City guard system is fundamentally flawed

Leana

@Oleis I know you have a lot of work ahead of you, but I believe this is paramount to a future in which city vs city conflict is the main focus. I understand a new 'war' system will be brought out soon, but unless it changes the current guard system here is my post:

The guard system we currently have is broken.
--Reasoning:

As a result of the way guards can be placed throughout the city and their cost to the city, city's are forced to lockdown and effectively remove entire sections. These are entire pieces of game content being ignored and unused. Some examples are a large building in the northwest section of Duiran, the prisons in Bloodloch, and I'm sure Enorian and Spinesreach has a few places too. These locked off areas only shrink the world as a whole and deprive new players of potential experiences and fun.

I don't claim to know all the reasons as to why this happens, but I want to stress that I don't need to know. Something is causing this to happen to the four major communities of the game and it needs to be addressed. I have my ideas and I'm sure others have as well, which I'm hoping people will read and post on this thread. (I'm also sure that there's a group who just don't care and their response will be 'So what? Move on.' To them I ask kindly - take a back seat here. If the attitude towards cutting content from the game is apathetic, that's a completely different issue and should be addressed in another thread.)

Just another reason why I believe guards do not serve their intended purpose: If their purpose is to kill enemies, that is a fundamentally flawed purpose. Death is currently meaningless. There is a gray area where people are unsure if the mirror is considered an in-game lore item or if death should be treated with a level of fear as we do in real life. If the mirror is considered in character, then death is meaningless - you know you will be given a new body. If it is not, then choosing to die should be considered suicide and an in character trait. Likewise, dying repeatedly while trying to kill guards and players should be considered an OOC or Metagaming action. Your character does not know they will return, so purposely jumping into a lose situation repeatedly is blatantly ooc. Here's an example:

Someone wishing for some conflict will perhaps attack a city in a raid to try and kill guards or defenders. If they decide that the level of response isn't to their liking, there is no way to stop them or counter if they decide to throw themselves at guards endlessly in an attempt to widdle them down one at a time. A raider who is choosing to die to nuke down guards has taken your only form of defense from you - killing them. This gives them the ability to effectively grief an entire city with no real response.

Guards are designed to offer sanctuary to players so they may operate without fear of constant attack. While the idea of providing a safe place that negates conflict seems counter-intuitive to the nature of the game, it's necessary. Without this place to conduct roleplay, design work, shop, or relax. Many would either choose to seldom play the game or gravitate towards the safest place they could find (Which would turn into a city hidden room with sparring or some other highly fortified single room structure).

The only barrier towards abuse right now is admin opinion of a situation. In the recent past, this has failed us. What's worse still, the entire situation had no real relevance on the organization (Duiran) as they turned around and just citizened one of the griefers like it was all for nothing. That sends a lot of confusing signals to players when it comes to conflict. Is it all just meaningless fun? Should we approach raiding and any form of city-wide conflict as non-canon unless presented by the Admin?

--Ideas:

I'm going to throw out some ideas so this post is a bit more constructive. I would love to hear other ideas from other people. I think I'm always right, but that's until I hear someone who is more right than me.

1) Change how death affects living:
Right now, death for living takes about 2 minutes (or 1 minute with spirit anchor) or you are revived instantly. (Minipoint: This needs to not happen during focis or vamp husks need to be revivable.)

Instead, when you die you can only be revived by a player. If your body is not revived within 1 minute(30 Seconds for Spirit Anchor), it decays and begins to reform at the nearest shrine of the Patron of your city with some flavor text (then you get dumped into the living portal room), which takes 1 min (or 30 seconds). Likewise, if the body is destroyed (beheaded, destroyed outright via insta-death like vivisection) it will start the reforming process right away(which means a quicker respawn). This is effectively a lore change as you can still decapitate or offer the kill within the time limit.

2) Change how guards deal with intruders:
Right now, they kill them and each do it slightly differently and require usually a handful to succeed on high level or artifact people. As mentioned above, they'll be back in 1-2 minutes if they really want to be there.

Instead, balance guards around a system where if the intruder is forced to stop moving for a period of time (say 15 seconds) and is prone, bound, and low on health (say 25%) they are moved to a city prison. Each city would have their own version, Spinesreach already has one, Bloodloch has one. This room would be the 'holding cell' and it will be a non-violence room for say 5 minutes, before they are transferred out of city and escape (it'd be a big flavor emote, perhaps with rotating reasons) and end up at the living or undead portal room (the one you end up after dying)

Put a cap on the number of guards per room, lower their cost, have them be squishier, and encourage the raider to run from them.

---- That's it for now, this is a long post.

Aishia

Leana said:

Someone wishing for some conflict will perhaps attack a city in a raid to try and kill guards or defenders. If they decide that the level of response isn't to their liking, there is no way to stop them or counter if they decide to throw themselves at guards endlessly in an attempt to widdle them down one at a time. A raider who is choosing to die to nuke down guards has taken your only form of defense from you - killing them. This gives them the ability to effectively grief an entire city with no real response.

Really the only part I agree with. the locking off area things isn't really a problem just us making choices. It's really not positive content it's more "stuff we probably should have just deleted" but 1-2 people wanted to keep it. Plus other stuff that's not worth getting into :P

Leana

Aishia said:

It's really not positive content it's more "stuff we probably should have just deleted" but 1-2 people wanted to keep it. Plus other stuff that's not worth getting into :P

I thought the prisons were a positive bit of Bloodlochian content. That is where vamps got quick food. Duiran doesn't have as many areas locked off, due to its design. But, If we could put doors on the third level, I'm sure someone would like to lock that off.
The conversation then goes to: Do cities need a redesign to make them tighter? Should we start deleting extra space that will never get used?

It's not like we need a ton of rooms to make up open space. For example, 50 rooms can make up a forest, but so could 1. Rooms don't have an uniform size. I'm always let down by a locked off part of the world.

Aishia said:

Plus other stuff that's not worth getting into :P

I wanna know >.<.

Aishia

Areas that are locked off are additions not a part of the original city designs nothing really lorewise or noteworthy about them. Also: I'm the one who installs and locks doors in Duiran at least so, nah, not interested in locking the top floor at all. MY TLDR is: Make guards a bit stronger so they can't be bashed to death easily. Let them fly/go up into trees more better. Make cities "relatively" safe but not impermeable to large groups or huge sneaks. Add secondary locations as raid targets or objectives rather than the common gathering areas.

Jensen

I'm no longer really interested in pushing the revamp the guards idea, but the game always seems to teeter totter between guards are easy to wipe out vs immortal hellspawn.

Rhyot

Here's my two sense... remove guards entirely. You don't want a city coming in and wiping you and your citizens, don't be dicks and understand that your actions have consequences.

Self-policing, self-punishing. We have much too large of a safety net for the general populace and there is no such thing as consequence anymore because you can spout whatever bs you want behind guards and hardly get touched so long as you don't leave your city.

Haven

I'd probably reduce guards, not remove them. Give them a real patrol function and make a sort of minigame for the security ministry that included random NPC related crimes in addition to player related ones.

I'd also expand the bounty system too to be part of the system in a more meaningful way.

Leana

I'd actually increase the guards overall numbers, but cap their room max. Lower their health and upkeep (and hiring cost) so they're just fodder and open up every 'public' part of a city.

Jensen

Every time I've ever been MoS I've discharged most if not all guards. In my opinion they are too costly to replace and maintain for what they do. We don't have a war system so protecting your militia isn't important. Hunting artifacts are lost on log out, so protecting those people isn't what it used to be, so that is no longer important. City enemies cannot purchase from shops anymore, so keeping enemies out of your market is no longer important.

All it currently does is give the illusion of security to people and semi protect org buildings and people with PK rights on them; while giving the remainder of the realm some high value targets to hurt city coffers. If there were more avenues as an attacker to damage a city then guard would actually have something to protect.

Rasani

I would disagree with removing them for only one reason: raids that last too damn long. We know the ones I'm talking about. 
We figured out a guard configuration that finally allowed us to not have to deal with the raiders for five hours at a time. Is it a rare happening? Sure is but it's still something I'd like to be able to be prepared for. 

Rhyot

Raids are done because someone was a dick and the city is paying the price of the consequence. Back when I played Imperian... if Antioch raided Kinsarmar.... and Antioch reigned victorious over Kinsarmar... a ransom was made to call off the raid/war. If the ransom wasn't paid, Antioch would continue to destroy Kinsarmar until it was. Once it WAS paid, they left and we were chill for a time until some moron decided to act up again. There was an unspoken agreement among city leaders to not just incite one war after the other to eliminate everything the opposing city had. There was always some IC reason (typically because someone was a dick and said the wrong things to a few people) for a raid/war.

One thing that people fail to either understand or comprehend, is that raids are a two way street. If we do it to you and you don't wanna claim to be the loser, then raid back when you can. This will continue until both parties reach a decision of a) truce or b) a victor is decided. Yes, they can last for hours, and some back in my Imperian time, lasted for DAYS, a few even lasted a week or two because the ransom wasn't paid or it was an undecided victor.

If you want to be prepared for a raid, always be prepared for a fight. Always be willing to go, "Sorry darling, but duty calls." and cut your RP. Its not the most ideal situation for the pure roleplayers, but it is an option. Additionally, you also have the option to not participate and claim the raiding city the victor quite immediately. Guards only serve as a deterrent to city v city conflict. That's all.

Rasani

Rhyot, while I agree most raids come from that, the raids I am talking about didn't. Everyone knows it. 
I get it, you're mad people shout or rp when they could be bashing or pking but those raids literally started for no reason. I know this and Spines knows it because they ALSO dealt with it. 

Rhyot

I know what raids you mean, Rasani. I really do.
However, those raids start because people are bored and just want to do something different beyond RP/PK/bash. If we had the ability to actually have city v city fights/conflict, I think we would see far less random raids for no reason, and we would see a fair bit more raids WITH a reason. I mean, of course you'd still have the griefy people who like to beat their chest... but I feel like we can police those griefy players personally.

I could be wrong in my assessment, and I might be. But I do feel that we can get rid of guards and still have a better/decent form of roleplay/conflict if we did so.

Aisling

When the griefy players went to Duiran/Enorian, we policed them and forced them to stop(see Lait), but before that, they were not policed. Enorian and Duiran went through raids that lasted for more than 5 hours and if we didn't have guards, we would've lost MORE players than we did. I still know 3 or 4 players who no longer log on after all that stuff because they got so fed up. Claiming that "they were bored" is a valid reason as if it's anyone's fault but theirs for spending over 5 hours stopping the fun of the other org isn't a good response.

We can police them, but since there's no guarantee that we WILL, removing the means of defending from the abuse of raiding and so on isn't gonna work. An actual raiding mechanic might be cool, cooldowns, punishment when the raiders/the city being raided loses, etc, minimum number of people for it, that sorta thing, which would also imply the involvement of reworked guards that do more than what they do now and so on. Make it a game instead of people throwing themselves into guards over and over and hiding in pockets without them.

That way you make guards worthwhile, and fix the potential issue with raids.

Rasani

That may be something incoming with the war system too and it would be cool. Spinesreach actually handled their raid of us over Lait really well, there was rp to it and it made sense. More stuff like that will hopefully be incoming from all sides. 

Faerah

What about another idea entirely for city defense that will permit raids, but also limit the length of them in a mechanical matter -

Make a defense system that city members keep charged via quests and the like that, when activated, slowly weakens city enemies within the city. Achaea had something like that (I don't know if they still do).

In Shallam, it was the "Daybreak Mirror" and we had to kill and feed certain denizens to it. Security aides could activate it, which sent a sort of pulse of energy/warning that it was activated.

That way, eventually, if city enemies stick around too long they are very easily killed by guards and/or player defenders. Once the defense system is activated, it needs to be re-filled (and probably should have a slow decay on energy to keep people having to watch it) - which gives coms and noncoms something to do to help defend their city.

Something like that could make it so that raids won't go on for five hours at a time, but also make it so that raids can occur for long enough for the aggressor to deliver its message. Effectively, instead of guards getting stronger the more they die, raiders get weaker the longer they raid.

Guards could still be a thing - but I don't think they can address the problems being talked about.

Edit: I am not a raider. I'm just throwing an idea out into the world to be chewed on.

Jensen

Aisling said:

When the griefy players went to Duiran/Enorian, we policed them and forced them to stop(see Lait), but before that, they were not policed. Enorian and Duiran went through raids that lasted for more than 5 hours and if we didn't have guards, we would've lost MORE players than we did. I still know 3 or 4 players who no longer log on after all that stuff because they got so fed up. Claiming that "they were bored" is a valid reason as if it's anyone's fault but theirs for spending over 5 hours stopping the fun of the other org isn't a good response.

We can police them, but since there's no guarantee that we WILL, removing the means of defending from the abuse of raiding and so on isn't gonna work. An actual raiding mechanic might be cool, cooldowns, punishment when the raiders/the city being raided loses, etc, minimum number of people for it, that sorta thing, which would also imply the involvement of reworked guards that do more than what they do now and so on. Make it a game instead of people throwing themselves into guards over and over and hiding in pockets without them.

That way you make guards worthwhile, and fix the potential issue with raids.

No guards and not in the mood to deal with raiders? Don't engage. Not engaging attackers means they don't have cause to kill anyone. All they can do then is be annoying and maybe exterminate rooms. Both of which are healed with time. The enemies earn a bounty, you don't lose guards, and your players didn't have to engage in a fight they didn't wish to have.

Serrice

Achaea has lots of mechanics, but the one real thing keeping raids from lasting for super long periods of time (because they still do) is that there's an objective at the end (blowing the tank)... and sometimes that's still not enough if someone REALLY wants to get the point across. That, fortunately, is very rare.

You have to understand though, that Achaea has a lot of differences - culture, size, population, mechanics, and you can't really just take bit and pieces and hold them up as viable solutions without including the context.

Raiding rarely has any RP reason to it - you don't raid because a city slighted you (though that could be a motivation), you raid because you're bored and want to get some PK and blow a tank. It's implicit that everybody hates everybody else, so you just raid 'because'.

Achaea has a larger amount of targets, and a far larger population - four orgs to target for each city with usually 5-10 or more combat capable people in it at any point in time, which helps prevent burnout and keeps things interesting. There's more fighters, so things rarely feel as griefy unless it's Ashtan vs. anyone that doesn't out number them 2 to 1.

When an official raid starts, exp loss is disabled for the defender. The objective, basically a magical bomb, needs to charge off of PKs, and can slowly charge with time to a minimal level of effect. Raiders need to defend the bomb, because defenders can disarm the bomb. Cities only have five bombs at once and they take an IRL or two to make a new one. You also can't just radiance randoms, you can only kill people actually gunning for you.

In 90% of raids, if the defenders don't show up, the raiders leave because you're not allowed to just kill random people to start a sanction, which lets you blow a tank, and because, hey, you're raiding for fun and PK, and it's boring when no one comes out to PK. Let's go raid someone else who will!

Guards are limited in Achaea, but they're also absurdly lethal. Combined with the font (anti-long raid mechanic) and shrines (worldburn still hurts a lot in Achaea), they help serve as safety values for when a defender REALLY doesn't want to fight (or if they're salty about losing). You walk a clot of five guards into an enemy group and a lot of them are going to die before the guards do. Totems also exist in Achaea (walk into room and get transfixed-slept instantly). Running rampant in a city is really hard. Trying to guard bash is almost impossible if the guards sit on top of a totem.

---

Overall, what you see in Achaea is that raiding is mostly a mechanic that requires the consent of the /defender/, and is something that's supposed to be for the fun of both parties involved, and it works because every org has a number of PKers in it that like to PK - these are two things we don't see in Aetolia, and would need to be addressed/changed to make raids a fun thing for everybody involved. Otherwise, you're just going to get a lot of bad feels all around.