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New ideas for Order Wars
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You'll get more conflict if more people enjoy it. This means that, especially in mixed communities, there's a need to draw in the non-Pking side who wish to also be of help but are left with little to no options other than to QQ or try to do things that they hate/dislike/find no enjoyment of/etc.
It's pretty frustrating seeing people trying to address this and being met with, "tired of hearing you guys unicorns about not liking it, suck it up, we like it as is."
Let the Gods declare war and just leave the 'accept' Running like a coward away from the War, upto the people.. Then least 1 elemental is taking out of order wars, People starting them out of boredness.. As Im sure the God will involve everyone in his/her decission or even make RP out of it..
Or better yet, Make it like the old City v city v city v city thing that used to happen once a month, Capture the flag.. but to make it fair, only have the same amount of people, So if 5 people from first order, Then only 5 from another order can join. That will be decided before it starts with the "Join Order war" or some other command, And on the howling if first order has 10 and other only has 3, only 3 people from each will join, (at random)
thats only because some orders are bigger then other orders and try to make things fair.
Or Do like Pack challenges, Setup like 3/4 different things you can challenge a god for, Pk, Shrines, Capture the flag, etc etc etc .
As it is they can help during the preparations in finding shrine locations (if it's a shrine-kind of war) and hopefully help with defiling and raising shrines, but if they do that they are likely to encounter the whole PK thing that doesn't interest them much and not everyone has a hood and gem and whatevermorethereistohideyourpresence to do it safely. Sure, they might feel a little bit useful for a while, but I'm sure that we can collectively find other ways to be useful and helpful in a Holywar (which is sort of why I think this topic was started).
If it's the PK-kind of holywar, they will just log off, sit in haven and wait it all out because why bother? There's nothing they can do that interests them. However, in this scenario the characters and players of non-coms face a different dilemma. Will the player go for their preference and idle through a war, letting their Divine get decimated by opposing forces because they are not interested in getting involved in combat, harming their character's reputation/roleplay/whatever by making them seem like they don't care what happens to their God(dess).
Or will the character win out, going out to defend their beliefs, fighting valiantly for their chosen Divine, dying and costing a lot of essence because they can't fight, while the player is bored and feels bad for having to get involved in something they really don't like/finds boring?
Wouldn't it be sort of good if we could get back to the topic of finding ways to keep the PKers happy with a way to fight, while at the same time finding a way for non-PKers to contribute in a way that can make them feel useful throughout the entire thing and also having fun?
The current system is not perfect, but it's unfair to present it as nonstop PK with nothing beyond just "hitting things" - there are tactical elements (scouting, clever shrine placement, use of shrine powers, area control, monuments, smart movement/navigation, monitoring defilers/erecters, etc). It's far more engaging than lessers or raiding, as there ARE elements outside of just standing in a room and hitting each other - the system is not perfect, but it's the most expansive one we currently have for tactical choice and involvement beyond just standing in a room and hitting each other.
I am reading a lot of people say that holy wars are just PK gank-fests, but while some of that is the fault of the system, I think some of that may also be due to inefficient delegation and the system itself not being as clear in mapping out the options people have. In the Slyphe vs Iosyne holy war, for example, I didn't PK really at all for the first 1/4 of it. Ezalor led the fights while I bashed/cracked seals, monitored defiling, scouted, assigned defiling orders, etc. This is going to sound bitchy, but there's definite unfamiliarity and inexperience being a factor, which is creating this perception about stuff that simply isn't true - hoods, for example, really don't matter much for holy wars, as you can turn on shrine watch and use shrine sight to monitor who is defiling, even if they have a hood. In the Damariel Holy War, Maite was under the impression that surrendering would save her shrines, so I was yelled at for not being online to instantly surrender. Teani is posting about shrine/pk wars, which haven't existed for years.
The more fundamental problem is that PKers, especially PK leaders with experience in warfare, are skewed in what orgs they are currently part of. Changing the system to alleviate that has the potential to also strip out the tactical elements of PK involved, and I'd rather see the current system tweaked to address that versus making a new one.
Some constructive suggestions:
Improve ways that people can help out:
- Have shrine updates be baked into the system, so someone finishing a defile can see a tangible result right there over OT. A small change, but it helps illustrate that you did something to help your order out and makes it easier for people to see progress.
- Have people in the order either be directly stated in enemy order logs, or have people opt-in via HOLYWAR JOIN, so it's clear who is participating and who is not. There's a lot of frustrating confusion, ninjaing and collateral damage due to not explicitly knowing who is open game.
- Let orders form alliances. I don't think Iosyne's order would mind *at all* fighting 2-3 orders at once. We just want to fight, and if you guys can band together to make it more even, that sounds fine to me.
- Consider letting corpses be used again to help raise shrines. Right now, it's kinda an inexorable swing once people get momentum, due to how long sanctifying takes. If people could bash and help out with erecting, like in the old days, it would give non-fighters a much bigger role to play. Just tweak the numbers so it's not an instant raise/drop from a single quick clear.
Limit the PK to appropriate areas:
- Snag the unstable area/lesser aura concept. Turn a zone into an "unholy area" of maybe 2x shrine radius distance around a shrine that's been defiled/sanctified in the past 10 mins. Give "unholy aura" to people if they have sanctified/defiled/cracked a seal in the past 3 minutes.
- Same concept with monuments.
Augment the tactical options:
- Boost shrine powers more. We all have a billion (literally) SE, so give us way more to spend it on. Ideas:
- Have effects like Avatar persist after leaving shrine radius during a holy war, for an upkeep cost.
- Let players append ALL to shrine boosts/banes for a higher cost to let people remotely empower their shrines and help out maintaining shrine buffs from a distance.
- Let us do more than 3 worldburns because, eh, they aren't THAT op but they are great for letting someone outnumbered fight back.
- Introduce an option to give people a vanguard/prismatic barrier/etc - include a counter to this, obviously, but let us have a shrine power to basically make us super defensive to help mitigate overwhelming odds, for a cost.
- Consider an option to let us hire shrine guardians or make seals super strong, or something to introduce a way to slow down people just zerging shrines, and help out with defending shrines.
- Give a shrine glance command to let you look into a location of a shrine, to help people deal with hoods and whatnot.
- Remove godsbane. It just makes ninjaing easier and lets one Order curbstomp another super fast.
- Rework monuments. Nobody uses them. Partially because godsbane is far easier to use. Have their effects/loss be way more important. The actual mechanic for attacking/defending might not be that bad, it's just we never see them really involved.
Minimize the pain:
- Give extra xp on kills, assists and no xp on deaths to people with unholy aura/in unholy area. Make it suck less to die and more enticing to help. It worked for lessers, I guess.
- Make shrines only cost 10-15 shards to instantly erect, not 250, or let corpses be used to erect shrines. Make it easy to bounce back, so the focus is on fun conflict, not the boring afk that comes afterwards.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
I really like some of those ideas of yours, @Moirean, because they will improve how the combat war part works and lessen the strain and grief some might feel. I especially like the aura thing, because that would make only those who do certain actions would be open for PK, while others could still move around and possibly do other things to help without worrying about being jumped.
There could be quest lines to perform to provide an edge to your side. For example finding that special relic of the opposing side, which is hidden in a top secret location. By speaking to NPCs one could gain clues as to where it is and once found it could, um... make caps easier to break on shrines, maybe? And another one to gain entrance to the other side's Temple area?
Perhaps there could also be a way to enter negotiations for those who are diplomatically inclined, which would have a slight deciding factor in how the war will end or what will be gained or lost? Both sides appoint a negotiator and terms are discussed in some way. Like "If you agree to shorten the time frame, you will gain X amount of extra shrine essence in case you end up the victor." Or "If you leave these X specific shrines of ours alone, this special shrine of yours will have a hard-sealed cap after the war is over, making it even harder to break next time."
Remember, these are just IDEAS! Not perfect things, but starts and suggestions to pick from and make into something better.
That aside, having more options for winning besides just just defiling shrines would probably make things more interesting since you could tailor your strategy to the skills active order members have and you'd need to do a bit of thinking about what the opposite order might try so that you could actively fight that.
Like some of Moirean's stuff. I like the idea of using corpses more to defile/sanctify faster ( if I'm understanding that right ).
Wish you'd quit blaming that shit on inexperience, Moirean. Inexperience maybe made us lose a bit faster, but it's unfair to pretend any group was ever going to win against Iosyne. I'd be interested in seeing any -two- orders win, except maybe by sheer numbers of shrines.
Yes, you serve a Divine. You're at war, but there can be other ways to serve in a war other than fighting, as has been mentioned. We just want to spice them up a little, make them more involving and fun, create more options. Let the PK people have their PK, but at the same time let the non-PKers not -have- to be involved in PK, without telling them go hide in a city while this is going on, cause that's just... well. That defeats the purpose of all this, which was Making it more fun for everyone.
That was what my comment stemmed from. I think you're barking up the wrong tree if you're trying to convince me there needs to be more non-PK options - I agree. I just don't think PK should be lessened. There should always be the threat of getting killed while doing other work to win a war. That is.. sort of the reality of war, and it also opens up more avenues of strategy, protecting/escorting/etc of noncoms, working in pairs, whatever.
Perhaps, if applying the suggestions I made, one could gain the PK aura when finding one of those relics and carrying it. There would still be some danger in it and escorts would perhaps be necessary, one might have to hurry a lot (and perhaps not have the option of portaling or using wings/amulet while carrying the thing), but something as simple as going from a safe place to shop or RP in Delos would not immediately make you a target for PK. Just as an example.
At the same time, it shouldn't be the case where non-combatants end up just feeding, and PKers can camp there waiting to butcher anyone who steps out of the city.
What we need is something that balances the two. A mechanic that comes to mind is the minor focus ylem aura. In that case, the non-combatant is still open-PK, giving the PKer a chance to set up traps, but it is for limited circumstances/a limited time.
The aura system will most likely work.. But tuning it to find the system might take some thinking as how do you tell someone is helping? Hunting creatures to break seals/sacrifice. Standing near a shrine waiting for people to hunt?
I did like Saritas suggestion on the ROASTER thingy like the old war system but with the shortness of holywars have it a few hours and not 12 hours like the roaster thingy was.
That way you still get the pk aspect but for them orders who dont have pkers, You get different events to choose from and the first order gets to say alright then.