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Comments
A destroyed room, a plume of smoke over the target city, those are clear signs of victory built into the mechanics of the game. It says to the world, "This city lost", and the deathsights tell to whom. The defenders have nothing like that - there is no clear sign that the invaders lost because they can keep coming back, and while the invaders have a final, obtainable goal (getting a tank blown), the defenders don't. They have to keep going and going and going hoping the attackers give up. I'd say the goalposts constantly get moved back, but the defenders don't even have goalposts. There's no way to say "okay, this is it, we've beaten the invaders". You might say the Font damage stacks are a way of saying "defenders win when the invaders can't come back", but it's not - it's a way of the defenders saying "we didn't lose", which is a not-insignificant difference.
Even the supposed 'loss' that invaders have in their deaths losing them experience is basically non-existent. Dragons can die a dozen times and barely feel the sting of lost experience. What do the invaders actually risk? What tells them "hey, you lost, sorry buddy"? From a game mechanics perspective, the victory condition only exists for one side - the invaders. From a game mechanics perspective, the penalty for losing only exists for one side - the defenders. This means that the invaders, in theory, can never lose. They just have to keep going until they win.
The way things are now feels like...
Sanction-lose-lose-lose-lose-resanction-lose-win "AHA WE ARE THE SUPERIOR CITY AND YOU ARE THE WEAK AND FEEBLE ONES HOW DOES IT FEEL LOSERS GET WRECKED"
... Nevermind the occasional time this actually happens in the game. Post-raid shouts after multiple defeats because they got a lucky tank really piss me off, and I've seen it at least once since Cadan was made, and I haven't been able to play a whole lot the past week.
It's lame, and the mechanics of the game actively support it. The best fix, without adding a huge amount of stuff, is for a tank being disarmed slashes the sanction timer by, say, half remaining. When a sanction ends, another one can't be placed on the defenders by the invaders for a period of, say, four Achaean days. Finally, there needs to be a worldwide message, much like the plumes of smoke from a tank blowing, indicating the invaders lost. A penalty on them, somehow, or on their city, wouldn't go amiss - doesn't need to be serious, but something for the losing invaders to remember the fight by would be nice, just like the defenders losing has an inconveniently destroyed room to remember the attackers by.
tl;dr - Defenders need a win condition, a public message for win condition, and the invaders need some sort of loss penalty.
If Sanction -> Tank placed -> Tank disarmed -> Sanction ends
"A cheer rises from <city> as the forces of <raiders> are sent home bloody and beaten."
Being a cool automatic addition.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Like to see actual raids, sanctioned raids, means of conflict where as being a person coming from a game where if you raid an enemy city it just turns into a slew of numerous issues for ruining peoples RP time. Man This Is Amazing. You have notifications here of totems, you have abilities which let you bounty enemies...there were no bounties or means of retribution in Aetolia, you just had to deal with it yourself...or get good...but really there was no reason to, the only duels and fights were within the sect system there was no open world pk save for timed events every four hours which gave an aura that made it so all participants didnt lose any experience.
I love the raid mechanics here, I cant even explain how great they are...it makes you feel like being enlisted has a purpose.
I love the risks, I love the challenges, I love the systems in place.
A global announce for tank disarm would be nice. Sanction instantly dropping on a disarm and a sanction immunity period for like 15 minutes so defenders can clean up would be nice too. If raiders want to try again, they need to get a new sanction.
Atalkez is right in that it's too easy to defend a place, as well, home-field advantage is too strong. If disarming a tank is going to end a sanction, either defenders' options should get limited, or disarming a tank should be a longer-than-5-minutes channeled action or something so that a random CFH doesn't constitute a resounding victory.
I get the frustration on the defenders' part, but ultimately, the disparity in investment between what goes into attacking successfully, both time and credit wise, and what it takes to defend a city successfully, is a pretty clear indicator of which task is more difficult. Attackers have to scout, figure out guards, deal with font stacks, infil/exfil, get hit by totems when moving at first, basically risk losing a 1/5 chance to win if wiping, can't change classes in enemy territory, etc.
As someone who's done a lot of raiding, on either side, I can absolutely say attacking is way harder than defending, so I'm not opposed to raiders being able to win if they hang in there and adapt/change spots to move the tank somewhere defenders can't get at it.
If you don't like the trash talk, ignore shouts or something?
If you don't want to make disarming harder/reduce defensive advantages, I'm fine with keeping the system as it is until a better solution is arrived at.
Let's not pretend that 4/5 defences in Cyrene involve anything more than call for help. Dochitha admitted as much on warriors only this past Friday. Yes, people will adapt and learn what you can and can't deal with if you always try and do the same thing (and keep hitting you with stuff toy can't deal with).
Ultimately, it sounds like you guys are just pissed someone yelled something. Go gank that person, or tank Mhaldor back, or somesuch? Rangor might've said it tongue in cheek, but raiding a faction as revenge is absolutely the way to get even.
Eta: I like Torinn's idea of disarm taking away % gradually. Encourages early rush to get rid of tank right away.
Edit: You weren't misunderstanding me. My wording is confusing. I meant to use a comma after "losing for a good while" and not making it a statement in itself. My bad.
I don't know too much about the Tank mechanics, but would it be a ridiculous idea to have the raiding party able to commit X number of Tanks to a single raid, and if they are incapable of securing any destruction with those tanks, the sanction ends and they pull out? (Or they can pull out prematurely if things are going south and they don't want to waste them.)
I kind of assumed, probably wrongfully, that each tank had two timers. One that ticks up to detonation, and one that ticks down to disarm, with the disarming bar draining when being disarmed, and building at an even slower pace when nobody was working on it. (starting at 80%, or some arbitrary number). The detonation time would pause while being disarmed, but would otherwise be ticking steadily to an explosion.
It'd probably make everyone annoyed with raiding if you set an arbitrary time frame on how long you can wait before placing a tank down before it is useless and needs to be returned to the city...
Anyway, random thoughts. Again, 0 raiding experience.. so.. that's a thing. Seems a lot more fun than Aetolia's old army system, though. (waits until everyone falls asleep and marches troops around claiming all the territory)
I think it's naive to say half the shit in that post when Iaki and I duod 5-6 Cyrenians including some of your experienced ones like two days ago, and rena/reyson/I generally win and we don't even have a mage. It's also naive to pretend that groups don't change--the group you 'beat' for an hour or whatever was a small one made up of mostly less experienced combatants with one or two that tried to herd them. Then Proficy came with a couple more and let's not pretend that's even the same engagement again.
However, it does highlight the issue a lot of people have, that previous defender victories have little impact on what actually ends up happening. If you try to limit sanctions too much, though, then no one's ever going to send 'probing' numbers at first--they'll always just bring 20 people because you can't risk losing at all. Like Iaki said, though, and you're roundabout agreeing: it's up to you to interpret it as a loss or win, and it really doesn't matter that much if the two sides agree. Sure, sometimes you get Eleusis war situations, but I think in general it's more interesting if people can go back and forth on it a bit.
Still unsure on what to do about it beyond giving defenders some kind of reward/motivation for defending.
Edit: Either way cool stuff on the duo. Those engagements are fun when I'm around, but I'm just not sure how it invalidates the fact that you can win most skirmishes and somehow lose or makes half my post seem naive.
One team can be kicking your ass up and down your city, almost at an L3 tank, and then they just have so many font stacks on them that one more CFH wipes them and they lose their tank. It works both ways, and unless you want to diminish defenders' advantages (let's be real, nothing's more 'cheese' as a tactic than banking on guards), making it harder for raiders seems a little iffy to me, when defenders already have such significant options available to them in defence.
It didn't work out, as you can see.
I went to bed at like 9 pm yesterday so idk what you're talking about about 3 hours raids, lol. If you mean the one where Proficy and co tanked you I was there for literally 5 seconds to meteor Keorin so you guys knew there was a raid, then I qq'd. I'm fairly sure itwas not 3 hours but who tf knows, I wasn't there like I just said.
If Dochitha + shirszae don't count, idk what to tell you, but I also know I've got plenty of "You have slain Kogan" that didn't involve mages or ret or whatever else. You literally posted praising our tactic once on the forums when we tzantzad half of you not too long ago!
Ultimately I don't care. If Achaea's taught me anything is that no one will ever admit they lost and the current system both enables that and softens the blow, so who knows if it really needs changing.