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Guards
Seir
Seein' All the ThingsGetting high off your emotion
ANNOUNCE NEWS #2524Figured I'd comment since I've come back more recently and read a fair bit of guard deaths due to, primarily, one person. Kudos to @Trikal for having success at this just as @Daskalos did against Spinesreach, but like with Daskalos, these issues aren't really going to be resolved by making guards stronger (or more accurately in @Daskalos' case: altering the mechanics behind a certain sigil). The thing is that there's no real penalty for someone so far into endgame and what happened was repeated suicide rushes into guards while no one was around.
Date: 3/24/2016 at 5:48
From: Keroc
To : Everyone
Subj: Guards
Hey guys,
Some more guard tweaks for you:
- Increased complacency loss per guard death to ~0.75%, up from ~0.5%.
* This won't be absolute due to the nature of Rapture not handling decimals
well, but should be roughly close.
- If a city is below 5% complacency, guards gain an extra 20% damage bonus.
- If a city is below 5% complacency, complacency recovery rate is reduced to
1% until the threshold is passed.
And just as a reminder, from CHANGELOG 1182:
- Removed the 5% complacency gain from using GUARDS RETURN.
We'll continue to monitor the situation as it progresses. We're not super fans of constant raids, and think players should get a break now and then.
Fixing this is actually pretty simple. Deaths to guards in enemy territory should just result in the raider not being able to do damage to guards if they keep repeatedly dying to them. Repeated deaths in enemy territory should probably also result in the max vitals of any individual being lowered for a period of time as a deterrence from just doing it over and over. Imperian took a relatively similar approach. Guard raids are still fairly alive and well over there, just not overwhelmingly so. Problem solved. Guard raids are still viable here but the constant off-hour suicide rushes aren't.
Edit: If you want a roleplay reason as to why someone's max vitals would be lowered, just do an emote that a part of that person's soul or whatever gets jacked by the org's respective pylon. Ylem is one hell of a drug, man.
2
Comments
Honestly, the players and admins cant win. If we get rid of guards, people will camp a city (Oh no, means there's actually something to do beyond sitting in a haven and afking or throwing emotes at each other). Keep guards but beef them up, people cant incite city v city wars because guards become harder and harder to kill, which in turn forces the conflict players to sit afk and do nothing or throw emotes at people. You don't HAVE to have guards. They are expensive and cost alot to keep them up every day, and in most cases generally useless. But if you don't have guards, you have the potential to get camped.... hmm. Double sided sword with no winning for either side, but wait, there's one more choice. IGNORE IT. You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. Let the conflict maker run suicide runs against guards while you sit and rp. Eventually the conflict maker will stop when either a) they're bored, or b) there's nothing left to kill.
People find fun in the game in different ways, and conflict is all but nonexistent because things keep changing to make it harder to have conflict.... unless its completely roleplay based, which is exactly what most "conflict" is becoming.
And before anyone thinks I'm making a personal attack on anyone, I'm not... just making a generalized statement because I've heard complaints on both sides, not just on this topic, but an assortment of topics similar to this.
Also, just "ignoring it" is a poor form of roleplay. Yes, we are ultimately playing a roleplay game and if I walked into Bloodloch and starting massacring guards and you lot did nothing about it? I'm pretty sure that if Loch's leadership didn't say anything, your pantheon probably would.
If you want conflict, pursue actual means of conflict. Make your voice heard that you want a war system sooner rather than later. I'm completely fine with guard raids, but one person shouldn't be successful in them. It's a group activity and it should have an actual drawback if you keep repeatedly failing.
Edit: Oh, it's worth mentioning that stuff like this does more to kill conflict than create it. What will happen is the creation and implementation of knee-jerk mechanics that make guard raiding near impossible (which is what happened last time that people got carried away with it).
People can pick fights all the time, its call the Sect and North of Trees, but that doesn't make it a conflict.... that's just a fight. Yes, xp is meaningless... trust me I know this. Most people will see conflict as griefing because they just don't want to deal with it. Again, I know this as we did the same thing during the Bloodloch v Spinesreach war. The reason why most raiding quits is because its more usually a solo/two man team against 10 defenders. Most will stop because they aren't achieving what their primary goal is, so you stop and wait until you can reach your desired effect. That's like saying its still an rp scenario as you throw emotes at someone for 2 hours when you know they are afk.
Its still a form of conflict, even if a majority of people disagree/don't like it. You, as a player, have to find a recourse to end it... even if it means sacrificing an hour or two of emote throwing and being active to keep it ended. In the end, no one will truly ever win, because no one is ever truly satisfied with the outcome. Especially when changes happen that make a conflict pretty much a moot point.
I'm not upset over guards dying. In fact, I'm not really upset at all.
However, with a looming war system introduction which will likely have strong tie-in's to gold and commodities that an organization has on hand, there are compelling reasons as a player as to why I think one player taking advantage of poor guard mechanics is a bad thing. It's also why I'm saying that, if your goal is to create/have conflict, it's a poor way to go about it because you're ultimately just stifling it with your actions. Stuff like this is how mechanics get introduced that either kill guard raiding off completely or make it so it's impossible because it's generally hard to find a middle ground.
Fortunately, I've found a middle ground that can simultaneously make it so that guard raiding with a group is still very much viable and realistic while Trikal/Daskalos suicide rushes are no longer possible. It's a win/win for everyone.
I've also made it a point to discuss that we have too many means of avoiding/stifling conflict as is. However, when it comes down to discussions of removing havens or other mechanics that actively stifle conflict from happening, people from both sides of the aisle oppose it.
Also @Zsadist: If you raid an organization and get upset when the organization responds in force, I don't really know what to tell you. If I raid outside of Bloodloch, I expect Bloodloch to respond. I don't expect them to politely line up and let them fight me one on one. I do think there's something to be said where if you jump someone then the entire city gets involved and they do so knowing that if they get jumped in retaliation, it creates this endless cycle of not being held accountable for their character's actions, but that's another can of worms and unrelated to the thread.
The reality is that two players have demonstrated that just making the guards more powerful isn't the solution. My solution will make guard raids still viable, but will require a group to actually do it rather than one or two people.
Something something do you bleed in a rly gruff modulated Ben Affleck voice.
You mean that thing that MULTIPLE people have pushed to get implemented for 2.5+ years and is nowhere closer to being released than it was when it was FIRST implemented? Please, tell me more about how this will help AT ALL. Instead of little guard raids, it'll be a full blown system where City/person A complains that city/person B is doing thing C, and ruining D-G's active game time.
Every piece of conflict made or will ever be made, will ALWAYS end up with massive forum rp, en masse ooc whinging tells about how person B should stop doing thing C, en masse ooc clans about how much group A hates event X, and so on and so forth. Hell, even the 3W event had complaining from noncoms who were questing in an open pk area and being killed. No matter what the admins/players do, it always comes out to a lose/lose. Why else do you think there are very few "conflicts" about?? Because the majority of the people don't care anymore.
soo... +1 to Seir's idea as someone who was part of the "Victimized community/city" recently. I can live with, and enjoy defending against a raid party. I don't like seeing my city drained of resources because one to two asshats decided to suicide run the city when few to no people were around, and those that may or may not be around are noncombatants.
edit: And the debuff should last 30 minutes, with the timer resetting with every death to guards, and if this is too short, and doesn't do enough to discourage stupidity, even at a 10%-15% health loss per death, give or take, bump it to 45 minutes or an hour, whichever is more likely to discourage the brute-force stupidity, and make it actually a tactical thing that you need to plan ahead of time, and have prepared, and make sure that if you're going to go in with a squad of 5, that you're working cohesively, and that you are prepared for everything. Oh, and increase the usefulness of traps/trenches/stuff like that, I dunno if the shadow side has anything like traps (maybe sentinel needs a bit of a tether shift, or maybe some sort of shadow-side counterpart, if not just being made a neutral tether like Syssin) But I know that right now, traps are mostly unused because of a low success rate, a lot of guessing, and a commodity cost that doesn't feel like its worth the low chances of success.
If the concern is delaying reaching level 100, then I remember a time when endgame took a long time to obtain. It was a lofty goal that could only be reached by a great deal of dedicated time to the game, and dying would set back that goal. Endgame should not be something that a "casual" player should achieve as easily as they can these days.
If the concern is PvP victims, then there are PK rules behind that. Don't fight outside ylem auras if you don't want to die and lose the exp as a casual player. Making death mean something makes city raiding more of a deterrent for the attacking group, and the defending group can sit back and not fight back in accordance with the PK rules.
So suddenly you do not care about the conflict, the ideals, or anything of the sort... But your home is being attacked so you feel compelled to either do something about it, or log out so that you do not have to do something about it. The guards are screaming on CT and everyone who wants to defend is pressuring you to do so or accusing you of not being a patriot or caring about your home.
That, frankly, sucks, and I do actually feel bad for people in that position. A game without a neutral option is always a game that is going to put people in those situations, and I think the Administration needs to think about whether they want to continue compromising to make that not happen by hindering conflict (and therefore making people who want conflict log out or turn to other games out of boredom), or come up with some option for people who want a home but do not want to get dragged into conflict.
Personally, I like the idea of opening Esterport up for citizenship by players. Make Esterport have some agreement with Delve that they do not need to hunt ylem for the city buffs, but that the citizens of Esterport are not allowed to engage in conflict if they wish to remain citizens. It could turn into a pretty neat RP/artsy fartsy commune for people who want to build a city on culture but otherwise not be engaged with the ongoing conflict of the game. Events could be written to give the people of Esterport a means to participate without fear of removal from their city too.
I think there -should- be a place for those people, but there should also be a place for people who want spontaneous, player-driven conflict too. Right now, both kinds of people are unhappy, and I cannot envision a war system that is going to change that.
Edit: Also, I am super not a combatant. I have two macros I mash. That said, as a non combatant I still see the value of a game that has real, spontaneous conflict that is player driven. I also see the value of a game that feels a bit 'unsafe.' You do not need to be a combatant to value what combat/PvP brings to the game.
Regardless, its been a very long time since I played Achaea and I hear things have changed around city-wise. When I played Cyrene was "light neutral" but pretty much tied to Shallam's hip.
@Zsadist. (Re: War System) Yes, I know. I've been a large proponent for the war system (including the old one) for ages. You know why the original got disabled too, right? People taking an inch and going a mile. Sounds pretty familiar given the circumstances on what brought about this recent batch of guard changes. Case in point about how people end up stifling conflict with what they think is them galvanizing it. (Re: Forum RP) Players need to work on that then and detach themselves from their characters. I've had this problem in the past so I can recognize the same behaviors in others. People need to stop looking at the other side of the playerbase as adversaries and more so as people with the same objective: to have fun.
Though really, the reason that our conflict systems tend to go away is because people have a tendency/history of abusing mechanics and going too far with them. See: Why we haven't had a Holy War in forever, the war of attrition that was attempted with the last war system, guards, all the changes that were necessary in the Hunting Grounds, etc.
Edit: If there's an extreme amount of forum RP going on, there's an extreme lack of accountability regarding why the conflict systems tend to disappear too.
(Re: Forum RP) I highly doubt that people will ever truly be able to detach themselves from their characters or their time in the game. People complain because whats going on in the game isn't what they want to do or be subjected to do. Like Faerah said, you either log out during guard raids or get guilted into defending your city (regardless of your viewpoint on the situation). These actions are what CAUSES people to come to the forums and whinge, gripe, complain about every little negative situation that arises against THEM. We're all guilty of whinging about conflict to some varying degree, but most take it to forums or complain en masse to the point that it will get the admin attention the offended player wants in a way to get the offending situation to cease and desist. There is going to be no end to this unless people agree to some predetermined outline of what said conflict is going to contain.... and even then, thats not fun because Person A can't do everything they want to do because Person B doesn't want A to do XYZ.
Also, I'd like to note that the reason there's no more Holy Wars going on, is because the Gods are hardly ever even ACTIVE anymore. Hell, at most I see Chakrasul, Slyphe, MAYBE Ethne online at random times.... not to mention the fact that, who the hell even cares about PK anymore, except maybe a handful of people. And how many of these PKers are even in one of the "active" gods' orders? Most people in Orders are pure RPers (which is fine) but is also why there's no Order Wars anymore, because nobody cares to incite a god conflict that will make them do something outside of throwing emotes at each other.
In my opinion.... the only time there is a conflict that people actually ENJOY, is when its a pure RP conflict that has no mechanical implementations at all and its just X emotes/tells/says Y to Z.