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Lessers: Potential Tweaks
Per the discussion over in the rage thread, there are some issues with lessers. Here are my observations and some ideas I can think of. Obviously feel free to share your own thoughts on the topic and constructively discuss things, but PLEASE don't get bogged down in individual skill comparisons or criticism or orgs/people. That stuff derails and is not helpful!
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- The tapping mechanic promotes a single-room, fortified setup. This innately pits ranged attacks versus digging in and fortifying and heavily highlights the disparity in tether specialties. Darkies will outrange. Lifers will hold down the fort better. It also shoves everyone into one room. This means things like AoE attacks become super potent, lag becomes punishing and combat becomes very blitzy since it ends up being large teams smashing each other.
---- Potential solutions: Tweak lessers to be more like shardfalls in Imperian. Have tapping create nodes throughout the area, or roving spawns of elds. Some sort of adjustment that promotes splitting teams up to get the resources would encourages fights to be smaller scale and reward good tactics and movement and area control and also give newer fighters/noncomms roles they can do other than be meat shields. This would also potentially give room for more sect point gain, since 1v1 fights could break out more easily.
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- The unstable area mechanic means that you have a weird situation where the PK mechanics are really right in your face. The enemies right outside the zone are obviously there to fight, but you can't actually attack them. If you get a lust when someone is dancing around, you can technically be issued if they don't have aura. Things like convocation are even wonkier, as that can be used to grab people from the fight into a room of enemies outside the area who don't actually have aura - but you can't attack those enemies preemptively, or counter them with range, and if you rush to save someone convocated, it's an absolute headache to verify who has aura and who doesn't.
----- Potential solutions: I'd say just let us use common sense, but that stuff escalating and being messy is why the whole unstable zone and aura got made in the first place. I don't really have any good ideas for this that wouldn't be even more of a headache.
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- Elds are usually saved for the end. This leads to this frustrating situation where teams are still grouped and fighting elds but auras are dropping, but people rush for a last fight anyways. Messy PK cause and stuff for both sides and usually it's kinda a bit of a letdown - we want to keep fighting, you know?
----- Potential solutions: Have elds give aura when you hit them. Have the zone remain unstable until x number of minutes after the lesser is fully extracted.
----------------
- The changes to XP encourage rather chaotic and non-tactical fighting. People benefit more from wild attacks that hurt their own team than they do from smart gameplay. This leads to frustration and consequence-free things like suicide rushes. It also means that the people leading - the ones shouldering the most of the work and the stress - are often the ones benefiting the least from the fights. This is tiring and leads to anger and burnout.
----- Potential solutions: Don't reward xp for kill assists on people from your own tether. Give a reduced portion of assist xp regardless of where the person is (dead, at range). Have attacks AGAINST you tag you as assisting in killing a target. Someone who is tanking the entire enemy team IS helping get people killed by actively keeping themselves alive and slowing down the enemies.
----------------
- The tapping mechanic promotes a single-room, fortified setup. This innately pits ranged attacks versus digging in and fortifying and heavily highlights the disparity in tether specialties. Darkies will outrange. Lifers will hold down the fort better. It also shoves everyone into one room. This means things like AoE attacks become super potent, lag becomes punishing and combat becomes very blitzy since it ends up being large teams smashing each other.
---- Potential solutions: Tweak lessers to be more like shardfalls in Imperian. Have tapping create nodes throughout the area, or roving spawns of elds. Some sort of adjustment that promotes splitting teams up to get the resources would encourages fights to be smaller scale and reward good tactics and movement and area control and also give newer fighters/noncomms roles they can do other than be meat shields. This would also potentially give room for more sect point gain, since 1v1 fights could break out more easily.
----------------
- The unstable area mechanic means that you have a weird situation where the PK mechanics are really right in your face. The enemies right outside the zone are obviously there to fight, but you can't actually attack them. If you get a lust when someone is dancing around, you can technically be issued if they don't have aura. Things like convocation are even wonkier, as that can be used to grab people from the fight into a room of enemies outside the area who don't actually have aura - but you can't attack those enemies preemptively, or counter them with range, and if you rush to save someone convocated, it's an absolute headache to verify who has aura and who doesn't.
----- Potential solutions: I'd say just let us use common sense, but that stuff escalating and being messy is why the whole unstable zone and aura got made in the first place. I don't really have any good ideas for this that wouldn't be even more of a headache.
----------------
- Elds are usually saved for the end. This leads to this frustrating situation where teams are still grouped and fighting elds but auras are dropping, but people rush for a last fight anyways. Messy PK cause and stuff for both sides and usually it's kinda a bit of a letdown - we want to keep fighting, you know?
----- Potential solutions: Have elds give aura when you hit them. Have the zone remain unstable until x number of minutes after the lesser is fully extracted.
----------------
- The changes to XP encourage rather chaotic and non-tactical fighting. People benefit more from wild attacks that hurt their own team than they do from smart gameplay. This leads to frustration and consequence-free things like suicide rushes. It also means that the people leading - the ones shouldering the most of the work and the stress - are often the ones benefiting the least from the fights. This is tiring and leads to anger and burnout.
----- Potential solutions: Don't reward xp for kill assists on people from your own tether. Give a reduced portion of assist xp regardless of where the person is (dead, at range). Have attacks AGAINST you tag you as assisting in killing a target. Someone who is tanking the entire enemy team IS helping get people killed by actively keeping themselves alive and slowing down the enemies.
1
Comments
Abhorash says, "Ve'kahi has proved that even bastards can earn their place."
The whole 5 room thing is a brilliant idea as if it is in a hunting area it still allows them who only hunt to hunt without involve them into combat. If US as Players cant monitor whats right and whats wrong with who has aura then the system should just be scrapped like the war system...
Rawr
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
If eld are to give aura, maybe have an additional timer? After X long from a spawned leyline, eld stop giving aura (or just disappear themselves).
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
I'd say whoever went after them would probably be policed up by the playerbase pretty quickly, tbh. Could be wrong, I guess. It's happened before.
Good times. But yeah I've not heard of people going after little guys with auras because of eld or minors. Might be different if you're a known combatant but people seem to be pretty good at least from what I've seen.
Rawr
Nor do I feel like any citizen of Bloodloch (Or most of the Spines people) should ever be able to pull the, 'You didn't have cause' card. Bro. You're a fucking demon. There is nothing wrong or 'bad' about anybody to at claims to fight for the light attempting to do something about you. Realistically, anyway.
My point is, opinions vary and people's level of acceptance is drastically different. Let's just say that @moirean probably gets attacked more for being an established and skilled fighter while also serving as one of the largest antagonists in the game. It's silly people have to wait for something like, 'Oh she harvested some funky Ylem and she's shiny, I can fight her now."
As has been pointed out several times, the issue was whether non come were routinely pk'd for hunting minors and elds, and I really don't think they are. If Moi or Dask or Valley or any one of a dozen or two others does, sure, maybe. But they aren't the issue when we worry about changing aura for killing eld.
I agree with @Moirean suggesting alternate versions of lessers.
However, I also think the existing version should remain as well. There is still fun had fortifying a handful of rooms and defending, so I see no reason to scrap that entirely. Instead, create different versions and whenever a lesser drops, there is an equal chance it is any one of them.
1. The area turns into the fracture for 30 minutes. Newbies beware (some areas would be exempt from this)
2. The area spawns roving bands of eld AND minors every minute, for X amount of time
3. A group rooms (maybe smaller than the whole area) spawns eld in waves of increasing difficulty, until eventually the swarm arrives. (yes moi... kinda thinking RIFTS here)
4. Lesser is spread across 4 locations, all four can be tapped at same time.
5. Whole area sends ylem to pylon with the most represented people in the area. Groups of people attract eld.
Not all of them need to be the entire area - could be 10 room radius or whatever. And obviously some areas are not suited to some of these effects.
Each of the ideas is designed to encourage a different type of conflict.
(1) Mayhem?
(2) Would be small hit squads killing the enemy and keeping the enemy off their own soloers searching for minors
(3) Is a PVE challenge with potential for PVP upsetting it. It sounds awful but rifts in the Rift mmo were all sorts of fun.
(4) Smaller groups defending/attacking multiple mini-lessers all at the same time.
(5) Pure mayhem