Holy Wars

Alexina

Holy Wars are broken, mostly because there's no 'war' part involved at all. Either changing the mechanics or simply returning to the days of only the Divine being able to start/end wars seems like a good plan because right now they add nothing at all to the game. People don't even care about defending their religions and essence in terms of 'resource' is just neverending.

Essentially, war is being declared and as soon as it starts instantly surrender. All that happens is that the defenders have to spend a crapton of time raising new shrines. There's no glory. No conflict. Nothing. And it sucks.

Riluo

I tend to agree that it has reached a point where it adds nothing constructive to game. In nearly ever case I have witness it starts and within a few moments it is over due to the "surrender command". Honestly the system should require an element of combat to defend your beliefs. But this has been circumvented by a command that adds nothing. It is a real pity I feel.

Rashar

I think there is a difference in scenarios.. In the last war there was a significant amount of RP involved, a definite increase in tension and interaction leading up to the point of actual declaration. It made planning for it fun, and the fact that it was over so quickly was almost disappointing. 

With this, it really seemed to me that it was declared over some thin, thin excuse for conflict. I don't want to jump to any conclusions about what Moirean was actually thinking, but.. eh. I'm just saying, people on both sides were like.. what is going on?

The problem is if things aren't -hugely- one sided, we're talking about days. So then you get a situation like this, where you have an order full of top tier combatants versus an order with.. not. 

So you're basically ruining the game for people for days over a decision that was made by one person. And honestly, I still debated it for hours. Because I don't care about dying, or spending a couple of days getting whacked across the mud. But at the end of the day, you sort of have to figure out what is going to keep people happy, and the one or two people who threw a fit because their pride was hurt don't outweigh the remainder of the people who would either not log on or have a miserable time with it.

I am not saying you're talking about this situation specifically, but these are two very different circumstances that I can speak about from my own point of view, for whatever it is worth.

Teani

Aye, allowing only Divine to declare war would be a way of making it more about religion, I suppose. I believe the most important thing when getting involved in something like a Holywar is that there should be some form of event leading up to it, rather than a simple declaration. Something that takes a while so that all members are somewhat aware of why it's happening.

Sometimes being on the other side of the spectrum doesn't really fit in as a reason. In the case of the last one, my character had no idea why it suddenly popped up, other than knowing that there has been some personal feud between Slyphe and Moirean. Even though it wasn't her decision to make, that right there, to her, seemed like a very poor excuse to drag everyone else into it. Even when asking, my char wasn't given any reasons for why this was happening, only responses saying "I just follow orders."

Just my two cents, I guess. Make an event of it to give it more substance or leave it to the Divine to declare war.

Riluo

Oh there should -always- be rp/reasons behind it, or it feels griefy. I was personally speaking in a general sense of the system not the last few holy wars. If there is no real reason it is kind of silly, even if it can be fun PK (I am not a fighter really, I just attend leylines). So for non-combatants it is a real pain. However having said that I feel the system could do with a tiny tweak to make the fighting at least last for an hour or two before it can be rejected. But it is only my opinion so I understand if people do not agree.

Alexina

Re: Rashar

This was just one of a long string of holywars surrendered almost instantly. I have no idea why Moirean started this war, there was no post to the order or really anything beyond the public board, but this particular war obviously brought nothing to the game except shrines to raise for Slyphe's order. My main issue is that this is a long-repeated pattern. So far, Iosyne's order has been in a number of holy wars, and I think only one or two were actually fought to the end. I'd give exact numbers but for some reason, the 'searchnews' function does not work for the politics board.

It seems to me like a small ratio of holy wars are actually fought until the master shrine is defiled. They seem to take away more from the game than they add. At least they do for me.

EDIT:
I realize I sound a bit selfish in this post. But if you take a moment and think about how many hours of enjoyment and thrilling action that holy wars has brought to people in Aetolia and compare it to the amount of frustration, disappointment, and sheer boredom (often associated with raising shrines), then it seems reasonable to pose the question of whether holywars are serving the function they were intended for or not.

Teani

Not throwing a punch at anyone, but I believe there were arguments in the beginning of Iosyne's change into the Malevolent that she would draw all the PKers to her Order and that it would be less likely to make others want to compete against them. For some people entering a war only to die repeatedly for the duration of it without really standing a chance is going to be disheartening. Not saying I'm one of them, but there are those people around in most organizations. At the end of the day, balance makes things a little bit more interesting.

It's the same with Lesser fights. I still go, even though I'm probably going to get crushed, but if I notice it's very imbalanced, I'm more likely to say 'screw that, let them have it.'

Neithan

This thread is not going to end well, especially if the personal comments keep up. Play nice, children. This is why we can't have nice things.

Alexina

Re: Neithan

I don't think any of the comments in this thread so far were rude or personal. Most people seem to agree that the system as it is does not contribute to the well-being of Aetolia, although I think we all have a bit different reasons for doing so. I've yet to see a single person speak in favour of the current system, much less anyone exalting it as the epitome of fun, challenging, and intense gaming experiences.

This is not why we can't have nice things.

Angwe

My god's sword is cooler than your god's.

Irruel

Holywars have been a failure since they were implemented. There's been the occasional good one, but really for me they just ruined order conflict.

And it's not like the old system was great.

Problem is that there are so many projects the devs are working on, so suggestions to fixit need to be easy or it'll just be shelved.

Making them god only limits conflict to active god orders, and still does nothing to address the imbalance with stronger orders vs weaker ones. Sure, the strongest order must win, but it needs to be fun and also to reward strategy more.

Neithan

@Alexina - I've heard lots of whining aimed toward @Moirean over this war and I'm not actually involved on either side. I may've taken @Rashar 's comment about the last war having a lot of RP and this one "not" having RP wrong. If so, I apologize for that.

That said, nobody likes holy wars. I had a -blast- in the one I fought in for @Haern, right up until our Champion threw in the towel. But, then again, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who was having a good time. The fights were one side utterly annihilating the other, and our side couldn't hope to keep up with the shrine destruction, so nobody wanted to keep bothering.

Ezalor

Holy Wars suck. Totally agree that they should be Divine-only. My experiences with Holy Wars have been unpleasant altogether - there was the time Dhar and Haern's Orders decided to randomly war every single darkie Divine because all the darkie PKers went inactive which was awful, there was a random one we declared on Haern which was awful, there were a few aimed at destroying monuments which were awful (and instant surrenders once the monument is down, also monuments are AWFUL) and then there was this one for whatever reason which was awful.

Making them Divine-only means that the avenue for griefing/warring over personal issues is gone (although DELETE MONUMENTS first since it also takes away the player ability to get rid of them) and ensures that any war will have epic build-up.

Toz

Make it less 'go pk their shrines' and more objective-based. Go offer corpses at some shrine to charge your God's essence cannon, or go have a big melee at NoT over some item, or any number of things not 'afk at a shrine for 30 minutes and repeat'.

...Or war system. I'd like me a war system.

Daskalos

I actually begged for the instant surrender, because Holy Wars were setup in such a way that you could troll another order. The problem is no order is going to declare a war they're going to lose - and yes, when Iosyne's order consolidated all the PK'ers into one order, this is exactly what was expected. There isn't another Order in the game that can stand up to Iosyne's - you have too  many PK'ers. Bloodloch is already the largest org in the game as a result of vampires being the focus of advertising - now you've taken the largest org and consolidated most of their fighters into  one smaller org. Life side's PK'ers are spread too thin. Now, if we could do order alliances? Eh,  maybe that would fix it.

I hate Holy Wars because they're about who can grind the fastest and who can find who - in the last war Dhar won, Lucus killed like 20 shrines before anyone realized he was Dharian. We were really careful not to let him get caught because no one was looking for him.

Also, when Belgarion was declaring  those Holy Wars, Dhar said 'ok, they've had enough' and stopped him from declaring his next one. I think part of the issue is that -one- person can declare the war. Perhaps make it a three person command of the three highest ranked members.

Also of note, in the old system, orders could decline a Holy War. Now, they can instantly surrender. The difference in this and the old one is that this one at least inflicts some damage with the instant surrender (you get essence, shrines are destroyed) as opposed to before when all you got was a politics message saying 'Such and Such has declined the Holy War'

Xiuhcoatl

I really dislike the idea of holy wars being ONLY able to be started by the god of the order. That would pretty much kill the holy war system. As how many active Gods are around right now, not enough to every order.

I personally think, the holy war system needs a revamp, because it's boring as unicorn all when you win a holy war through surrender and then you can't rechallenge. If you win a Holy War, I don't see a reason why you should also be put on cooldown. Let an order challenge as many people they want as long as they're winning. When they lose, I could totally see them having a cooldown put in place so you don't get back to back stomped. 

There's also no encouragement to start a war outside of LOL MY E-PEEN IS BIGGER THAN YOURS. Introducing incentives to start holy wars and better structuring of holy orders would be amazing. If they had a militia similar to that of a city, that would be a very good start. That way you have the champion being the top of the militia and the order head being the top of the regular followers. Restrict wars to the militant branch of the order. Also allowing the head of each to induct into each from the congregation. Super annoying to be stuck in a congregation because there's no active God. 

I think there's a lot they could do to change the current structuring of the game for the better in general. However, I only care about PVP. I hear the PVE fanatics have their own gripes.

Areka

If there's no cooldown, it's easy for a strong, PK-centric order to troll smaller orders and perpetually keep them in a losing cooldown and losing essence/shrines, which is the problem. Just cycle through. 

Xavin

I don't know if I agree with the assessment that there aren't enough active gods for that to work. I mean, let's look at the gods. For the spirit-side you have Auresae, Damariel, Dhar, Haern, Omei and Slyphe. Of them, only Auresae and Damariel do not have a current player. For the shadow-side you have Chakrasul, Iosyne, Ivoln, Severn and Maghak. All of them have a current player. Now, with the way things are going, I could see two of the spirit-side gods kicking it, or perhaps the introduction of one or two new shadow-side gods, depending on what goes down, to even up the numbers.

Irruel

I know Raz has a better handle on the pools, but it's happened multiple times in Aetolia that a bunch of people quit at similar times and then a side is left with just a single active god.

If the attacking/defending of shrines could be made a 1-2 person thing, perhaps by greatly rewarding or even requiring that multiple shrines be hit at the same time, then being outnumbered by the bigger order will have less effect. They'll (probably) still win, but at least the fights will be more fun.

Edit just to clarify:

The bigger, stronger order -should- win. I'm not advocating mediocrity enforced by code. I'm advocating making it possible to have fun while losing, and also possible to achieve something by losing slowly.

Rashar

@xiuhcoatl Leaders can bring Congregants in. We do it all the time.

Unless I misunderstood what you were saying.

Arbre

I think leaders should be able to PROMOTE order members as well, and maybe even mark them as a rep.  People have said that takes away from the Gods when they're active, but as it is, when a God becomes active, unless They say that They want Their Order members inducting from the Congregation, I've never heard of Order members inducting without permission.  If they did, the God has many options on Their hands for punishment, up to and including ousting from the Order.  If that isn't a problem, why should promotion and marking as a rep be a problem?  That way Orders can still have some semblance of activity while they have an inactive God.

Ezalor

@Rashar it's based on what the Divine has set as privileges. Only Iosyne has induct power in our Order.

Rashar

Aah. The noob monster strikes again.

Ashmer

Rashar said:

With this, it really seemed to me that it was declared over some thin, thin excuse for conflict. I don't want to jump to any conclusions about what Moirean was actually thinking, but.. eh. I'm just saying, people on both sides were like.. what is going on?

See, this is how I felt about the aforementioned Order War, but the darn thing started at 3:00am my time, and ended at 5:00am, so we never even had a chance to surrender. I don't think anyone in the Order was even awake for it.

In the end, it still didn't resolve anything, and poor Tina spent a day replacing all the shrines.

 

The resource loss was minimal, ultimately, and I'm sure you were left with a kind of "yay... essence?"

 

Rashar

@ashmer Yeah. It was fun to watch everyone work together and all, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking, 'this is way different with bad guys around'. All in all, it was an anticlimactic end to a fun situation, though I think it took a bit more than two hours.

Also, I feel the pain. Shrine reconstruction ftw. Totally didn't know that surrendering was going to crush 66 shrines. 

Katszia

Uh, yeah the Slyphe / Chak war took a -little- more than 2 hours. Especially considering gathering up shrine locations took like 8 hours during the 24 hour "prep period" (and we still had to find like 3 more to have enough?) It was actually closer to 6-7 hours I think. Which, in the grand scheme of things for an order war is still nothing, and yeah it was overnight which made the conflict almost nil. Was pretty mind-numbing actually. But the RP standpoint behind it was what made it more fun, at the time.

I do agree though that there's a lot of revamping to do in order to give them any real merit. I certainly don't think there should be an "insta-surrender" option though. Even putting in a time frame after the war starts where it -has- to go would be better than nothing. An hour? Two hours? Just something. As it was, even Chakrasul didn't surrender until Slyphe's order was standing at her master shrine. That was pretty epic. She was around, she could have done it sooner, but it was so much better to walk in and go, "Oh haidear Chaky" as she lounges on her throne in wait. :P

Rashar

That's because Chakrasul wasn't expected to spend days doing nothing but vainly defending her shrines.

Katszia

It was more meant to read "She could have just surrendered immediately since none of her followers were awake, but didn't".

Ashmer

 

Edit: Censored by the Meme Police. 

 

Ezalor

Wow, you managed to both screw up the hyperlink and misuse that meme. Shame on you @Ashmer.

Ashmer

I fixed it!