Lessers: Potential Tweaks

MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
Per the discussion over in the rage thread, there are some issues with lessers. Here are my observations and some ideas I can think of. Obviously feel free to share your own thoughts on the topic and constructively discuss things, but PLEASE don't get bogged down in individual skill comparisons or criticism or orgs/people. That stuff derails and is not helpful!

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- The tapping mechanic promotes a single-room, fortified setup. This innately pits ranged attacks versus digging in and fortifying and heavily highlights the disparity in tether specialties. Darkies will outrange. Lifers will hold down the fort better. It also shoves everyone into one room. This means things like AoE attacks become super potent, lag becomes punishing and combat becomes very blitzy since it ends up being large teams smashing each other.

---- Potential solutions: Tweak lessers to be more like shardfalls in Imperian. Have tapping create nodes throughout the area, or roving spawns of elds. Some sort of adjustment that promotes splitting teams up to get the resources would encourages fights to be smaller scale and reward good tactics and movement and area control and also give newer fighters/noncomms roles they can do other than be meat shields. This would also potentially give room for more sect point gain, since 1v1 fights could break out more easily.

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- The unstable area mechanic means that you have a weird situation where the PK mechanics are really right in your face. The enemies right outside the zone are obviously there to fight, but you can't actually attack them. If you get a lust when someone is dancing around, you can technically be issued if they don't have aura. Things like convocation are even wonkier, as that can be used to grab people from the fight into a room of enemies outside the area who don't actually have aura - but you can't attack those enemies preemptively, or counter them with range, and if you rush to save someone convocated, it's an absolute headache to verify who has aura and who doesn't.

----- Potential solutions: I'd say just let us use common sense, but that stuff escalating and being messy is why the whole unstable zone and aura got made in the first place. I don't really have any good ideas for this that wouldn't be even more of a headache.

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- Elds are usually saved for the end. This leads to this frustrating situation where teams are still grouped and fighting elds but auras are dropping, but people rush for a last fight anyways. Messy PK cause and stuff for both sides and usually it's kinda a bit of a letdown - we want to keep fighting, you know?

----- Potential solutions: Have elds give aura when you hit them. Have the zone remain unstable until x number of minutes after the lesser is fully extracted.

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- The changes to XP encourage rather chaotic and non-tactical fighting. People benefit more from wild attacks that hurt their own team than they do from smart gameplay. This leads to frustration and consequence-free things like suicide rushes. It also means that the people leading - the ones shouldering the most of the work and the stress - are often the ones benefiting the least from the fights. This is tiring and leads to anger and burnout.

----- Potential solutions: Don't reward xp for kill assists on people from your own tether. Give a reduced portion of assist xp regardless of where the person is (dead, at range). Have attacks AGAINST you tag you as assisting in killing a target. Someone who is tanking the entire enemy team IS helping get people killed by actively keeping themselves alive and slowing down the enemies.
Angwe

Comments

  • RiluoRiluo The Doctor
    ----- Potential solutions: Have elds give aura when you hit them. Have the zone remain unstable until x number of minutes after the lesser is fully extracted.
    This is an excellent idea.

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    Angwe
  • AngweAngwe I'm the dog that ate yr birthday cake Bedford, VA
    Moirean said:


    ----- Potential solutions: Have elds give aura when you hit them.

    I love everything in @Moirean's post except this. This will lead to terrible noncom griefing of people hunting eld specifically to help build ylem/reserves while avoiding PK. Bad, bad idea.
    image
    IshinFurtumRiluoSheirosia
  • MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
    I have never heard of anyone going around looking specifically just for elds. Tapping minors already gives you an aura. However, you could just have it be limited to giving aura only in the first hour or two after the elds were spawned.
  • AishiaAishia Queen Bee
    Vaguely speaking: Some of this stuff is being addressed! Or other issues relating to these things tangentially.
  • AngweAngwe I'm the dog that ate yr birthday cake Bedford, VA
    I used to go around looking specifically for eld when I don't feel like getting jumped. Maybe it's just me? I started doing this as a response to @Azton and... that other guy, can't remember his name (he used to shout a lot, recently stopped playing)... stalking me and other Duirani/Enorians hunting lessers and dual-ganking them when they had aura.
    image
  • Moirean said:

    I have never heard of anyone going around looking specifically just for elds. Tapping minors already gives you an aura. However, you could just have it be limited to giving aura only in the first hour or two after the elds were spawned.

    99% of the game people doesnt kill Elds after they tap a minor, most of them dont even shackle, Main reason I even got Refining in the first place because of people not killing eld and accidently hitting them while hunting areas (WHICH still happens)

    The unstable area mechanic means that you have a weird situation where the PK mechanics are really right in your face. The enemies right outside the zone are obviously there to fight, but you can't actually attack them. If you get a lust when someone is dancing around, you can technically be issued if they don't have aura. Things like convocation are even wonkier, as that can be used to grab people from the fight into a room of enemies outside the area who don't actually have aura - but you can't attack those enemies preemptively, or counter them with range, and if you rush to save someone convocated, it's an absolute headache to verify who has aura and who doesn't.
    If you get convocation out of the lesser into a group of people and your team rushes them people... We now with 'assisted deathsight' to tell you who hit them... :/

    The whole 5 room thing is a brilliant idea as if it is in a hunting area it still allows them who only hunt to hunt without involve them into combat. If US as Players cant monitor whats right and whats wrong with who has aura then the system should just be scrapped like the war system...


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  • Can they kind of say where these things happen by Area instead of room name by chance. Kind of hard to get involved without knowing where to go (not all of us have a sys that auto-room #s on alerts or what not to get them from A to B and groups kind of go off.)

  • MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
    That would be a nice change, I think. The ninja capping kinda goes against what the point of lessers are. In Imperian, there's an announcement for everyone to see and it's easy for a newb to meet up with teammates and participate, and that was a nice option, imo.
    IshinFurtum
  • I don't see why eld farming shouldn't give aura. It's farming ylem, and all the other ylem stuff gives aura. Ylem is supposed to be a conflict resource...
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    Rawr
    XeniaIshin
  • ArekaAreka Drifting in a sea of wenches' bosoms
    My only mrph with eld giving aura is when there's rogue eld roaming bashing areas that you need to kill to make safe for the nubs (at least I see this happening pretty often), and it'd suck for folk to get PK'd because eld didn't get cleared out after a leyline.
    image
  • IshinIshin Retired Lurker Virginia
    I think they meant actually HITTING the eld, @Areka, rather than getting hit by. That way someone actually bashing the area could just run, while a buddy came in and mopped them up.
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  • ArekaAreka Drifting in a sea of wenches' bosoms
    Yeah, but eld move, and folk may just want to get rid of the 1-2 roaming their area since they're a hazard. I don't think they should become open PK for that, that's pretty silly (and the sort of thing that could lead to a lot of bad feels on both sides of the game).

    If eld are to give aura, maybe have an additional timer? After X long from a spawned leyline, eld stop giving aura (or just disappear themselves).
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  • IshinIshin Retired Lurker Virginia
    I've never noticed eld move unless someone was intentionally kiting them. Otherwise, they're still.
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    I remember, involve me and I
    learn.
    -Benjamin Franklin
  • edited May 2014
    Ishin said:

    I've never noticed eld move unless someone was intentionally kiting them. Otherwise, they're still.

    It happens all the time, I had to kill a few in A.Cliffs yesterday...

  • Who goes looking for people that are hunting eld just to PK them? The only people I know that go 'eld hunting' are non-PKers. It's like their way to help without going to lessers and getting whacked.

    I'd say whoever went after them would probably be policed up by the playerbase pretty quickly, tbh. Could be wrong, I guess. It's happened before.
    Ishin
  • EleanorEleanor FOR SCIENCE
    Far as I've seen, people are pretty good about not being dickheads to people capping minors. I've only ever been attacked once, someone awful who I forget exactly who it was but they began with S chased me while I had aura. This was back when leylining was really new. I direcalled about five times to try and get away because silly noncom me didn't have a vial of restoration. I eventually got cornered when I direcalled into Enorian in my mad flight (he was tracking to me each time I jumped), and then had to sit through him trying to damagekill a Cabalist. Then he rezzed me and went "Tsk tsk, now I expect to never see you leylining again" and I went "mmhmm yeah sure" and went on my merry way.

    Good times. But yeah I've not heard of people going after little guys with auras because of eld or minors. Might be different if you're a known combatant but people seem to be pretty good at least from what I've seen.

    RiluoPiperIshin
  • MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
    Moirean said:

    I have never heard of anyone going around looking specifically just for elds. Tapping minors already gives you an aura. However, you could just have it be limited to giving aura only in the first hour or two after the elds were spawned.

    People do chase people hunting minors. At least, I regularly get chased. But, that could be because I'm disliked and people just want to attack me or whatever.
  • Other people get chased, but it's rare. I've had Spines people come and gank my minors out from me and be in a position where it wasn't viable to oppose them. It happens. Not a bunch, but it does.
    image
    Rawr
  • EleanorEleanor FOR SCIENCE
    That's ganking minors, though, not ganking you, which was the topic of discussion here.

  • I...don't really see any reason to get mad at someone for pking you for doing minors. You have aura, that's the point of the aura. If you go into HG, you're going to probably get attacked. If you go into an enemy city, same. And if you get aura, the same rules apply - so, if someone's out running minors, there's really nothing wrong or 'bad' about attacking them.

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  • Eh. I don't see any reason to get 'mad' about being attacked, ever, by any one of the dozens of evil, wicked vampires out there who RP being such nasty critters all day long, eating angel babies and knocking old ladies' shopping carts over. Or any other 'bad guys'. It's not a pleasant world.


    Nor do I feel like any citizen of Bloodloch (Or most of the Spines people) should ever be able to pull the, 'You didn't have cause' card. Bro. You're a fucking demon. There is nothing wrong or 'bad' about anybody to at claims to fight for the light attempting to do something about you. Realistically, anyway.


    My point is, opinions vary and people's level of acceptance is drastically different. Let's just say that @moirean probably gets attacked more for being an established and skilled fighter while also serving as one of the largest antagonists in the game. It's silly people have to wait for something like, 'Oh she harvested some funky Ylem and she's shiny, I can fight her now."


    As has been pointed out several times, the issue was whether non come were routinely pk'd for hunting minors and elds, and I really don't think they are. If Moi or Dask or Valley or any one of a dozen or two others does, sure, maybe. But they aren't the issue when we worry about changing aura for killing eld.
  • MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
    Moirean is also a player who wants to enjoy the game and being jumped nonstop isn't really very fun.
    IshinFurtum
  • Getting back on topic...

    I agree with @Moirean‌ suggesting alternate versions of lessers.

    However, I also think the existing version should remain as well. There is still fun had fortifying a handful of rooms and defending, so I see no reason to scrap that entirely. Instead, create different versions and whenever a lesser drops, there is an equal chance it is any one of them.

    1. The area turns into the fracture for 30 minutes. Newbies beware (some areas would be exempt from this)
    2. The area spawns roving bands of eld AND minors every minute, for X amount of time
    3. A group rooms (maybe smaller than the whole area) spawns eld in waves of increasing difficulty, until eventually the swarm arrives. (yes moi... kinda thinking RIFTS here)
    4. Lesser is spread across 4 locations, all four can be tapped at same time.
    5. Whole area sends ylem to pylon with the most represented people in the area. Groups of people attract eld.

    Not all of them need to be the entire area - could be 10 room radius or whatever. And obviously some areas are not suited to some of these effects.

    Each of the ideas is designed to encourage a different type of conflict.
    (1) Mayhem?
    (2) Would be small hit squads killing the enemy and keeping the enemy off their own soloers searching for minors
    (3) Is a PVE challenge with potential for PVP upsetting it. It sounds awful but rifts in the Rift mmo were all sorts of fun.
    (4) Smaller groups defending/attacking multiple mini-lessers all at the same time.
    (5) Pure mayhem




    MoireanLimIshin
  • MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
    I really love the idea of different lesser types. That would add some fun, fresh new things to the PK experience.
    PiperIshin
  • I know I'll probably be shite at it, but all that sounds like it could be a lot of fun. It shifts the key factor to winning from gank-kills to more tactics and coordination.
    MoireanIshin
  • I don't want to make any specific promises (or spoil any big reveals!), but I can assure everyone that this very issue/idea is being looked at and interesting things are on the horizon.
    MoireanIrruelTeaniIshin
  • MoireanMoirean Chairmander Portland
    Cool!
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