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Winnings for Losers
Hello Everyone! I hope everyone has been doing well and enjoying the holiday season.
Today I'd like to broach the idea of buffing the combat system for losers. I'd like to preface that this idea set is not because I feel I personally need to be rewarded for participating in combat/crusades/other possibly losing battles (situations with 5 v 10, so on and so forth). Not all of these ideas are fleshed out 100%, nor are any guaranteed implementations, however, I feel that if we take a look at ways to reward players for participating in raids/raid defenses/shrine conflicts/crusades and other facets of the game where more players involved could possibly equivocate to more fun created.
I've spoken with several players, mostly in light of the recent crusades where one side has considerably more than the other. Not that I'm 'shaming' or 'complaining', as I've been on both sides of the equation- yet because I've had experience with both I know that when nobody (or only a few) contests, it becomes ridiculously boring. By implementing some of the changes below, I think those who are less likely to engage might in the future.
WISHLIST:
Crusades:
- To encourage participation in Crusades and to reward people just for participation, whenever a shardfall happens give everyone on Nishnatoba a small but non-trivial chunk of experience. (not mine, @Penwize's idea).
- Remove experience loss from Nish.
- After 10 minutes (could be any timer) of being present in the plane of Nish, players automatically receive a basic favour from the divine they used to enter into the field of nishnitoba. (or just have it be from matsuhama)
- Shorten the duration (most of us aren't available for 3hrs a crack)
Raids/Raid Defenses:
- When an enemy group detonates a tank explosion, all defending soldiers of a given city receive a non-trivial chunk of experience through a wave of heat- similar to firetank. If necessary, buff the amount you get as an attacker.
- When weaken is activated, attackers do not lose experience or attackers receive a small chunk of experience per tick/5 ticks/etc
I'm sure that plenty of other people have great ideas as well, I just think these are a few ways to balance out and reward people for engaging in conflict. If anyone has ideas for what would make them more likely to engage in a situation that is disadvantageous, then feel free to post.
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."
Comments
Anything to drive more participation in terms of anything PvP is awesome. I am not the best PvP player but I do enjoy being a part of anything related to combat. The biggest thing I try to get newcomers involved with is large PvP battles like Raids and Crusades, it is just hard to explain the upside if you are on the losing end.
Adding the argument of "you get to learn "x" AND get experience/favours/gold" takes the sting off getting obliterated sometimes.
It also is nice, I would imagine, for the ones who normally have the larger numbers to actually have people to battle and fight. We are usually the smaller numbered group in Targ, and don't have the biggest pockets, so when we do have the numbers plus doing well and the opponents just stop showing up.. it's like, oh..ok so just sit here for two more hours?
Regardless I am always amazed at the veteran combatants and I am sure more feedback will come on both sides of the fence for this, but I think if it all else.. it is a nice discussion to have and think about.
Thanks Astarod
I don't know that shortening the duration on crusades is a great plan as much as seeing the crusading side hold the degrade is frustrating. Every order but the order that declared the crusade gets up to Nish for free, it's a reasonably hefty essence cost for a crusading order, that earns some sort of tactical advantage I feel like, or else no one will ever crusade a time they think can be reasonably contested. I'm not wild about handing out favors either just for being on Nish but I do like more incentives for people to come up and try something so the rest of that seems like a win. No strong opinions on the raid ideas, though I'm not sure they encourage active participation from defenders.
Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
(Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
I was talking with Penny on the crusade degrade functionality. I personally think that you should degrade the shrine when you start it, (24 hours prior) since degrade isn't really a channel so it's not really like you can block degrade for 3 hours or want to anyways. That way there's a syntax to just.. start crusade or whatever, and then shards fall for the next 30 minutes or something, within 90 minutes of the 24-hour start.
I think lowering the crusade cost would be ok, in exchange for lessening the rewards or damage or whatever. Doesn't feel like a lot of crusades are a big deal anymore anyways.
Additionally, one of the reasons I've heard from defenders that hate defending is they lose out on bashing where they could have gained exp. This was just way to remove that con from the equation for a somewhat minimal reward for participation.
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."
It's not encouraging participation if it's just "if you're a soldier in a city that gets tanked you get minor xp" it's just encouragement to sit on a guard stack until the tank detonates.
Mechanically I think crusades are fine, they're primarily a tool for patrons to stir up conflict and there's not really a problem with most of how they work. Maybe subverted essence rewards need to be looked at so people don't feel obligated to just save for avatar? and something to encourage actually coming up to Nish if you're not the crusading order, but otherwise they work fine for their purpose.
Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
(Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
It pains me to agree with this but I do. To me, Achaea is amazing because it's a game with real long-term rewards AND penalties for your actions so there are real reasons to invest time (or other things) in winning, so at a glance I should hate this idea because it kindof destroys this facet of the game.
However, you can't have winners if nobody plays, and lately it seems like nobody wants to play. Hiding on ships and journals or just logging out seems to be like the new meta, and participation trophies honestly would help with this problem. I think the benefits would outweigh the cost of turning the game into a safe space, which frankly seems to be the way things are going anyways so why not go all the way.
@Astarod You have some good ideas, and they may help. I think there comes a point for a lot of people where experience doesn't really matter anymore, so that might not do much motivating. The favor idea is original and pretty cool. I don't really think rewards of any type are a long term solution to this though. I think it's more about helping people become more capable at combat, so whether they are losing or winning, they are having a good time. The level of scripting/automation that some people/teams have just puts them on another level, and it's not going to be fun for many people to fight that. If you really want more human denizens to bash, then sure, just keep increasing the reward that comes with their participation medal. Give them favors, credits, free ships, etc., but we all know that's not a long term solution. The long term solution is to help get more players on at least similar footing (obviously it will never be equal).
I'm down to give full levels and credit prizes, packs full of gold, artefact discounts to anyone we attack.
Come fight.
I mean the goal is to get more people involved more often. I'm just puzzled on how to get that to happen.
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."
I think the lack of engagement might stem from the rapidly expanding paywall of artefact and multi-class requirements to be able to get into pvp. As it stands, the second you attack 2 people you become infamous and get dunked on by 20 people with $20,000 in arties, then later on get dunked on by someone else with a bounty on you.
It really seems to discourage people from participating. The skill wall is tough enough as it is.
There really is no cure to this, so I guess this is just an observation.
One thing I think would help a lot is a complete overhaul of contracts and bounties with player experience being the central design consideration. That won't solve this issue but it would help. As it stands, every bounty is by nature of how the system works, dramatically in favor of the hunter. They choose their target (always a weaker player) and when and where to attack. They also get infinite chances to attack.
I'd rather see bounties be randomized, but that would just restrict the system to Uber artied people like Marks.