Mhaldor vs Targossas

Tesha

Stheno said:

Let me know when Mhaldor is twenty-man raiding. I'll wake up to cheerlead.

Sure. Day 3 or 4? 23-24 Mhaldorians bashing through gates. It's never a fun thing to deal with, for either side. But unfortunately war as it's designed isn't fun, and participating in it isn't fun either. Participation is a balance of trying to remain competitive without making it a boring slog. Unfortunately, both sides have made it a boring slog. I'd like to think Targossas has taken more risks, but perception bias is a thing and in the end it doesn't really matter.

To both sides: can we please stop the forum RP and antagonizing of one another? This community is small enough as is. Let's try to show newer players that this is a game worth sticking around for.

Relevant:

Atalkez

In fairness, we definitely did not have 23 Mhaldorians for that Gates raid. 

Big Papa Jomi

In fairness, this war is boring and WE’RE ALL  bad and should feel bad.

The only good thing that will hopefully come out of this war at this point is hopefully shorter future wars, less powerful bombs, nerf to ama-rain, better infamy tuning, and hopefully some ok internal RP (cuz let’s be honest, I doubt either side is going to RP much with each other)

 everything else is the same old. both sides have sucked, no one has acted better than the other, and let’s leave it at that. There hasn’t been a good idea/constructive topic for a few pages now, let’s just leave it in case someone comes up with something

 smh

Big Papa Jomi

Something that came up a few times was neutral ground skirmishes, and I was thinking what if we had a sort of King of the Hill sort of thing? Each City has two allied locations - Jaru/New Hope, Blackrock/Enverren. 

I would say a good idea imo would be to have one under attack for an hour a day - if the default length and extensions are a year (12 days), then each is under attack 3 times. Worldburn is disabled, no implanted totems, each will have a different “spot” to take/protect at the beginning of the day - starting from the entrance to the townhall/lords chambers/whatever. They’re completely open PK in that area.

For the hardcore PKers, let’s give them the option to set their status to War Infamous or something at serenade - until the next serenade, they’re open PK to other war Infamous. But of course, we’d need to incentivize it somehow so that people don’t just play it safe - hella shot in the dark and probably a bad idea but: if you spend a certain amount of time out of the city and on mainland sapience (so ships, phased, wilderness, etc etc don’t count), then your death during the king of the hill phases count for half. That way it’s like “you made yourself an open target outside of the designated war times, thus risking points, so you have a bit more free reign during the actual fights”. 

Personally, that’s something I’d enjoy. Give it different times during each day so players in different time zones will be able to have it sometime near their peak at least a few times. Then you know when it’s off-peak or something and you can’t complain. 

Because skirmishes >>>>>> raids

Kog

I think the Reckoning was, in general, a good way to go about those. Tone down the boss mobs so they're not murder-monsters. Maybe let them retreat a little sooner/tweak the timings - but with only four possible targets instead of five, they'd be less frequent.

Ship trades originating in your city and ending in your city would be a great way to get sailors involved, too.

In general, I feel like this setup rewards being a dick, though, rather than trying to encourage people trying things. Toss the soldier deaths counting for points and maybe people have a lot more fun with random, pointless fights.

Just, I guess, if you want to incentivize people playing the game, don't punish them for losing, only give points for trying. If you go on a ship trade and get sunk, that sucks, but you didn't *cost* your city anything, so it's not the end of the world. If you whiff the Jaru raid, you lost out on a chance for points but you didn't throw your city's lead. I lost 20% experience in one Darkenwood fight at level 101 just because hey, why not? And it was fun to dive in and try to get something done, even when mostly it was just me dying over and over.

Thaisen

Atalkez said:

In fairness, we definitely did not have 23 Mhaldorians for that Gates raid. 

Right?...has Mhaldor ever even had a cwho bigger than 20 people? But...you alone have to count for like 5 or 6...so there's that.

Big Papa Jomi

Kog said:

I think the Reckoning was, in general, a good way to go about those. Tone down the boss mobs so they're not murder-monsters. Maybe let them retreat a little sooner/tweak the timings - but with only four possible targets instead of five, they'd be less frequent.

Ship trades originating in your city and ending in your city would be a great way to get sailors involved, too.

In general, I feel like this setup rewards being a dick, though, rather than trying to encourage people trying things. Toss the soldier deaths counting for points and maybe people have a lot more fun with random, pointless fights.

Just, I guess, if you want to incentivize people playing the game, don't punish them for losing, only give points for trying. If you go on a ship trade and get sunk, that sucks, but you didn't *cost* your city anything, so it's not the end of the world. If you whiff the Jaru raid, you lost out on a chance for points but you didn't throw your city's lead. I lost 20% experience in one Darkenwood fight at level 101 just because hey, why not? And it was fun to dive in and try to get something done, even when mostly it was just me dying over and over.

I could get behind this. So like a commander at each allied location and one team is trying to kill it while the other is trying to protect it? Throw yourselves at each other for an hour OR until the boss is killed and that's that. I like that idea. 

The idea with ship trades is also good - maybe we can do this same sort of thing for non-coms, non-sailsmen with some resources (that don't need a skill investment to gather). Do quests/tasks to get resources to land-based forces or whatever, or donate comms/gathering stuff outright for "war points". Definitely not open PK during these runs, so it's whoever chooses to put in the work - but not so many points, they're more for like if the war is close then the more dedicated city wins by a small lead, or to better secure a lead/help make up being behind.

Big Papa Jomi

Thaisen said:

Atalkez said:

In fairness, we definitely did not have 23 Mhaldorians for that Gates raid. 

Right?...has Mhaldor ever even had a cwho bigger than 20 people? But...you alone have to count for like 5 or 6...so there's that.

2 of me can definitely take 1 Kez and I'm not even that good so there's not that he only counts for 2

Saonji

Big Papa Jomi said:

Thaisen said:

Atalkez said:

In fairness, we definitely did not have 23 Mhaldorians for that Gates raid. 

Right?...has Mhaldor ever even had a cwho bigger than 20 people? But...you alone have to count for like 5 or 6...so there's that.

2 of me can definitely take 1 Kez and I'm not even that good so there's not that he only counts for 2

I think he meant when Kez has curing enabled.

Minifie

Big Papa Jomi said:

Thaisen said:

Atalkez said:

In fairness, we definitely did not have 23 Mhaldorians for that Gates raid. 

Right?...has Mhaldor ever even had a cwho bigger than 20 people? But...you alone have to count for like 5 or 6...so there's that.

2 of me can definitely take 1 Kez and I'm not even that good so there's not that he only counts for 2

Lewd.

Iaxus

In seriousness I think we peak at like 23 that I've seen during the war, but that's for a very short amount of time as people in one timezone go to bed and the others get up. It's possible we hit gates with 20 or so, but also gates is never a "we're going to crush them" fight, it's just a flex to say we took gates.

Vinzent

You've had sixteen at your highest.

Big Papa Jomi

Saonji said:

Big Papa Jomi said:

Thaisen said:

Atalkez said:

In fairness, we definitely did not have 23 Mhaldorians for that Gates raid. 

Right?...has Mhaldor ever even had a cwho bigger than 20 people? But...you alone have to count for like 5 or 6...so there's that.

2 of me can definitely take 1 Kez and I'm not even that good so there's not that he only counts for 2

I think he meant when Kez has curing enabled.

u guys r so mean can we go back to being constructive instead of bully plz ty

Crixos

While I don't really like the scheduled, neutral-area skirmishes that IRE's other offerings have since I find them to be consequence-free (if I want to do battlegrounds, there are other games), inorganic (why are our characters fighting over this?) and from the PoV of an outsider, mostly meaningless. 

That being said, I think they're going to be what's necessary moving forward to encourage player participation in wars. Have less weighting being assigned to your faction losing or winning (reward everyone) and encourage more interactive, fun fights that you -should- want to participate rather than want to avoid (in case you lose), as simply participating grants rewards with less severe detriment as losing a room for 24 days.  This will promote fighting outside of that single skirmish outside (before having to check your city for tanks ad nauseum), dreary guard bashing or solo losing the war by charging in too many times as a HVT.

So, how do we keep the mechanical conflict meaningful?

My ideas aren't entirely new, they've been suggested in this thread but not collated.

I'll refer to both war score and war points as different entities.

War score determines the winner of the war, war points are consumable points

Temporary war areas/battlegrounds, open PK for both faction's soldiers. Whatever mechanical goal you want to set, be it shard collection, KotH, some supermob (one of each city's dragonquest NPCs leading?), let the successes in this area add to the war score (to determine the winner of the war) as well as adding to the war points which can be spent as you've outlined in the War Proposal thread.  Don't let the weaker side walk away with nothing if they've participated.  Rewards to be scaled off kills as well as securing the objective.

Give these powers direct weightings to the city raids (if we're still keeping city raids relevant) as well as short (3 hourly?) non-war related city-wide bonuses - preferably nothing that affects the artefacted PvP some people enjoy (as the snowball effect can be strong).

Speaking of PvP - for the few 1v1 addicts we have left - let's give them something too.  Duels to the death as conducted in the Delos arena (or some other mechanical method, since arenas have limitations but fights outside can be interfered with) can accrue score.  The amount of score you can 'give' the other side (per loss) are limited based on your army rank, this may need to be extended to gain as well to limit gaming the system.  Or make the score here universally uniform. Obviously these won't count towards sanctions (if keeping that system).  Who wouldn't want to see Dawnlord vs Tyrannus?

For the crafters, hoarders, hunters and traders, I like the idea behind the denizen armies that were a part of the Underworld event.  Announce 4592, 4593.  It's a good way for people who aren't all that into fighting to be able to contribute.

Meeting a monthly crafting quota to upgrade your troops.  

For example: 

a monthly quota of 20 platemail must be met to upgrade your denizen army's for the month

a monthly quota of 20 longswords must be met to upgrade your denizen army's offense for the month.

5000 Minerals gives them more health,
1million  corpse essence to bolster their spirits, etcetera.

Some resource cost to make a denizen army, some daily resource quota (of what, I don't know) to be filled to make fortifications and of course, a degree of RNG with variance reduced by how much your side puts into it.  The strategy behind this would fall solely on the MoW.

This would result in per-month, passive generation of both war points and war score - not commodities (we don't want to add more variables to that system).  Something more aesthetic than K/D numbers to add to the war report too.  Soldiers clashed at location, after several bloody battles and empowered by their morale, X faction was slaughtered by Y.
Contributions could be tracked via MILLOG.

I like the ship trade idea. Some sort of MVP or object that a seafaring aide can take that when placed on a city-owned ship, can't be taken off and starts an expiry timer.  It also alerts the other warring city to the item being placed this activity can only be done once a month, or once every other month for each city. Open to inevitable timezone abuse but the oceans are too vast for it otherwise.  Successful fulfillment rewards something for the war as well as reward something to the crew.  This could also contribute to meeting the daily quota for the denizen army as above.

I've not seen a single CTS ship in the water aside from the war galley (good bait by the way). There's really no reason to do anything dangerous with city ships if you have personal ones instead.  

For the current war system:

- HALVE THE DURATION

- Remove the global sanctions (or at least give a warning when the first tank is placed in your city).  I don't enjoy having 1/4 of my players walking around looking at rooms for 20 minutes waiting out sanctions before fighting again)

OR, remove global kills from counting towards tanks in a city - encourage skirmishing without having to worry about hidden tanks.

- HALVE THE DURATION

- Halve or 1/4 the the original infamy gain from killing guards add it to everyone in the room. Remove infamy gain from hitting each other's city soldiers - logic here is guard bashing is (or should be) the rarer option.

- HALVE THE DURATION

- Potentially some way to give or assign score?  I know you don't like us looking into mechanics nor believe players can be trusted with such things; but this would be for things with no metric of measurement - like theological debates or something to that nature.  Not sure if this option would ever be used.

- Finally, HALVE THE DURATION

I suppose my own ideas adds to the innumerable amount of of chores to be done in the game so I can understand why they won't be popular.  They do add an avenue for the less combat-focused cities to participate by flexing their industrious citizenry or something to that nature.  

In typing this, I see this would be a very big overhaul and is unlikely to happen.  But I can hope for something more fun if there's ever another war.

Big Papa Jomi

A big overhaul but it’d be super cool and fun

Trey

Lol'd @ Mhaldor 'discord training'. 60%+ of everything that gets posted there is pictures of cats in #kitties - most of the rest is RL bitching about jobs and shit. I don't ever really see "OMG LOG ON WE NEED A SANCTION" or stuff like that.

Entaro

---
Tesha arrives, following Ada, riding a giant horned toad, from the ether.

Ada removes a pair of eagle's wings.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:44.089)- 

The mount of Ada slips and falls on the ice.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:44.233)- 

The mount of Ada slips and falls on the ice.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:45.184)- 

The mount of Ada slips and falls on the ice.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:47.475)- 

Ada flails her arms about.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:47.901)- 

Ada sends a lash of fire to strike the ice-coated ground, which quickly thaws.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:48.530)- 

Ada takes a long drag off an enamel bubble pipe.

10115h (104%), 7191m (80%), 35780w  cdbk|ex {0}   (18:45:48.828)- 

Tesha leaves, following Ada, riding a giant horned toad, to the south
----

Made me lol.  It's the little things..!

Iaxus

Trey said:

Lol'd @ Mhaldor 'discord training'. 60%+ of everything that gets posted there is pictures of cats in #kitties - most of the rest is RL bitching about jobs and shit. I don't ever really see "OMG LOG ON WE NEED A SANCTION" or stuff like that.

I was thinking that but didn't want to say it. I've honestly never even seem game related discussion happening, though I'm not terribly active in the discord. It's almost all cats or frogs.

Reyson

@Sothantos, dude. 

Archaeon

u calling me a cow???

Saibel

I have been having fun for the most part but to circumvent the entire tank building process, which gives soldiers (on both sides I'd hope) a bit of a break from all the fighting, by borrowing/begging/buying them from other cities- well, that's just no fun at all. Perhaps in future installments, we can prevent this somehow. 

Archaeon

consider it payback for disarming as a soul

Minifie

I thought that was karma for dropping a tank from hashan's sanction? 

Reyson

If only that had been the sole disarm for the day  

Archaeon

something something guards something something bombs

Entaro

Archaeon said:

consider it payback for disarming as a soul

Dude, it's not like that was intentional at all, and you got your tank back and tried to detonate again.  

Saibel

Archaeon said:

consider it payback for disarming as a soul

Yes, because that was obviously intentional. You guys sure are sporting.

Archaeon

i know for a fact you intentionally did it.

Achilles

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/

Webbed you, hit with paralysis and such didn't stop disarm.

What you guys are crying about above regarding tank building was done entirely IC.  Kept it off our city logs because I know you metashits will log onto alts to look.

Minifie

My fault, I introduced Saibel to my stoner playlist and all the bob marley infused her soul with incredible power.