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Announce post #3255: Anomalous Focus Postmortem
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11/8/2021 at 0:26
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Anomalous Focus Postmortem
Hi folks!
After the event focus and the ensuing events of last night, we've put a bit of a debrief together to answer some questions and give some insight as to our thoughts on the system. We also have some questions for you to help us gather feedback and make some decisions for the future.
To start things off, I want to confirm that we DEFINITELY did not intend for the fight to result in a draw.
Unfortunately, the spirit eld did not spawn due to the lack of a winner. As things were playing out, we noticed some problems but didn't want to change any mechanics mid fight and unfairly tip the scales one way or the other. There were several key moments where both sides held three of the four points but weren't quite able to clinch the fourth to start the timer.
Instead, I made the call to let the focus time out. Battle had already taken 70+ minutes at that point and we didn't want to burn everyone out before the rest of the event had concluded.
With that in mind, we have a few questions. Feel free to post answers in the forum thread for this post, or message me if you don't use forums.
1. Would you prefer us to run this anomalous focus event again with mechanic changes described below to allow another shot at the guaranteed spirit eld? Alternatively, we can just go ahead and add the eld into the major gateways chance pool as planned.
2. Would you be open to having the system added (with further modifications, see below for our initial intended changes) to majors as part of the contention chance pool?
3. What changes would you like to see (beyond what's listed below), if we go ahead with this?
The already planned changes we have in mind, assuming there is interest in giving it another shot:
* TAKECOMMAND DIVISION will default to any unclaimed division first.
* ORDER DIVISION will default to the first division under your command in your location.
* Spawning of new troops increased from 30 seconds to 40 seconds.
* Only need to hold the majority of control points (3 out of 4)
* Holding a control point now requires you to have 20 or more troops over the other side in the room.
- Only troops that aren't in combat count towards this total.
- This number is total size of all your division, not individual divisions.
e.g. if you have a division of 17 soldiers and a division of 10 soldiers, the total is 27 soldiers in the room, not 2.
- This would let you use leftover smaller stacks of troops e.g. a division of 5 soldiers to attack an enemy's stack of 20 and disable them from counting towards the control point timer, allowing you to possibly edge some time over them while the division stays alive.
Let us have your thoughts and suggestions!
Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 1st of Slyphian, in the year 498 MA.
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Anomalous Focus Postmortem
Hi folks!
After the event focus and the ensuing events of last night, we've put a bit of a debrief together to answer some questions and give some insight as to our thoughts on the system. We also have some questions for you to help us gather feedback and make some decisions for the future.
To start things off, I want to confirm that we DEFINITELY did not intend for the fight to result in a draw.
Unfortunately, the spirit eld did not spawn due to the lack of a winner. As things were playing out, we noticed some problems but didn't want to change any mechanics mid fight and unfairly tip the scales one way or the other. There were several key moments where both sides held three of the four points but weren't quite able to clinch the fourth to start the timer.
Instead, I made the call to let the focus time out. Battle had already taken 70+ minutes at that point and we didn't want to burn everyone out before the rest of the event had concluded.
With that in mind, we have a few questions. Feel free to post answers in the forum thread for this post, or message me if you don't use forums.
1. Would you prefer us to run this anomalous focus event again with mechanic changes described below to allow another shot at the guaranteed spirit eld? Alternatively, we can just go ahead and add the eld into the major gateways chance pool as planned.
2. Would you be open to having the system added (with further modifications, see below for our initial intended changes) to majors as part of the contention chance pool?
3. What changes would you like to see (beyond what's listed below), if we go ahead with this?
The already planned changes we have in mind, assuming there is interest in giving it another shot:
* TAKECOMMAND DIVISION will default to any unclaimed division first.
* ORDER DIVISION will default to the first division under your command in your location.
* Spawning of new troops increased from 30 seconds to 40 seconds.
* Only need to hold the majority of control points (3 out of 4)
* Holding a control point now requires you to have 20 or more troops over the other side in the room.
- Only troops that aren't in combat count towards this total.
- This number is total size of all your division, not individual divisions.
e.g. if you have a division of 17 soldiers and a division of 10 soldiers, the total is 27 soldiers in the room, not 2.
- This would let you use leftover smaller stacks of troops e.g. a division of 5 soldiers to attack an enemy's stack of 20 and disable them from counting towards the control point timer, allowing you to possibly edge some time over them while the division stays alive.
Let us have your thoughts and suggestions!
Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 1st of Slyphian, in the year 498 MA.
7
Comments
As for adding it into the possible contentions, I think that this would be a welcome addition and shake things up a bit, putting more of an emphasis on strategic thinking during any contention where it pops up.
Honestly though, I think it's better to let it sit at a tie. Both sides worked real hard to hold it steady while they were behind and I think it'd be a shame to negate that by just doing it again. But even though running the same event back would be a bit odd... maybe you could increase the rates of anomaly/gateways + spirit eld spawning for a few upcoming majors or something?
Mostly I say this because I think the impact of having to work together after fighting one another to a standstill for over an hour felt much better than if hypothetically one side had lost and then had to walk back to participate in a more neutral event afterwards. So while maybe it wasn't intended to be a tie, I think it worked out better that it was, narratively.
2 - Absolutely add the system to major contentions; while it wasn't perfect it was interesting and I'd love to see it come again and get some support to balance it out (like the changes you've already listed.)
3 - I think changing it to only needing 3/4 points controlled is already a major improvement, I can't think of anything else specific off the top of my head; I didn't work with the troops myself so my general thoughts were more based on the map layout than anything else specific to the system in place.
Overall though I did want to stress I had a very good time with the event, both the group pk aspect and the followup. Thanks to the Pools for running it!
For ease of use:
In addition to ORDER DIVISION defaulting to a division under your command, it'd be nice if it defaulted to one that isn't busy (i.e., if my first division is already in battle, it goes to my second). Otherwise, you have to use #s off IH to order them anyway if you have more than one. Would also be nice if you could just ORDER DIVISION ATTACK and they'd automatically attack the first available enemy division? Or maybe some options like ORDER DIVISION ATTACK SMALLEST or ORDER DIVISION ATTACK LARGEST to prioritize certain enemy divisions, rather than having to look through IH in all the spam.
Other thoughts:
Maybe rather than needing to control X number of points to earn points, you should just gain more points for each control point controlled?
2. I'm on the fence about this one. While I love the general idea of it I think there is a clear difference in complexity between this and the existing majors. What made this one work well was that it was in a relatively controlled environment.
* Area: Masilia is a relatively symmetrical and small area. I think this would become very tedious in areas like Western Itzatl or Liruma, for example.
* Time: It went on for over an hour, but major contentions end up in a draw much shorter than that and this isn't even taking into account the time it'd take to kill the eld boss inside.
I think the above issues can be worked around but it'd need to require reworking the mechanics of majors entirely. For example, maybe before the major spawns it picks either the existing ones or this new one. If it picks this new one it'll be in a new set of areas and only have a single, extended phase of contention rather than 2 phases.
3. I wonder if it would be better if there was a bigger gap between rooms. I feel like it only worked because it was possible for a single person to lead a division into a point and stall it for long enough to get the entire group to regroup, but it really only encourages suicide missions rather than strategic planning.
Also think the divisions shouldn't defend players at all. It feels like it only helps the side that is entrenched and this might be especially true with the change to only needing 3/4 points.
Overall, need to see how it plays out with smaller (or even larger) group sizes to get a better feel for it.
However, I would not want to see it as a regular contention. The scale is too large compared to any of the other contentions. I think this is the kind of event that needs to be announced a few days in advance, not just 30 minutes. As a contention, I think the control points would have to be 2 out of 3 instead of 3 out of 4. Maybe set it up like the Stalagmites Contention so you can only have one person from each tether in the room while troops are fighting.
I felt like the event/mechanic itself was interesting, but if there's going to be a "safe room" or "base" for each side on the map, I'd like to be able to find it easier.
The troops defending their leader makes sense rp-wise, but it would be great if it were toned down in attack. I'm only level 70ish, but they one-shot me for 5kish damage because I hit someone once.
I think foci as a concept are a little scuffed these days - and ylem, as a resource, actually lacks the stakes that make me care about a win or loss. Anything that breaks up the monotony of the current system, be it new game modes, new bosses, polish passes on existing modes, etc are Good Things. I think all of these changes address my greatest area of negative feedback, which was that it often felt onerous for me to control and command divisions on individual points as time went on. The bodies of soldiers and legionnaires would listen to your commands or be valid targets for the relevant commands - this either necessitated me coding something while in the thick of it or just grinning and bearing it. It is my understanding that this system greatly resembles what Bloodloch used for their rebellion event, something I learned today when I consulted with a few players in Shadow tether to see how they had handled it, etc.
Movement was a different story altogether. The changes will help, but I found that the only thing that gave me trouble was when the enemy team realized I was leading troops and began trying to lust and lure me.
I would like a command that tells me all existing divisions under my command, their location, their state, etc - i.e 'in combat', 'idle'.
I had a lot of fun last night! It was a spectacular event and the system just needs a few tweaks for now before it can be used again.
It was nice that the rest of the event was PVE related, as it allowed non coms to come and help out
That being said, with the armies being tied to Bamathis/Damariel, I am hard-pressed to think how we would integrate it as part of the major foci spawn possibilities.
Maybe we can make it a once in an X time thing, spawning after some amount of ylem has been extracted from minor/lesser/major, instead of being part of just the Major foci? It has a windup just like a Major foci etc.
When the divisions die, can we have their remains removed from the room as well? It definitely screws up attacking when there's a billion remnants of x division in there and the existing ones remaining are like after 8 of them dead bodies.
Next thing, does the troops really only attack people who attack their commander? Troops springing to defend their commander makes sense, but there's also things like, which hurts as heck and is instant death in maybe one/two prompts.
We'll be looking at a way of incorporating the anomalous focus mechanics into major foci in future, but we won't rush this out.