Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 3.7K All Categories
- 3K The Midnight Age
- 757 Announce posts
- 125 Newbies
- 6 Class Guides
- 804 Harpy's Head Tavern
- 57 Echo Canyon
- 310 Self-Affirmations
- 163 Town Crier
- 135 The Exchange
- 167 Sparring Grounds
- Combat Guides
- 30 Combat Logs
- 188 Idea Box
- 9 Classleads
- 578 Roleplay Logs
- 107 Aetolia Development
- 5 The Void
- 744 Miscellaneous
- 9 Announcements
- 417 OOC Chat
- 217 Tech Talk
- 47 Scripts
Looking for more active discussion? Join our Discord at https://discord.gg/x2s7fY6
Announce post #2867: Everything's Eventual
Autoposter
BotBot
<pre>7/26/2018 at 3:22
Tiur, the Gnosis
Everyone
Everything's Eventual
Ruins Events have begun!
Those of you rank 4 or above in your war faction will now see Ruins Events missions available for every 30 missions done. This is retroactive, so you have a bit of a pile to start with. Every Howling you will be allowed 24 RL hours to start a Ruins Event. Only one may be started per faction per Howling. ONE. Coordinate this, please. At the moment 3-5 people can start the event for each faction, and I am making the assumption they will choose carefully when and who triggers it. The reward for the mission itself is meaningless, the Event is where the score lies. Please note that this is not per person. One event per faction, per Howling.
Everyone in your faction will be given a warning you started the mission, and the event will begin in 30 minutes. At the 15 minute mark BOTH factions will be told 15 minutes remain. Another warning will be given to both factions at 5 minutes. Then the event will begin at the outermost edges of the ruins.
The event involves PUSHing or PULLing carts of ylem and resources towards the center of the Ruins, where the Spirit is held. This is a channeled action that will be broken by any command. PUSHing brings the cart closer, PULLing causes it to retreat. They may not be performed at the same time, so you must interrupt the person performing the action first. The event will last for 20 minutes, and the score will be based on how close each cart is to the Spirit at the end.
You can see our goal here, I bet. It takes roughly 6-7 minutes to fully reach the center, unmolested. Strategies will be yours to develop, but I anticipate a lot of murder. Scoring, again, is based on cart proximity to the center at the end ONLY. One room matters.
PUSH CART
---------
Push a cart closer to the center of the ruins. Channeled, interruptible.
PULL CART
---------
Pull a cart away from the center of the ruins. Channeled, interruptible.
-------------
Notes for the forum:
We will be loving feedback for this. We've tried to come up with something equitable between a staged event with exact timing planned and something you can spring on an unprepared opponent. Your feedback will help us to see if we need to adjust timings, make the channeling easier/harder, etc. We're loving trying new things and I appreciate all the leeway you've given us with tweaking here and there, so thank you in advance!
-T
PS. There is an imp cart. It does not score. It is there because we couldn't bear to take it away.
Penned by my hand on Closday, the 23rd of Niuran, in the year 474 MA.</pre>
Tiur, the Gnosis
Everyone
Everything's Eventual
Ruins Events have begun!
Those of you rank 4 or above in your war faction will now see Ruins Events missions available for every 30 missions done. This is retroactive, so you have a bit of a pile to start with. Every Howling you will be allowed 24 RL hours to start a Ruins Event. Only one may be started per faction per Howling. ONE. Coordinate this, please. At the moment 3-5 people can start the event for each faction, and I am making the assumption they will choose carefully when and who triggers it. The reward for the mission itself is meaningless, the Event is where the score lies. Please note that this is not per person. One event per faction, per Howling.
Everyone in your faction will be given a warning you started the mission, and the event will begin in 30 minutes. At the 15 minute mark BOTH factions will be told 15 minutes remain. Another warning will be given to both factions at 5 minutes. Then the event will begin at the outermost edges of the ruins.
The event involves PUSHing or PULLing carts of ylem and resources towards the center of the Ruins, where the Spirit is held. This is a channeled action that will be broken by any command. PUSHing brings the cart closer, PULLing causes it to retreat. They may not be performed at the same time, so you must interrupt the person performing the action first. The event will last for 20 minutes, and the score will be based on how close each cart is to the Spirit at the end.
You can see our goal here, I bet. It takes roughly 6-7 minutes to fully reach the center, unmolested. Strategies will be yours to develop, but I anticipate a lot of murder. Scoring, again, is based on cart proximity to the center at the end ONLY. One room matters.
PUSH CART
---------
Push a cart closer to the center of the ruins. Channeled, interruptible.
PULL CART
---------
Pull a cart away from the center of the ruins. Channeled, interruptible.
-------------
Notes for the forum:
We will be loving feedback for this. We've tried to come up with something equitable between a staged event with exact timing planned and something you can spring on an unprepared opponent. Your feedback will help us to see if we need to adjust timings, make the channeling easier/harder, etc. We're loving trying new things and I appreciate all the leeway you've given us with tweaking here and there, so thank you in advance!
-T
PS. There is an imp cart. It does not score. It is there because we couldn't bear to take it away.
Penned by my hand on Closday, the 23rd of Niuran, in the year 474 MA.</pre>
0
Comments
1) What will we be doing with our excess troops? We own the entire Liruma. Like there's nothing left to capture. Thanks to the imp bombers, those troops are going to just be dropping over and over until they're replenished, but at some point we're going to just move our troops into their barracks because we need them to die to refresh...
2) Why did we march troops around and take over the Liruma if they're just going to wheel a mine cart past our troops? These guys suck as guards.
3) Doesn't this event encourage waiting for off-peak and starting it up? Most of us are EST/American, most lightside battle leaders are EU. So there'll be a 1v10 at 4 AM my time because that's optimal for them, then a ton of us around EST to push back with about the same result.
4) How much longer is this event slated to last?
outcome of the event in different ways. e.g. if you win the land war but lose the ruins events, the outcome is going to be slightly different to if you win both or lose both. Wars are rarely just "Side X won" ESPECIALLY in a proxy war where sides fighting don't truly have any lose situation.
We are a bit worried that this encourages offpeak play like that. We are very happy to discuss alternatives. One was to make you guys choose a time the day before, from a list of 'acceptable' slots. But we had a hard time coming up with a fair set of them.
The event is drawing to a close. Getting to the Ruins and dealing with the Spirit would be the final goals of all sides.
I started with a HUGE deficit and I'm discouraged to try harder than the bare minimum to help my city because of that false start.
Edit: I misread something and the real complaint isn't that I can't start the Ruins event, it's that I'll not be able to get any real ranking before this even ends.
EDIT: Also, how will we see the score there? We got a nasty surprise when reports finally came out, being much more behind than we thought. I'd rather not get to the end of this event and, surprise, we lost.
From the post @Oonagh. Yeah, I've got rank 4, and at least 2 other Spirit side do as well.
The Mitrine Ladhai'i (3) Ladha 39450 45000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missions Accepted: 0
Mission Allowances: 0
Missions Completed: 92
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time to hit that grind harder!
Nothing I do has felt like a facet of the event. I put in hundreds of sword blanks, digging into my own steel reserve to do so, and our Ophidians still use clubs. I spent a ton of gold, but I don't see that used anywhere (yet? mentioned earlier?) I also have no idea what all the fish roe is for, or why they wanted me to capture the orrery or do Hunting Grounds. I have taken over literally the entire Liruma twice now, and all that has earned me is -5 troops every day. Their village is surrounded and cut off from the outside world. Their troops can't march out, but they're pushing a cart past 200 soldiers to a ruins we've uncontestedly controlled since like day 4 just like their random NPCs do. The Ophidians don't seem to be doing anything to the village they have encircled, the Mitrine don't care that they're surrounded, and it doesn't seem to do anything.
I haven't altered the world. I haven't changed anything. I even missed the medal ceremony, so I just have some gem-y badge that means something, probably, but I don't know what it is. No Ophidians have bothered talking to me, no Kobolds have said a word, and even the Mitrine have ignored me the few times I've said stuff to them. Which is fine because I realize Celani are busy with the logistics of all this, but it's my understanding that outside of the single event nobody has had much of anything happen to indicate anything. We have a report for supplies, but no idea what those supplies do, maybe they don't actually help at all, how could we know with how troop RNG seems to function?
I think I have spent more time than is healthy engaging on these facets- the missions, and the troop movements. I've agonized over strategy, developed plans with @Borscin, I even drew the map of the Liruma on my wall with color-coded markers so I could quick reference changes. I logged in from my honeymoon (with permission from the lady) to shout about rations and coordinate some things as well as do my missions. I have been waiting to be a general in this game since the old war system was patched out and I think I've marched troops as much as anybody else. But I don't feel like I'm winning. Everyone keep saying I'm winning, the NPCs in the one meeting said we were doing well, but there's no feeling of that. I held out hope, frankly, because a post mentioned that if a side lost all their territory they'd possibly be knocked out of the war - if I marched my troops, I thought, it made sense that things would end in a win. We captured one gate early on for the advantage it gave, and to see if that would allow us to claim victory, and that got taken away pretty quick. So now that we've done it to every gate, and the entire Liruma, it feels like the chessboard is being abandoned a move before checkmate and I'm getting dragged to play Overwatch instead.
I just can't answer the question "Why did I bother with troops?" right now, because they don't do anything except partially? change how it ends.
The only thing enjoyable about this event has been the PK, everything else has been a test of how much I can suck it up and try to be a team player.
- RP: Biased towards RPing with lifer side more.
- Missions: Imbalanced and took a month of complaints to get fixed.
- Troops: Who can herd cats best and apparently a measure to ones ability to suspend belief for the second half of this event.
- Carts: (prove me wrong!) No engagement because people have to sleep/work/don't like to lose and come out either tied or in favor of Spirit because they'll wait until their peak PK time during EU hours.
I'm half tired right now, so apologies if my thoughts make little to no sense, but I just want to point out, I'm agreeing with @Xenia here, it feels like the goal posts are moving, and favoritism is being shown it feels.
I liked the Imps because I figured if everything turned out to be pointless, they would at least make me smile with their antics. With them gone, I'm free to focus on helping the Shadow tether but I also don't really care about the results of event beyond hoping we win so Borscin, Toz, Mjoll, Xenia, Rhyot and the ten or so other people who've been working so hard since day one to just beat Spirit. Pure Spite.
The Ophidians are stained in my opinion and it would take something directly to the Indorani to make me think differently of them. I looked over the various RP events the Indorani took part in, including the initial Ophidian-Kobold coup, and felt that the Indorani left themselves open to being strong allies to the Ophidians. It would have taken a single Celani five to ten minutes to sort out the Ophidian/Indorani relationship problem and it never happened. It still feels to the Indorani that they absolutely hate us and don't want our help and will betray or kill us at the first possible second. They're offering Shadow nothing aside from spiting Spirit (though we are getting literal tokens of appreciation, TBA what for in the future).
I don't know how to balance my appreciation for the work put into Aetolia and my disappointment at what I interpret to be a resource shortage. This reminds me of Early Access on Steam. If there were just more people brought into this event to help smooth it along it would have gone a lot better. Surprises -suck-, almost all the time.
I know there's still alot planned and more coming out, but maybe figure out what's dropping moral before the next update kills the entire event's attendance.
ALSO: Ylem containers being so scarce and the most popular mission is discouraging. I have to drop a 5 star mission to pick up a 1 star donation.
edit: @Axius I did the quest too for the language because they were a unique people who didn't hate me on sight. I was disappointed when helping the Imps dropped my reputation when I engaged in zero hostility. It's like branding the town blacksmith an enemy because he makes swords that could be used by criminals. Maybe not that simple, but it still sucked.
-All of the Liruma and the whole of Mitrine village is surrounded by Ophidians indicating that ruins should be no longer the focus of Mitrine and Mitrine backed forces. When the brothel is on fire, you do not go elsewhere to seal deals you rather try to douse it first.
-Ruins are already under heavy Ophidian occupation so pushing carts in it to gain a partial victory makes no sense for the other side. I will not call it favoritism because I think the mechanics have been made with several stages of a war in mind but perhaps the overwhelming Ophidian victory on Liruma was not expected. Ruin game would make sense if the scales were not tilted towards one way.
-There are always winners and losers in proxy wars. By being unable to help Mitrine and causing their village surrounded by enemies (which in a realistical scenario would end up whole village starving over time due to blockade or stormed by the magnitudes of soldiers within the Liruma Scrublands) alongside the potential material losses Enorian/Duiran would lose face as a reliable and powerful ally within the eyes of the continent. That is the RP loss of course. So in that light, I find them getting a chance of partial victory or salvage victory uncalled for in form of ruins game.
-At this point the only scenario would make sense is "the Last Stand of Mitrine Tribes" and their survival against Ophidian hordes and by Ophidian hordes I mean look at them, they are like Uruk-Hai hordes at Helm's Deep right now. If Light side requires a partial victory, they should have in form of saving the tribes of Mitrine from total annihilation instead of ruins game.
... how? how does it make any freakin sense that the mitrine can sneak a cart past literal hundreds of ophidian troops? how are the mitrine not just barely hanging on for dear life at this point? the ophidians slaughtered the beastlords like it was nothing - apparently, though, an agrarian tribe with few connections to the outside world is harder to squash than a violent cult? what??? just... what??????
i'm sure there are noble intentions here, whether this was something planned well before the mitrine's utter defeat (i mean, c'mon, they're defeated) or a more recent idea, but the goalposts can't keep moving. there's nothing remotely fair about it, and i can't repeat it vociferously enough: it makes not a single lick of unicorn-wanking sense that a 'facet' of the conflict that's definitively located within the sphere of total ophidian military dominance could be accessible to contest, let alone have any effect on the major meat of the conflict. ignoring the rando mitrine (whose presence *also makes no sense*), the ophidians have absolutely secured the ruins. it's theirs.
i can only assume this was a planned part of the event from the get-go, so it wasn't conceived in order to favor or give a second chance to any faction. however, this hasn't been close. it's not a war where neither side has really made any headway against the other. the mitrine are imprisoned within their village borders, and the only thing saving them from capture is that it's mechanically impossible to capture the mitrine settlement. in light of this, this 'cart' 'facet' of the conflict should have been replaced. the ruins simply aren't in contest. continuing ahead with sub-events that treat everything else in the event as though it hasn't happened is just... it's poor judgement. it's really poor judgement. again, the mitrine are clinging to a thread while the ophidians stand with scissors in hand. the ruin events should be - already should have been - scrapped in light of this. anything else is preferential treatment, since it yet again gives unfair second, third, fourth, etc., chances that they haven't earned.
i'm not trying to be mean, like... i want to believe in y'all upstairs, really. this is just, like... i don't see the logic. it feels oblivious - or at best, wishful. combine this with my perception that the meat, the underlying foundation of the game is being neglected and i just really don't get what the producers are trying to accomplish. things aren't in a healthy place right now, and the albatross is long since slaughtered...
This feels like beating a dead horse. Spirit side has had a steady downtick of people participating for a while, for various reasons (frustration, not wanting to pk, not wanting to pk with particular people, tiredness, don't like things, etc). We don't have the bodies (the willing and/or capable bodies) to maintain this mission. The other side -has- won. We keep going at this point because we want to be gnats, because it isn't over until the fat lady sings, and because individual orgs are still going to reward people for doing stuff.
I still have to talk this through with the team today, figure out how it will be handled, because we will HAVE to attempt it fo RP reasons. But, I don't see us really making any headway with it realistically.
Favoritism:
As much as I'd like to believe there hasn't been any favoritism going on with the war, a lot of the changes throughout have left me going, 'Uhhh, why does it look like we're being thrown another bone? This looks really bad.' Yes, the Mitrine have been losing pretty badly, and I HATE to lose as badly as we have been, and while I appreciate the attempt to offer comeback mechanics - really, I do - I think they could have been handled in better ways.
I'll be honest here, going into the war, I had the full expectation that whichever side Shadow supported would end up ahead by a lot. It was kind of an inevitability, and it's a bit foolish to NOT have a bit of that expectation. But if the war was meant to be fudged to make things a bit more even, there are a few ways it could've been done without coming off like favoring one side.
The most obvious thing to me would have probably been capping the amount of troops you could summon with available supplies. It costs x amount of rations, cots, blanks, and dressings to summon a division, but if you have any of them at 0 or don't have enough, you either can't summon a division, or the division you summon will be severely weakened in terms of RNG rolls or morale. It probably would have made it so there wasn't like 20+ divisions just hanging around and sweeping through everything, and might have offered more strategy and care in picking up divisions, and would have been a palpable way to 'punish' people for donating nothing but dressings. I was checking the war reports when the numbers were first made visible, and for RL WEEKS the Mitrine's supply totals were high and evenly spread across the board whereas the Ophidians had 0 everything except dressings. I knew from the beginning that supplies would probably be a factor somehow, but they don't seem to have had a visible impact at all, which brings me to my next point.
Our actions don't really feel impactful/doesn't feel like we're truly 'involved':
Yes, this is a proxy war and all, but for all the support we've been throwing at our respective sides, it still feels really detached. You go to the mission board, complete the quests, get your rewards, wait for the next day when you have more allowances. But the main difference between the missions and quests is that quests at the very least have flavor text telling you a little bit about WHY you're going about a particular task. Missions don't even give you a 'We are in need of supplies for the war effort! Donate 20 supplies consisting of any combination of the following: Dressings to help tend to our wounded, blanks to arm our troops, cots for rest, and rations to feed them.' And upon completion, all it would really take is a little message along the lines of, 'An Ophidian/Mitrine quartermaster hands you a pile of tokens. ''We thank you for your aid! Please have these as a token of our appreciation."' That doesn't seem like much, but it helps. It at least kind of acknowledges that you're helping.
Don't get me wrong, though! I did love the little war meeting with the Mitrine, and I was pleasantly surprised at receiving a medal of recognition - it was the best feeling in the world. But I do feel everyone else that's been slogging through the war ought to feel like their actions matter too. I've been in Mitrine everyday since the war started doing not only the war missions, but also the Anandhaz faction quests, but it doesn't really feel like much has changed. There was a neat little infirmary tent that popped up, and I wish more had been done with that. Maybe in the future, make it so that the locals greet you a bit differently the higher you climb in faction rank. Or have faction rewards increase in recognition of your status.
Then there's the aforementioned supplies thing. Ophidians had nothing for RL weeks other than dressings while the Mitrine supplies were in the green consistently and...that wasn't really reflected anywhere. I mean, if that still matters, great, but I feel like if it does matter, it ought to have some palpable effects instead of being just a stat on some 'after the game analysis'.
Also, beyond the initial pre-war RP, the mid-war meeting, etc, there hasn't been a ton of interaction with our factions. I've had Phoe in Mitrine everyday training ina'a (Anandhaz quest), and lingering around the infirmary tent and sort of making it look like tending to the wounded. I know everyone upstairs is probably busy with stuff, but I do feel little scenes like helping medics tend to the wounded or retrieving the dead from the battlefield (which I've also been doing) can really help in getting a person invested in the side they're supporting.
I dunno. Maybe that's just me. I've been on a kick of watching a ton of war movies recently.
Also, removing the Impire completely might have been a bit of a mistake. Before their withdrawal, I had left numerous mob messages trying to potentially start something to strike a deal and have Imp support along with the Mitrine, not as a full on faction, but to help bolster numbers or whatever. Obviously, that didn't end up panning out, but again, making player actions matter.
Some of the missions are weird:
This sort of ties into our actions mattering. Some missions make a lot of sense. Exterminate, Crafting, Donation, Collection. Then there are some that leave me scratching my head. 'Okay...why are we collecting ylem for these guys? Are they making bombs?' or 'Why do we need to be doing Orrery? That's not even in the war zone. How is that related?'
Event fatigue: When running a long event that requires sustained participation, you run the risk of attrition, and people just...kind of stop caring because missions can be a slow, and we all just kind of get them done to get them over with.
To put things in perspective a bit. There was an event Duiran was involved in almost immediately before the war broke out that spanned the course of a week or two weeks. There was stuff happening, and there was a sense of urgency. People got really invested, and for the final encounter, we were able to muster a whopping 24 people to participate in the final showdown.
In contrast, we have the war, which we have no idea when it's going to end, and we have to do missions everyday, which are tedious and painful to do. You have to nag at people, yes, NAG, to do missions, which I'm sure players on both sides don't really appreciate. And I'm sure there's a bunch of players that aren't doing missions because they have more fun uses of their time on Aetolia. And let's not forget that summer is the time of year when people actually go out and do stuff. I'm going on vacation for two weeks with limited or no internet access. I actually value my marriage, so I'm not going to risk that just to keep participating in a war that by all appearances seems like it really should be over.
I'm going to echo a lot of what's been said already in that it feels in poor taste to initiate the Ruins Event after the Ophidians have pretty much conquered the Liruma. If it had been done almost immediately after the underground shortcut had been made? Sure, that would have made sense. But to do it now feels like another bone thrown in our direction that, while appreciated, completely undermines the efforts Shadow side has put into the war, and is kind of a slap in the face to all the work they've done in trouncing us. The war event may have been intended to go all summer, but it kind of seems like things went way off the rails and went in ways that were underestimated or unaccounted for. I think a lot of us just want to see the war over at this point, and the Ruins Event just feels like it's artificially extending the war to fit into the time slot it was intended.
It's been a widely accepted fact from those of us still trying to keep the Spirit side limping along, that we're fighting a rear-guard action. At this stage, I'm completing missions more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. There's not a snowflakes in hell's chance that I would ever start up this new cart pushing mission at a time beyond say, 3pm GMT, because we just don't have the numbers or experience to be able to succeed. Which essentially begs the question, what is the point? From an RP perspective *how* is it possible?
There were a number of glaring issues from the start. I felt like there was never a proper explanation of the mechanics of why we had to do the things we were doing and what the results of doing them were. Which, as a leader, if you can't provide a decent explanation, it doesn't exactly help muster enthusiasm - "We're just doing this because we've been told to."
If we'd been made aware of how troops worked from the start, this war might still be on a much more equal footing. Instead that information came too late and the stacked masses of the Ophidian troops rolled through a defense bonus-less set of capped troops and established a chokehold that has been impossible to breach ever since.
It felt a lot like every bone the spirit side was tossed was done because this happened and there was an element of guilt involved. But every measure was too little, too late and wasn't fair to the Shadow side participants who had put the work in.
At it's core, I think this new system is great and it has huge potential for the future. The work put in to make it so available, so quickly is staggering and as players (and personally) we're hugely grateful for the effort given by the admin. That being said, right now, it's time to wrap it up, assess what worked and didn't work, make the changes that need to be made and roll it out as a v2.0 in the near future.
This is the battle I have had to deal with throughout this war.
Generally the vanguard is going to bed, Benedicto is long asleep, Stine is winding down and around to give me a little direction, Phoenecia has been fighting all day and doing other stuff and is winding down, Daren is resting or RPing.
My log in consists of doing missions and running around solo a lot, to the point I got syssin class so I could do so effectively. The purpose of this war was kinda lost to me because I had RP with the kobolds and was fighting to support the ophidians from the get go. I was told ‘NO you’re of enorian you support the mitrine they are Lleisian’ I still have yet to read anywhere that lleis was involved in any way with the Mitrine or have that acknowledged in game. The war started with a tenuous relationship with the Ophidian because enorian claimed they were favored of Severn and were manipulative... I still haven’t seen that anywhere at all.
I feel like this event ultimately is going to end up poorly in our history for some reason like a weird gut feeling but I’m still trying every day to work hard and see this through despite not having the support the peak and daytime players have being in my time zone.
Ultimately this event came down to supporting the city and encouraging my guild to reach out and support the other organizations, to show unity and to show resolve even against the hardships. Do I feel like the mitrine even appreciate what we’re doing... not really. But it’s what the city wants and I will continue to do it as best as I can.
I have no idea why I pick hundreds of sweetgrass or why I’m tossing gold into a bucket or what the heck our cool custom crafted things are doing to aid the Mitrine.. in fact the mitrine haven’t said anything and just continue marching like lemmings off the cliffs we command them... it’s kinda funny to be honest.
Overall the war has become as exciting as a blue exclamation point dictating a daily quest that I’m grinding rep for so I can maybe get that cool epic mount the faction vendor is selling... they’re selling one right...
I know alot of people in the community misunderstand my general curiousness or even moreso my approach and have told me it can be passive aggressive, I honestly am just a lost froggy and am trying to learn and understand to see the bigger picture. I try to lay out concerns in the forefront alot of time, and I apologize if anything im doing is coming off negatively, I feel awful that it is being perceived that way at all. I am just trying to do well and want everyone to do well that is playing. I dont like to be bummed out and I feel there are alot of opportunities we can all work to improve things.
So sorry if I have come off that way, I do feel pretty awful about that.
Beneath all this rage is a truly grateful player. 60+ kills on killstat and it was a struggle to stay on top for the first 2 weeks because soooooo much PK. More people have been doing Sect, and even if they're instantly relinquishing my effing Pendant theres been more unique individuals in the HG in 2 months than in 5 years, and I got to see troops march again for the first time in like a decade.
Thank you for your effort and the attempt @Tiur (and everyone else involved). Please keep doing things like this. Maybe just not as long.
This
I got over my shakes and anxiety from pk!!
I feel more confident out doing things now
I do enjoy the time I get to play with others and do things
I love the new war mechanics, and totally understand that because it's a relatively new system, stuff is going to get fumbled. It's sort of a given. The system has potential, and what's important is that lessons are learned, and stuff is taken away to improve for next time.
I'd love to see another proxy war in the future because there has been stuff I genuinely enjoyed. How many new people has it brought into combat? How many people has it drawn into a global event and felt like they're contributing to their org and helping their city? I've seen a lot of new faces getting involved in stuff and helping each other out, and itsi made me happy to see.
It is becoming quite frustrating to miss out on the fame lines and recognition simply because one wasn't there at the right moment, even though one helped out quite a bit.
I think the sentiment everyone is giving is: We love the new stuff and this was an interesting first run. The next one will be better so please don't be discouraged by all our salt.
If feels to me a little bit like a few of these things are disconnected from one another. I'm not sure if it's possible, but perhaps linking components like cart and the troop and the supplies together might be an idea for the future?
To clarify, and to riff off of an idea I think I spotted up above which I quite agree with/like, if you link supplies to the combat prowess of (or ability to generate) troops, link the troops to the ability to control territory (which they already are), and then link territory control to the ability to move the cart (or whatever other objective), it makes everything feel a part of everything else, and no matter what level people are participating on, whether its crafting, PK, troop movement or what have you, they're making a tangible and visible impact on the war effort.
Troops have to be well supplied to maintain control of territory. And territory needs to be controlled to achieve the objective (I.e. release spirit. Keep spirit from being released).
This would mean that in order to Release/Bind the Spirit, one side or the other would have to control the Ruins. By all means, allow the other side the ability to disrupt or lessen the effect of doing so by mucking about with it, sabotage the cart, murder the pushers or whatever.
From a Spirean perspective, one of, if not THE main point of Spinesreach's involvement in the conflict was to make sure the bound Spirit isn't released. I'll admit that it's a disheartening prospect to think that all of the work that has gone into securing territory might be rendered largely moot.
I guess that's what I mean by things feeling a bit disconnected, if that makes sense. The individual parts seem to work really well, and I'd hate for anyone to think that I'm being salty, because that's not what I'm going for. I just wanted to offer my perspective, and perhaps a suggestion that might help for the future?
Cute-Kelli by @Sessizlik.