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Comments
Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
get smote
smite me with all the smite you can s-muster
TBQH, I love how no one has been super obnoxious on this thread. Normally, cities behave like the two shopkeepers below: (Spoiler because of bad words in video).
Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
1) Uh. Two years might be a smidge long for this whole shebang. I actually have tried to keep my spirits up and just lean into war being a necessary evil (see what I did there) but like, there's a fine line between thrashing the daylights out of each other in turn and this being OOCly kind of exhausting.
2) Definitely want to +1 the notes on infamy. I was worried about this monthly bounty on my head making me a real liability to the city, but it turns out it is the least of my worries because a whole bunch of people can PK me all the time due to infamy, so what's another one on the pile.
3) I'd agree that there's been a nice upwelling of support from our youngsters. But I'm also curious if there's some ways to codify things that newbies/midbies/noncoms could do. Font is great, collecting materials, etc. are all good, but if there was any way they could contribute in a particular way to the war effort that was special to them (a la reckoning outposts or something of this nature) I think that would be nice. I'm working on faith/culturey things for them to do, but with their usual captive audiences often in combat it's a little tough. A few months of being otherwise occupied this way is fine, but I'm worried about it in the long haul.
also yea dude 2 years is way too long can we please have that shortened right away? Like idec if it breaks immersion but I do not want to be at war for a whole month, man, that’s too much of this
I’m sure Archaeon can agree
1) I'm strongly against the default length of the war being 2 years. 1 year is long enough, especially given the existence of the ability to extend the war. 2 years is over 3 weeks, which is long enough to drive people away from the game if they're not enjoying themselves. I'm working on keeping morale up, but that's another issue. Targossas had a pretty good population for a few weeks, but it's dwindled significantly, and I'm afraid some of the people who have stopped logging in won't return. Shorten it to 1 year.
I have no idea how Mhaldor's playerbase is doing, but I would definitely be concerned that the population that isn't a huge fan of PK might not be having as much fun as the population that plays the game for it. In Targossas it feels like everything that isn't PK is put on hold, which isn't really a great feeling to have to deal with for over 3 weeks. I'm trying to deal with that in-game, but it would be nice if this was only an issue for under 2 weeks rather than over 3 weeks.
2) I have a problem with the role Pandora and Twilight have played in providing incentive for third parties to get involved. Mhaldor already has the vast majority of the combatant population. They really didn't need a Divine-funded book to help motivate people to jump in. I appreciate that Pandora and Twilight were trying to make the war more interesting for the rest of the game, but honestly, there's no need for that. It's led to a significant feeling of dog piling where people are getting involved just so they can boost their odds to win more money.
This would be one thing if the war was close, but Mhaldor's winning pretty decisively at the moment, and with a significant number of other people getting involved, it has me wondering why I should care about the war at all. It's too late to do anything about this now, but something to keep in mind for future wars. Volunteers - please don't spoil future wars by encouraging dog piling. It's really detrimental from an enjoyment perspective, and contributes strongly to the "this isn't fun" feeling that can drive people away from the game. Even if the roles were reversed, I wouldn't want my victory lessened by having to drive off people who are getting involved to boost their chances.
War is a culminating experience between two factions. There's no need for the rest of the game to have a reason to care about it. Let it be something meaningful between two factions rather than motivating the game to unite against one faction for gold.
3) The infamy system in wars is something I brought up on ACC, but it bears repeating. It's too much. This is tied to both 1 and 2, as participating in the war boosts infamy, which then leads you to being open to attack from uninvolved people (or soldiers). This is fine for established combatants, but less fine if you have a large population of relatively inexperienced and low-escrow characters that rely on building renown over time for credits.
4) This is a system that relies on Achaea's PK system, which rewards taking as few risks as possible. The war system provides further incentive to take as few risks as possible. I have never disliked combat as strongly as I do right now simply because there's significant consequences to playing with risk. I appreciate the efforts to mask the impact of the desire to game the system by providing no information on what awards how many points, but in practice, that means people just try to be careful about everything. That is not fun.
5) I would suggest considering altering how tanks function in wars in order to force restraint, and outright confirming that killing guards has no impact on the war whatsoever. Guard raiding isn't enjoyable for either side and strongly encourages off-peak raiding. It also feeds into the infamy cycle. Right now it feels like there's incentive to kill guards because it might have an impact on the morale function, which might have a strong impact for points.
Restraint is something our entire playerbase is absolutely terrible at, myself included. Giving each side a set amount of tanks and either making capturing much more mechanically difficult than it is right now or disabling it entirely would force more tactical usage of tanks rather than trying to raid every single night. Balance this by doubling charge rate until level 1, tripling charge rate until level 2, and quadrupling charge rate until level 3. Remove the restrictions on charge building over time on level 2, save that for level 3. Make level 4 tanks a thing; they would alter the tank room's description for X amount of time even after repairs. Make level 5 tanks a thing; they would alter all affected room's description even further until repaired via patron request after a period of years. Increase the charge rate with each level - make it something rare and amazing that can only be achieved during war.
This could be facilitated by having the city's war denizen(s) prepare specific war tanks to be used, which would empty the font for both cities in order to ready the war tanks. This part isn't particularly necessary, but would make conflict over font energy more of a thing.
6) Please add a way less experienced players (or noncombatants) could participate beyond the endless loop of PK. Make fonts drain 3x as fast and add level-restricted font outpost-style areas. Consider ways noncombatants could get involved through providing incentives for donations (sufficient donations repairing rooms or temporarily boosting font recovery, for example).
7) Make npc soldiers of varying difficulty in areas surroundings cities that would drop great gold and experience if killed by the enemy faction, perhaps increasing in difficulty as they get closer to the city. (Also don't make them truelock in 4 seconds; I feel like this has to be said.) These soldiers wouldn't have any impact on the war beyond making it slightly easier to recoup some of the losses of experience for the 4 people who didn't get dragon during the 7 weeks of double XP.
8) Please add some automated open challenge system that sends a mutual challenge to both cities for duels to the death in Delos that would be relevant for points. The current system is very anti-1v1.
As for the current war, we are definitely losing so far but Im waiting for the essay and quiz to be announced to help us catch up not to mention the final raid on Sunday night for all the marbles
We are already having to turn down outside offers.
ETA: I would really like some kind of neutral, non-hostile ground like the Worlds' Fair pavilion where discussion and events can be held. Tells and yells are good and all, but preaching in a city you're raiding is still met with a lot of "shut up!" I don't care if this counts for war points or not, I'm not a fan of very structured debate. I just want the interaction.
In non-war times, the Ziggurat is meant to serve this function.
Reaching down with a massive hand, Sartan lifts your head and draws a taloned finger across your throat, the wound closing as He does so.
That's mostly because I really enjoyed the skirmishes during the Reckoning, where totems and guards and font weren't an issue. I wonder if that wouldn't be more fun in a war system.
I hate guard bashing personally, I feel like whenever we get asked to do it I'm being forced in to it every time. The infamy you get for doing it sucks, and the act itself isn't the least bit fun especially for anyone that is not a dragon. Novices are the ones who largely pay the price for guard bashing. I complained about it heavily at the time but that fell on deaf ears as my complaints usually do.
Definitely make a war 1 year and not 2. I can imagine half the people in a war getting fatigue already and we're not even a quarter of the way through.
From my perspective, the infamy system is a relic that should be removed (for PK, I don't care about theft). The old PK rules are gone. The other circumstances that contributed towards the infamy system haven't been relevant for years.
There's no reason that engaging in conflict with one faction should allow totally uninvolved parties to freely attack you afterwards. The writ and bounty systems exist to allow, and control, organisational retribution.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Also, war infamy should just be a thing, to eliminate the problem of outside actors trying to horn in on someone else's story.
Can you address the concerns of burnout raised by everyone here?
Reaching down with a massive hand, Sartan lifts your head and draws a taloned finger across your throat, the wound closing as He does so.
Seems like it only got removed for everyone being in the room when it dies. Would wager people who kill/attack it still get infamy.
Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.
smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.
ETA: @Daeir sure. One person can hit you, as opposed to being a fair target to start a sanction with, as retribution for an attack on the opposing City.
ETA: A person can only hold two bounties, and you can't have two people hit the same bounty until there's another reason for your teammates to, as opposed to a team being able to murder someone infamous all together. It's a mechanical difference, and it's pretty significant.
I'm not going to go into details but guard bashing for the sake of guard bashing is not a winning strategy. It might facilitate things that are, but if people are guard bashing and you're getting even half their team bountied out of it, you are probably the one better off. That said, guard bashes where a city has entirely noone online are very rare. They might not have enough to defend, but noting names for a full bounty list is usually possible, even if they don't show up on the logs. I will note that groups mass hunting individuals down was one of the primary issues with the old war system, so we're not really interested in promoting mechanisms that encourage that: that is a situation where fun has to trump realism we feel.
We are talking about war durations at the moment.