Protectorates

Toz

Right now, Enorian has 2-3 places that it 'has' to protect (Jaru/Tainhelm/Torston). Bloodloch has 1 that it vaguely cares about (El'Jazira). Spinesreach and Duiran have 0 that can feasibly be attacked. I think that each city should have 2-3 areas that they are supposed to RPly care about, because I don't want to always be on the offensive, but I DO want to be able to just...spontaneously generate some pk, and raiding is Very Bad and admin discouraged by about a thousand buffs from when @Trikal was doing it daily.

So my suggestion is this:
- Mitrine and Ophidians in the main area call for help via a crier once, when attacked, after a 1 minute delay. For example: (Duiran): A winded Mitrine scout says, "H-hey! They're killing us out here!", also echoing to Enorian as they're both allied. Scout goes on cooldown for a RL hour so it doesn't get spammy. Want to pick a yuge side v side fight? Go ping there, see who shows. It's gonna announce once, nothing more, so it can go ignored.

- Protectorate: Allied with a city, it only alerts that city. Want to pick a smaller fight? Go hit one of the guard mobs (or attack someone in front of a 'guard' type mob).

Protectorate suggestions: Ayhesa/Tasur'ke for Spinesreach, El'Jazira/Vilimo/ for BL, Enorian keeps their three, and Duiran gets 2 to match Spinesreach's: Vintal Glade and Abelaas, both of which might need some fleshing out.

There should definitely be some way to 'hit back' when I go pick a fight, but I should be able to go pick a fight. I don't care about leylines, and the orrery is tedious because it requires long, long investment.

Also these protectorates should definitely not be ENFORCED defense, if you can't muster the crew for it. I'd rather have 2 people from Enorian show up to rumble in Tainhelm than 8 people sad at me in Discord later because they had to.

EDIT: Also put some fog of war in so nobody has to lose xp messing around in there, but only for pk death?

Toz

To clarify briefly, the ENFORCED bit - Enorian feels like they gotta drag over and deal with me when I come knocking, and that's not fun for anyone. Protectorates could maybe shape guards a little, or do some minor thing for the city, and become like a mini-hub that's expected to deal with things on their own, but can call for help. So, Tainhelm/Jaru military up a little bit to protect the farming (they already have a stack at the gate...) - they're not 'innocents', they're tactical war resources, etc. Might require some squinting, but I want to be able to go stir the pot and not drag people out of whatever else they're doing, even if that means I get less pk overall.

But I'm definitely gonna come knocking with varying group sizes.

Benedicto

The biggest issue I see with this is, the same primary issue with what happened with this defence of Tainhelm today, the pendulum of combat might is firmly, firmly Shadow at the moment.

The number of active/experienced PKers is about 5 or 6 to 1 in favour of Shadow. There is an unreal amount of apathy on Spirit side that has existed since before the Mitrine war (and which was only really further reinforced during it.)

In relation to what this means for your idea, Spirit just doesn't have the numbers/experience to really do anything meaningful. You could have the various areas to protect, you likely won't see anyone raiding them due to the fact that, as a given, Spirit side would become very quickly outgunned and outnumbered and it would be a total wipe. Defending or attacking. Makes no difference. Lo and behold, it ends up becoming just as pointless and largely unenjoyable as lessers/orrery/war/take your pick.

A lot of this comes from deep within my salty heart, because it's something that, in a long, long time as a combat leader of Spirit, I've never really known a period as bad as it has been. There have been efforts made, but as has frequently been said over the course of the last year, 'you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.' We can't pay people to get involved at the minute and there aren't really any good ideas to turn that around.

Toz

Sure, but IMO better to have the option than not. Plus, you guys can occasionally muster a massive doomstack and hold the orrery, you can do the same for a protectorate fight or whatever.

Also also, I'm gonna keep trying to limit group sizes etc. to make it more even. Just tricky to do so.

Mjoll

WE'RE EXCITED TO PLAY MURDER GAMES, SORRY.

Iazamat

So, how do we get people involved, even when there's no exp loss? How do we teach the community that it is okay to lose? At some point, we have to realize the excuse that "they have the better PKers, so we're going to not involve ourselves" is just feeding into the very vicious cycle of people being discouraged and moving on - either to the other side where they can get the PK or from the game altogether.

So if the issue isn't exp loss, and the issue isn't the consequences that everyone claims to want for conflict, what's discouraging people beside the idea of losing? And how do we fix whatever that issue might be? Serious questions here, because, as a community, we obviously need to come together and help foster conflict, win or loss, and get our players actively involved again.

Stine

@Iazamat

I think if we had a specific answer to provide you, we wouldn't feel as helpless(not sure if there's a better word atm) as we sometimes do.

You may suggest:

1. inviting people to specific combat sessions and I would reply that we've had at least three different people in the last few months do such a thing and even with specific items or an open forum, it doesn't really lead to more involvement.
   
2. providing more incentive, to which I would reply that both Duiran and Enorian provide rewards for going to lessers, and I think even combat type arena events.
   
3. helping people learn to code, answering questions on how to tackle certain problems, etc, and I would reply that I have 4 different systems downloaded right now on Mudlet to help code anything from basic offense aliases in their specific system vars/functions/etc to longer, more fully able functions for use in Sunder or Source or otherwise. Edit: Not to mention whatever @Benedicto, @Daren, @Galadriel or any other number of helpful people who look at code do to pitch in.
   

These are just some examples, but it's not like we're throwing our hands up in the air and giving up. At least, I'm not. That said, the Mitrine event that @Benedicto referred to earlier was unicornsing rough on the Spirit side. I know that there are a lot of mixed/bad feelings on both sides, though, so I can only imagine how it was for you guys - maybe better, maybe the same.

Perhaps part of the question is 'why bother?'

1. In the case of the Enorian protectorates, it went from an interesting(for some people) RP claim to a PK factory whenever people want to stir something up, regardless of who is online or able to actually defend, and there is no mechanical difference if @Toz or @Vyxsis commits genocide of Tainhelm, Jaru, Arbothia and the Mitrine every day for the next 3 months other than a fat fine in Enorian.
   
2. If it's lessers, why bother when you can farm the fracture and minors and severely outpace ylem spending? Not to mention this type of conflict is now a little over 7 years old, having been released in October of 2011. Maybe people are just tired or bored of it.
   
3. In the case of the orrery, the bonuses just aren't that great to spend 12 hours (or however long it is now) camping a 5 room area for pk.
   

I agree, though, that part of it is people switching sides or leaving for other games. This post doesn't even go into the easy excuses of group size, pk ability, etc etc, because those are just symptoms of lacking involvement.

I don't want to make this sound doom and gloom, I just don't think there's an easy way to tackle it. At least, not that I can see, but I've been staring it dead in the face for so long that I may just be missing it beyond my view. Hopefully someone can give me ideas.

Toz

Re point 1 of 'why bother', that's what I'm sort of going for. It should be a PK factory. It shouldn't be anything else. If I show up with 100 aimbots, just let me go bashing and be bored. That should be the extent of the RP requirement. It will end with me bashing a lot, I'm sure, and waving my arms and making threatening posts, etc. etc. But also it might see me get a fight outside of the usual boring crap once every other week, and that alone would be worth it.

I also think it's unfair that exactly 1 city has a non-shrine thing to 'attack'. Conflict is dying out as our playerbase does, and we need more ways for players to kick SOMETHING off. But it also needs to not be mandatory.

Also as an aside, the last 2/3rds of war was hell. Between the plot to 'deny us pk so we get greedy and then issue us' that a few came up with, the ganks, the aura arguments, and the lack of tangible progress, a looooot of people felt a lot of ways about the other half of the game. That's why I waited until now-ish to start stirring things again. I checked QWHO and saw that there were a good many purple on, so I went to stir the pot in Tainhelm and see what happened. I asked Mjoll and Emir to keep an eye on my back, and Vyxsis tagged along. I felt pretty good about four, but sent Emir back and had Iazamat on standby just in case we got zerged bad. So six-seven showed up and I brought Emir/Iaz in (5v6/7) and then it got...out of control on numbers. So I yelled at them to go away when I rezzed, and I'm sorry the dogpile showed. I'll be more restrained next time.

Stine

@Toz

To be clear, I don't think what happened today was a bad thing by any means. The numbers were pretty similar for the most part and we reacted as expected, and after getting a decent amount of deaths we backed off.

I am also not saying that you shouldn't be allowed to have such conflict avenues, because I agree that there needs to be something.

Please don't take what I wrote as complaints. Just trying to provide more insight into the gist of Spirit side thinking that I've witnessed over the past six-ish months, and, again, looking for ideas of how to help turn things around. I know this type of problem spans back much farther than that, but I am committed to at least providing a competent and cohesive group so that conflict can thrive and not feel, as it so often does, that Shadow trumps Spirit despite our efforts.

Aloli

I'm joining this conversation a little late. I don't know which villages Duiran might be interested in protecting besides the immediate ones surrounding it or ones residing in forest areas, maybe, but outside of that the Sentaari have assignments to protect their scribe sisters and brothers in the Chapel Gardens.

That's unofficially a duty I've been instilling in the tasks and lore so that the two histories remain linked. 

Kalinaar

This isn't really a solution for most people, I get that but the easiest way to balance this is in the hands of the players. Either in the form of more non-coms getting involved (unlikely), a couple of closet tree loving darkies (you know who you are!) switching sides, or even just people hopping on an alt from time to time.

I like Toz' idea but I agree with Bene..  right now what's going to happen is the great and powerful Toz attacks little innocent NPC village, spirit checks who is there and who is available for reinforcements and decides going afk for a sammich is preferable to getting stomped.