.
1) Wanna be a pussy and just radiance bot people? Well you gotta be in range to get slapped.
2) Don't wanna get radianced? Don't be a pussy and engage them, instead of entrenching and waiting for them to run at you.
It unprops all totems in the area and makes totems unproppable for the duration.
Don't recall the duration off hand.
Elaborate? It appears to work fine for me.
I think the defenders can only ever have one of two objectives: engage the raiders and attempt to disarm (or capture) the tank, or ignore the raiders until they blow the tank and leave. They already have those objectives, so your suggestion doesn't appear to give them anything. Is there some other objective I'm missing that you think this will give them?
The structure of raids really isn't "super vague" or "unstructured", from my perspective. Attackers come in, get sanction, place a tank, wait until they've either gotten enough kills or enough time has passed for the tank to be ready to detonate (at whatever level they desire). Under your proposal, the attackers come in, get sanction, place a tank, and wait until they've either gotten enough kills or enough time has passed for the tank to be ready to detonate.
The only difference seems to be that there's an additional command involved and that the amount of time required is less. Just speeding up the current mechanics we have would achieve that second part. I think it may actually do a better job of it than your proposal, because if I only get tank progress from kills on defending army members during these five-minute windows, I'm probably not going to start that window until I know the defenders are going to fight (or enough time has passed to make it clear they will never fight).
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
I.e. if in the 5-minute window, or whatever, it gets to 50%. A second window makes it 100%.
Since that's the window during which it charges, the defenders (if they have any incentive to defend) should get to it to keep it from charging, specially during its second window. If they're just gonna ignore it, then it's only two windows plus the cooldown in between and the raiders can hightail it with their easy win.
Oh- probably this should only apply to L1's. To be able to charge an L2, the current system is fine. That way, a no-fight tank can only be L1, like now.
A lot of these suggestions don't really fix the problem of the defending party having no real way to win, either, or at least not directly.
The way to handle both of these, imo, would be to give the offensive party objectives of some sort that are 1) more interesting than sitting on a tank waiting for it to charge and 2) disallow entrenching.
Going back to looking at how other games do it, generally the offensive team has to capture an objective in some way or another. This can be a control point, or something more like the counter-strike objectives. The point is that the raiding party would be the ones that have to take a location, whereas now the defending city has to assault itself.
I'm not sure how to translate this to achaea, though. Randomly placed objectives (accounting for guards probably?) that the offending party has to get to? A special area like Alrena suggested where there's 'battlements' or something the offending party has to rush and take over?
1. Lack of rewards for for defenders. Outside of doing it because it's fun, there's very little in the way of incentive to engage a raid. There's the chance at tank disarm exp, but that's only if your defense wins, which just encourages only defending when you have a shot at winning. You might get some xp for a player kill during defense, but if you're a support class, a noncom or a midbie you're very likely not going to get kills in the majority of engagements. A solid, tangible reward every step of the way during defense would go a very long way toward encouraging people to defend, and maybe even look forward to defense. It's worth noting, this tangible reward has to be something that can actively contribute to the progression of one's character, as that's especially important for pretty much everyone. As a note, there's a very good reason why PvP instances in most other games all have participation rewards on top of victory rewards, most of which have tangible benefit.
2. Cost to defenders. This is separate from number 1, but very similar in nature. Simply put, defending has an inherent cost to it. Time spent defending is time spent not hunting, not questing, not roleplaying, not working on house advancement, not reading lore, not socializing, not crafting, not working on an individual character story or order story, or whatever else it is you enjoy doing in Achaea. Unless that something is primarily PvP, defense is a time cost to you. Coupled with number 1, this is a very poor value proposition to a lot of people, which is probably why you see so many people not engage with it. I think if number 1 was addressed, a big part of this would be mitigated, but it would still be there. Part of this is a player culture problem as well, where choosing not to defend isn't always an acceptable response. Part of this is roleplay problem, where it's difficult to reconcile you the player not feeling like defending, with your character not defending.
3. Time spent. There's a complete lack of limiters on time spent on raids. We've all seen rant threads about four-hour long raids, and while I have no doubt there's a subsection of the playerbase that enjoys that, it's obvious this is not for everyone. Especially when it's a one-sided raid. Putting a hard time limit on raids would go a long way to making people stop hating them so much. To solve this one, I'd suggest adding a power to the city font that has no city font cost (so it cannot be over-used). Once activated, exactly one hour from activation and with reminders along the way, a city-wide worldburn to all city enemies in the city's area flushes them out. That's it, raid done. If a city is enjoying the raid, they can simply not activate that power. If they aren't, then there's a way to say "you have one hour to tank or gtfo and let us get on with our other stuff."
I do think that 'being able to fix the damage' is better than 'having to wait for it to fix itself' in almost every situation. Forests auto-rejuv, but I can tell you there would be furious individuals if each room that was exterminated had to be left like that for 14 days before being fixed and couldn't be manually restored.
Mass exterms are also a thing of the past, can't do it anymore.
The side that gets there first is the side that gets to entrench, and that's almost always going to be the raiders because they have the initiative.
I'm choosing to ignore the results of raiding and look at what, based on posts from all factions over time, makes people feel shitty about raiding in general. That's a good place to start.
1) Sanction (or sanction attempts) can last ages. This means when people really want to they can raid for ages. Lose a tank? Have 4 more to go. Someone mentioned the whole sitting at gates attempting to prevent re-entry (which is almost 100% impossible vs even one competent raider to get the raid in). People who don't enjoy extended PK conflicts, or who only PK to help the city when it interrupts what they would rather be doing, end up getting tied up for even longer because now you're on alert. Think it's been 10m so you're clear and you start talking to whoever you were talking to before and get the conversation back to where it was, oops raiders are in again with a tank down. Even if they don't get a sanction, it's on the raiders to accept they lost and stop attempting to get a sanction while the defending city is tied up by the raid.
2) It's incredibly easy for both sides to escalate. I don't see this as a problem for defenders escalating, they're defending their city. However, when raiders do it it can feel awful. You have 3-4 solid fighters and a couple newbs on your side, you see 5 raiders and think with home field advantage you have a shot. You have a close fight but because of bursts they just barely eek out a sanction, but hey you can probably win a fight given what happened. Wait, now the raiders have the rest of the city in with their tank and you've lost because you let them get a sanction.
3) Entrenchment. As others have said it's kind of weird that the dynamic of raiding is that defenders have to attack the raiders entrenched position. With the way cities are now, in terms of layout, guards, shrines, etc, it can be very difficult to find a place that doesn't put you, as raiders, at an immense disadvantage.
Another thing to note, I think, is that the reward for defending being 'more raiding' (via counter sanction type ideas) isn't an answer to the people that truly dislike the state of raiding. PKers will, in the end, enjoy the times they're able to pull off something impressive and get an otherwise super unlikely kill, and if they want to continue raiding they'll usually be able to get their city rallied to go and start a raid normally. The people who would rather be helping novices or stocking their shop or just talking to their friends aren't playing Achaea for that, at least not as often as the PKers are. If they successfully defend it still might be awesome for them, but they may have things they're looking forward to getting back to doing instead of raiding more.
I have a handful of ideas about dealing with the above mentioned things but I don't want this post to go forever so I'm cutting it here, will post some of those ideas later.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
This would force a wider variety of classes for a successful extended raid. Meaning not so many room dominate classes. And limit the fear of rapid escalation traps, forcing the attacking side to assault properly at first.
Another idea would be to make it so it requires X amount of font energy to first charge a tank. This will make it so you cant lay too many tanks in one trip as well as make it so if the defending side wants to retaliate back, the initial city now is out of font power limiting there defensive capabilities from the recent offensive attack. When a successful tank detonates, said font power can be restored as an incentive for success and to keep it from always having a retaliation raid.
Battlement sieging
The general idea here is to make defenders defend, and puts raiders in an attacking position. Well, technically it would switch back and forth to give defenders the option to sally forth and wipe out the raiders. Here's how it'd work!
1) Sanctions are much like they are now. X soldier deaths sanctions a raid. RP wise it paints a target. If Defenders get a set number of kills, the city fortifies defenses and prevent the enemy city from raiding for an hour or two. That gives defenders a reason to attack pre-sanction, as wiping out the enemy group once or twice means two hours of peace. It's a clear win condition.
2) Once sanctioned, attackers build a siege tower outside. Defenders can rush to destroy the siege tower if they prefer, or they can entrench on the Battlements, a special area that only opens up once sanctioned. No totems, no guards, several rooms so it's not a bottleneck either to default to adjacent ret strategies. It'll be on the attackers to rush, as they gain nothing sitting around. To deter them, passive damage ticks occur (think forest defs) that grow more damaging as time goes on. Can be represented by npc archers firing down on attackers. Might also only activate after X amount of time.
3) If the defenders are defeated, there's a set amount of time to 'secure' the area. In reality it's a cooldown period to give defenders a chance to embrace, regroup and entrench in the next area. Attackers can choose to plant their city's flag and call victory here, or push on to the next area. First area victory would give small xp reward and looted gold, each subsequent area gives more (probably max amount of areas?)
4) If the attackers are defeated, they secure their battlements and the next area is the surroundings of the siege tower. In essence, the defenders can push the attackers out of their city with a counter-attack. If they win again, the siege tower is destroyed and the raid ends. If the attackers win, they can make another push on the battlements. Defending soldiers also gain an xp bonus for winning engagements, to make it more attractive to participate!
The raid would probably end after a maximum set of engagements, maybe only 3 to prevent it from taking more than an hour, with the option to declare an early victory for the attackers if they get nervous. The maximum amount of loss would only happen with three consecutive victories for attackers. Siege towers would replace tanks, putting a hard limit on how many a city can have, with the option to capture a siege tower if defenders push the enemy completely out of their city.
Just a random idea, really.
Also, how about when a tank is stopped from exploding by the defenders (say after it’s cHarged at least 30% the defenders can work to destabilise it), it implodes and instead of damaging rooms said energy is used to raise an undestructible shield over (part of) the city under attack. I’m thinking a la the anti-extermination ritual.