Raiding Mechanics

Mathilda

As players of the same community, we should at least expect some level of friendly competition that would encourage each other to improve and progress, and in so doing, also benefit the game as a whole.

Hashan has for a long time been the butt of jokes for failing to have a concrete identity and stance in relation to the rest of the cities. That it is now attempting fresh to dive into the larger world, to put the Darkness/Night faction up beside Good, Evil, Chaos, and Nature should be welcomed. Yes, of course as our characters we should oppose or support this as is expected of our role in the game world. But as players, we should encourage this.

That is not at all what is coming from Aegoth. The tone of antagonism and, quite frankly, hate, is palpable even through text. This is an OOC medium, and to see a group of players, who are trying to bring a new big player on the world arena, be vilified is disheartening. And please, the "he's actually joking lololol" defense to cover up belligerence is getting old and thin. We've been had enough of that from politicians and public figures in recent months.

Kiet

I have a hard time taking that post seriously when you still haven't apologized for comparing text theft to rl sexual assault, tbh.

Beyond that, though, there's a difference between 'establishing an identity' and challenging people to come fight you.

Asmodron

Saeva said:

I recall another time when a specific group made a public post and said “Come at us!” And when we did, they issued promptly.

To this day in don’t know why you would make a public post saying “Come at me” (p.s. that’s not a direct quote) to people who you KNOW will come fight you every chance they can.... then be upset when they do it.

I would just advise to not make posts inviting aggressive action  if you don’t want aggressive reactions. There are so many other ways to put down or lord your superiority over another city or ethos.

You act as if we would have been left alone if the Edicts werent even presented? Hashan was being raided and attacked long before the Edicts and stance was taken...please dont try to portray it as 'our fault' for the aggressive behavior. That is entirely on your own.

Again, we arent complaining about raiding. I've repeated this several times now. If Hashan didnt want to get into warfare then it wouldnt still be raiding and skirmishing.

However there is also the respect for other players and fair gameplay which has not been seen for quite some time now with attacks.

I honestly cant blame the players, trolls will be trolls and this is indeed Achaea. I honestly would prefer the mechanics be tweaked to remedy the issues.

Calira

Kiet said:

Beyond that, though, there's a difference between 'establishing an identity' and challenging people to come fight you.

There's also a difference between accepting a challenge and showing up with at least 13 Mhaldorians to a combat-inept city for the purpose of bashing guards.

Kiet

You're being disingenuous by pretending that all Hashan did was post their edicts, or that several cities haven't ramped up aggressiong on Hashan lately. Hashan did a lot more than just post their edicts and then go 'well, see ya.' They insulted and goaded at least two cities on the public news alone.

It doesn't help, then, that Hashan immediately starts guarding every engagement after. Yes, you're right that people shouldn't shame you for not engaging, or for guarding, or so on. But if you pick fights and then just call guards then people will be like 'eh, whatever, just go all out on them,' too.

The ideal, of course, is that we all stay civil throughout it, and like I said I'd prefer if no one yelled or shouted anything in raids from either side.

That said, last time Hashan raided Mhaldor you yelled similarly insulting things, so idk what your stance really is.

Minifie

Calira said:

Kiet said:

Beyond that, though, there's a difference between 'establishing an identity' and challenging people to come fight you.

There's also a difference between accepting a challenge and showing up with at least 13 Mhaldorians to a combat-inept city for the purpose of bashing guards.

Your guards are the most apt defenders, we gotta take them out first!

Kiet

Calira said:

Kiet said:

Beyond that, though, there's a difference between 'establishing an identity' and challenging people to come fight you.

There's also a difference between accepting a challenge and showing up with at least 13 Mhaldorians to a combat-inept city for the purpose of bashing guards.

12*, vs a cwho of 30 people with at least 10 regular defenders. You can't really blame us for expecting your city to have even half the dedication other cities have to defending! Guards get bashed because there weren't any good untanked spots not in guard range, and with how often everyone that raids Hashan has to deal with guards, what do you expect?

We left after like 15 minutes when no one moved, anyway, so not sure what the big deal is.

Calira

Kiet said:

12*, vs a cwho of 30 people with at least 10 regular defenders. You can't really blame us for expecting your city to have even half the dedication other cities have to defending! Guards get bashed because there weren't any good untanked spots not in guard range, and with how often everyone that raids Hashan has to deal with guards, what do you expect?

We left after like 15 minutes when no one moved, anyway, so not sure what the big deal is.

Aegoth, Syndra, Proficy, Chiam, Hataru, Iakimen, Naelrhi, Zackery, Taryius, Saeva, Lii, Cooper, Kiet. That makes 13.

And this is exactly what I expect. Behaviour that at best takes no consideration for the fun of those you raid, and at worst is designed to punish the opposing players, as opposed to their characters.

Kiet

Lii ditched immediately from being asleep irl.

If you can't get a decent defending force out of thirty people with several combatants, how is it the raiders' fault? If we didn't care about your fun, we'd have kept bashing all your guards, since I mapped them all out before the raid and knew all the easy ones to hit.

You complain when we afford you basic courtesies like leaving when you're not interested, and then expect people to keep affording you them, weirdly.

Calira

Kiet said:

Lii ditched immediately from being asleep irl.

If you can't get a decent defending force out of thirty people with several combatants, how is it the raiders' fault? If we didn't care about your fun, we'd have kept bashing all your guards, since I mapped them all out before the raid and knew all the easy ones to hit.

You complain when we afford you basic courtesies like leaving when you're not interested, and then expect people to keep affording you them, weirdly.

You know full well that Hashan is nowhere near Mhaldor in terms of combat willingness or capability, and that we had no hope of matching the force that you brought, and you knew that coming in. Regardless, I'm not actually saying anything is your fault - it would be a hollow accusation, to say that it's your fault for having a resounding victory. I'm just pointing out a bit of hypocrisy; it's nice of you to acknowledge, as you have, that being raided (often multiple times) on a daily basis can lead to burnout or apathy, but then you turn around and expect Hashan to be able to motivate the numbers to fight off a numerous and artifact-laden team after being raided (often multiple times) on a daily basis for the past few IRL weeks or months.

That being said, I don't wish to suggest that Mhaldor or anyone besides Hashan is responsible for Hashan's poor showings. I would simply like to request that you at least give us the respect to stop pretending that guard-bashing a down city is in any way a courtesy.

Kiet

I don't expect anything, and half that group is lightly artied at best (tho obv iaki/cooper/proficy can carry even a full unartied group pretty well).

Beyond that, I haven't raided Hashan in a while and have no idea when the last time you got raided was. You showed no interest, and we left. There were no yells, no forum callouts, no anything. I fail to see how we were disrespecting you or expected you to motivate anyone. We checked if you could motivate anyone, you couldn't, so we left within like 15 minutes of arriving. Where, exactly, is the issue?

My posts are not about Hashan not responding, my posts are more about my continued confusion at provoking two combative cities when most of your city doesn't want to--and that's aimed at the people who posted/represent Hashan, not at the average Hashani.

Cyr

Since this thread seems to be going down the rabbit hole of what happened to Hashan:

Ashtan literally got marching orders from the Chaos Court to 'make Hashan understand their mistake', so yeah we didn't come in with a gameplan of let's go a bit easy on them to start. But lines like ' Neither you, nor Ashtan nor the Chaos Lords you swear fealty to...actually have dominion over Chaos.' 'you may as well make good on your threats because at least there will be some action while we remain undeterred from our course.' 'I suppose that I have come to expect too much from the once-great Bastion. It seems that you have either stifled or have no great, creative minds left. Pity.' while we were busy killing the shit out of Hashan (that's ignoring any tells and shouts that went on during that) don't really lend themselves towards us saying 'yeah let's take it easy on them'. And even then when we did show up with less than our full force, and you had more than enough defenders, the most common response to a raid was the guard re-station message.

I'm not without sympathy for people not enjoying being raided constantly, but it really wasn't the edicts that got you raided constantly, it was your response to people raiding you for the edicts. You didn't have to take things back, you just had to not pretend like you weren't getting your heads handed to you and insult people at every turn. 

Since it's the raiding mechanics thread, I'll chime this in to the actual discussion, I'm not against changes to the system, although I'd be somewhat wary of some of the proposed ones in here, but I think it's important to understand that raids and sanctions don't exist in isolation. The response of the defending city isn't limited to just disarm and wait until they win enough the sanction ends, the response is to go raid the other city back, or take some other form of RP retribution. If the complaint is limited to 'We can't compete with the arties/fighters the other side has', well, them's the breaks, mechanical changes shouldn't be implemented to try and bridge a skill gap. 

Cooper

Calira said:

Kiet said:

Lii ditched immediately from being asleep irl.

If you can't get a decent defending force out of thirty people with several combatants, how is it the raiders' fault? If we didn't care about your fun, we'd have kept bashing all your guards, since I mapped them all out before the raid and knew all the easy ones to hit.

You complain when we afford you basic courtesies like leaving when you're not interested, and then expect people to keep affording you them, weirdly.

You know full well that Hashan is nowhere near Mhaldor in terms of combat willingness or capability, and that we had no hope of matching the force that you brought, and you knew that coming in. Regardless, I'm not actually saying anything is your fault - it would be a hollow accusation, to say that it's your fault for having a resounding victory. I'm just pointing out a bit of hypocrisy; it's nice of you to acknowledge, as you have, that being raided (often multiple times) on a daily basis can lead to burnout or apathy, but then you turn around and expect Hashan to be able to motivate the numbers to fight off a numerous and artifact-laden team after being raided (often multiple times) on a daily basis for the past few IRL weeks or months.

That being said, I don't wish to suggest that Mhaldor or anyone besides Hashan is responsible for Hashan's poor showings. I would simply like to request that you at least give us the respect to stop pretending that guard-bashing a down city is in any way a courtesy.

Well, this just isn't true. We had a discussion IC on who to raid, and a discussion OOC on who would be best due to numbers. Hashan had like ~38 people on cwho (forgive me, I don't remember the exact number, but it was above 35 when we talked). Of the people you listed, there were a couple that were only there for 2-3 minutes each.

We went in wanting to kill guards and then engage because of your massive cwho. We had absolutely no way to predict that you would have only ~4 people actually try to defend. If we assumed that % of people would defend every time we tried to raid, we would never get to raid. That problem is on you guys, not on us. You 100% had a force more than capable of ejecting us without guards. I told people OOC that we were going to get stomped before we went, and I was pretty sure I was right.

Behaviour that at best takes no consideration for the fun of those you raid, and at worst is designed to punish the opposing players, as opposed to their characters.

We killed guards, killed the guards Ajoc used against us, waited around for a bit to see if you guys could actually make people defend, and then left. We took your lack of response into account, and left accordingly when there was a poor showing. How could you possibly consider this as us taking no consideration of your fun?

Calira

Cooper said:

You 100% had a force more than capable of ejecting us without guards. I told people OOC that we were going to get stomped before we went, and I was pretty sure I was right.

I find it very hard to believe that you thought this. You've raided Hashan enough times to know that our turnouts are extremely poor compared to our CWHO at the best of times. You showed up with similar numbers to our absolute best turnouts, but with five times the escrow and fifty times the practical experience.

Melodie

I mean... can I just ask how we could have expected around four people to show up, out of 34-36?

Like I wasn't even there and I find that a little difficult to grasp. 

Calira

Melodie said:

I mean... can I just ask how we could have expected around four people to show up, out of 34-36?

Like I wasn't even there and I find that a little difficult to grasp. 

It's pretty simple. AFK, non-coms, and burnout.

Melodie

We're not really mind-readers or know every single person very well. Like, we got told partway into it that Targossas had blown tanks twice in the last 24 hours, which is why we (or rather, they) left to... go fight Targossas instead.

Why not just send a polite, OOC message that the city isn't up for fighting if it's annoying you so much? Dunno what else you want, unless it's to be left alone and only play on your terms, which is a bit impossible.

Calira

Melodie said:

We're not really mind-readers or know every single person very well. Like, we got told partway into it that Targossas had blown tanks twice in the last 24 hours, which is why we (or rather, they) left to... go fight Targossas instead.

Why not just send a polite, OOC message that the city isn't up for fighting if it's annoying you so much? Dunno what else you want, unless it's to be left alone and only play on your terms, which is a bit impossible.

Please don't mistake me, Mhaldor raiding doesn't annoy me. Pretending that Hashan is some threat that deserves Mhaldor coming out in full force and guard-bashing annoys me very slightly, though. Raid and bash us as you see fit, just please don't pretend that you're doing us a favour.

Ismay

Exactly. It's best to just send an ooc message to the raid leader, letting them know that a raid isn't currently welcome. They can always plan one for another day. Most raid leaders will let it go because without willing opposition, conflict is dead.

Personally, I've been known to send ooc messages to enemy raid leaders asking for them to raid us...

Asmodron

Melodie said:

I mean... can I just ask how we could have expected around four people to show up, out of 34-36?

Like I wasn't even there and I find that a little difficult to grasp. 

4 people only attacked because we werent going to bother taking on a force that large. The 4 shooting were those that were attacking you as you assaulted guards. Frankly Mhaldor got no tank and we managed to get several kills when they lept on guards, I was rather pleased with the results.

Additionally the reponses here reinforce my original statement. Mhaldor brought in a force and Hashan was expected to satisfy. Guards began to be killed because we didnt. Somehow..it is Hashan's fault? Why does this mentality prevail..?

It was mentioned that Hashan had a lot of citizens awake. The reason Hashan, Cyrene and to an extent Eleusis have such numbers is because they are not merely focused on being combative. They give their citizens the leisure of other avenues of gameplay enjoyement without strict regulations. That should be pretty obvious now when considering numbers.

Kiet

Guards got killed because they were in CFH range and then because you called more on us, lol.


Also, Cyrene almost always responds with big % of their city, there's a big difference between the two. We also really don't need two 'peaceful' cities, because then that just further dilutes Hashan's identity, but that's probably a lost cause.

Aegoth

When CYRENE can mustre 25+ people for a defence multiple times in a week... Hashan has absolutely 0 excuses when it has a high CWHO count. Get your shit in gear, and stop making excuses for yourself. Just do it

Calira

Kiet said:

Also, Cyrene almost always responds with big % of their city, there's a big difference between the two. We also really don't need two 'peaceful' cities, because then that just further dilutes Hashan's identity, but that's probably a lost cause.

Raid Cyrene daily for IRL months and watch that % dry up. And before you nit-pick, I know Mhaldor has actually left Hashan alone for the past few days, so I'm not laying blame for that on you or Ashtan or Targ, but the fact remains that Hashan seems to be the most popular raiding spot for all 3 of those cities and as a result, Hashan is raided every single day without fail. The raid fatigue is extremely real.

Asmodron

Cyr said:

Ashtan literally got marching orders from the Chaos Court to 'make Hashan understand their mistake', so yeah we didn't come in with a gameplan of let's go a bit easy on them to start. But lines like ' Neither you, nor Ashtan nor the Chaos Lords you swear fealty to...actually have dominion over Chaos.' 'you may as well make good on your threats because at least there will be some action while we remain undeterred from our course.' 'I suppose that I have come to expect too much from the once-great Bastion. It seems that you have either stifled or have no great, creative minds left. Pity.' while we were busy killing the shit out of Hashan (that's ignoring any tells and shouts that went on during that) don't really lend themselves towards us saying 'yeah let's take it easy on them'. And even then when we did show up with less than our full force, and you had more than enough defenders, the most common response to a raid was the guard re-station message.

I'm not without sympathy for people not enjoying being raided constantly, but it really wasn't the edicts that got you raided constantly, it was your response to people raiding you for the edicts. You didn't have to take things back, you just had to not pretend like you weren't getting your heads handed to you and insult people at every turn. 

Firstly, I love that the Chaos Court itself ordered the attacks. That is rather fun. (It's  true they dont have dominion on Chaos though >> )

Secondly, you stated we werent showcasing that we were "getting our heads handed to us" in order to satisfy the act of attacking us. You're literally asking us to behave intimated, broken, and helpless? Why?

It honestly reads as an act of bullying and being displeased if the victim shakes it off.

As for the posts and shouts, admittedly Mosr did love to push buttons but as I said, we expected this. We arent going to be coyed and suddenly give up on what we are pushing for. You cant be a challenger if you are accepting of everyone.

We dont mind the attacks but you cant honestly even remotely say they're fair :P.

Honestly I'd love a font power that disables starbusts...just so I dont kill someone 4 times in the same fight...

Kiet

Having to accept a loss IC is not OOC bullying, lol.

Mathilda

I find it hard to believe that Mhaldor isn't aware of Hashan's turnout %. Targossas raids Hashan just as much as Mhaldor and we know not to bring more than 7+ people if we want an actual fight.

Kiet

lol ya obv it's reasonable to expect 9% turnout for any city.

Mathilda

We're talking about Hashan specifically, though, not just any city.

Mhaldor, we expect close to 100%
Ashtan is a good 75%
Eleusis and Cyrene are somewhere at 25-50%

There are only 5 other factions in the game, surely most people have enough mental capacity to remember each one's turnout %.

* numbers vary on presence of a willing/capable leader. Not all combatants are made equal after all

Minifie

Mathilda said:

I find it hard to believe that Mhaldor isn't aware of Hashan's turnout %. Targossas raids Hashan just as much as Mhaldor and we know not to bring more than 7+ people if we want an actual fight.

You definitely don’t do that 100% of the time, as usual you’ve thrown in hyperbole to pretend some authoritative high ground in here. It’s also a bit bullshit people want to claim knowing turnout % when there are times I’ve been part of a small team that would be massively outgunned and had 0 response, just people running out of the city to avoid having a tank blow. 

No one is ever going to know what their enemy is GOING to pack without directly asking them before hand, and at that point if you have to constantly manage raids as events they lose all value, a big part of it is in the spontenaeity. 

Kiet

Hashan generally has 30-50% turnout. We have literally never gotten 9% turnout before.

Surely you have the mental capacity to understand that 9% is low turnout even for Hashan.