Member Ciem.....I MEMBER....

Runas

I seem to recall fond memories of gathering groups for a fun little objective based honors/conflict event, it was a way to get an organization to gather people up and whilst sometimes it was rather one sided, I seem to recall there being talks of IMPROVING the experience.

It was a larger scale battlefield with world emotes and announcement and opportunity to get all sorts of people involved, and while it was ...essentially DELETED. (I mean a fortress just doesnt vanish into the thin air), I feel like there was opportunity to expand upon this struggle, I feel like the "Replacement" was the Vortex, but ...Ciem had a fun flavor to it and I enjoyed it a bit more since there was an objective and an army, and not just a bunch of powerful mobs who effectively are a bashing grounds.

I dont know if perhaps my nostalgia for the place is overpowering my judgement (It might be)

What do you lot think?

Xavin

Ciem was fun at first. And then everyone figured out the rub - kill the other side's questmob. Ultimately it ended up turning into an annoyance where one side or the other just wouldn't show up without overwhelming numbers.

Haven

Aw, they got rid of Ciem? For shame, I thought the conflict was fun whenever it got utilized. It was cool trying to come up with ways to split groups to secure objectives but I can understand the frustration of dealing with the dogpile + questmob rush tactics.

I'm not sure how complicated the code is but a solution could have been to make the essential questmob immortal instead until a certain threshold of remaining forces was crossed. It'd make sense that commanders on the battlefield are the most protected or tucked out of the way of the main fighting. This could have been accomplished any number of ways like removing the QuestMob and having it spawn only after X objective is completed. Alternatively, provide the QM with "healer mobs" or just plain 'ole make the mob unkillable until X occurs. This would have eliminated the bumrush tactic and pushed players to approach the system more as originally intended.

If Ciem suffered from anything though, I'd say it was the larger issue surrounding group combat in general and that Ciem had no real effect on the world outside of its zone. A lot of the symptoms described by Xavin can be usually seen and perpetuated throughout most if not all the conflict systems Aet employs that involve group combat because group combat in general isn't really balanced and doesn't offer much strategy & counter after a certain size group. Ideal skirmish size imo falls between 3-5 people per team. At least then it's much more manageable despite the cheese that comes with group combat.

Aishia

Bring back Ciem!

Mykellah

Aww man, they got rid of Ciem? That was one of my favourite things to do back in the day.