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- I'm not all that big into PK in the first place. I find it a bit too complicated to try and figure out, but that's definitely a 'me' issue
- My class (Cabal) is super borked so it doesn't make figuring that out any easier
- I wasn't there at the start of the Orrery conflict, so I don't really know its origins or what's behind it
- I also find it far more difficult to understand the mechanics of, compared to Minors/Majors, which turns me off towards engaging in it.
- I feel like if this was mad a bit more approachable, rather than tucked away as a timed niche thing, it would be a bit more easy to involve myself in it
Even borked, you can do a world of good attending, because it's group fighting and Cabal can typically survive long enough to do real damage.
The Orrery mechanics are documented in the News boards and each city has a scroll, typically CHELP ORRERY.
The mechanics are run around Scidve and collect spirit or shadow globes, of which there are ten, then take them to the orrery and INFUSE ORRERY WITH spirit/shadow. Also, don't die to other players during this process. That's it.
The only real barrier to PK right now is coding an offensive system, since firstaid can serve most people pretty good, so I'd look into talking to your allies about setting you up with one you can learn from.
XP bonus would be nice, though, but might be a bit excessive.
EDIT: If you could do something with enemy globes, like DIFFUSE GLOBE and delay its respawn by 15 minutes, might be worthwhile to do. But, if the enemy -can't- get to their room, why bother?
In a situation where there are ten+ people within the Orrery room proper, they can send all the noncoms out to hunt for their own globes without a single worry that they'll be stopped. Not only is this boring for the people defending the room, it's effortless. This allows a large enough group to basically AFK and do other stuff while still dominating the vent. All they do is wait for the call to combat, which thanks to the orrery being in a different area than scidve, there's plenty of alert in the form of Mindnet/Bracer/Overgrowth/Vibes etc.
This is not an event where noncoms should participate. It's a PVP event and allowing a group of people to move without any threat at all removes any form of balance, grantind all the advantage to the side with the larger numbers. If there were mechanics that allowed someone to hinder and choke the entrances, causing the globes to despawn in their hands of carriers that would be different. But it'd be a lot easier to make anyone who touches a globe or stands in the location or engages in a pvp action against another a PK aura.
Also, how can it be fun to participate and all you're doing is running around and waiting for your trigger to collect globes? You're basically on autopilot too.
All that said, I believe that the Orrery concept is a significantly flawed one. It reminds me a great deal of the old icons in Achaea, where an entrenched group of a lot of people are just waiting around for some conclusion to happen. There's not really much strategy involved, which makes it very flat, and the team that is entrenched has an overwhelming advantage over the team trying to remove them.
Instead, I would like to see the Orrery change to a central location on the map between other "control points" elsewhere on the map. The control points would need to be tuned to Shadow or Spirit. Once tuned, whatever tethered energy would flow from that control point to the Orrery, impacting its own tuning/level. As an example, let's pretend that there are five control points. Spirit could hold three, Shadow could hold two, so Spirit would ultimately win (if that was the static result for the entire period of time the Orrery was unlocked) but be unable to get too high in level unless they uprooted Shadow in the other two locations as well.
This way, large groups would have to break out over different control areas, and the losing side can still have an actual chance at doing damage to the winning side's progress even if they don't have the true numbers to secure a victory. There would also be more opportunity for strategy.
Shadow has control of two points. Who do they leave at each point to defend? Who do they send out to try and uproot one of Spirit's strongholds? Maybe each side gets in control of two points and so they're fighting over control of the last? There's just more options this way.
It's not an entirely fleshed out idea, but I think it offers more for everyone to feel engaged in.
Catering to non-coms is all good and well, but the solution to getting them involved, once again, isn't to tie the hands of PKers in a PK event.
And while I'm ranting, as far as I'm concerned XP bonus is unneeded. There are already tangible benefits from having the orrery attuned to your side, + whatever a persons organisation offers by way of reward.
Cute-Kelli by @Sessizlik.
However, having it so that a Shadow-tethered person picking up a Spirit Globe is PKable, but not a Spirit-tethered person picking up a Spirit Globe, doesn't actually address this problem. Nothing actually changes.
I agree that if ANYONE picks up ANYGLOBE they should become PKable.
Cute-Kelli by @Sessizlik.
As I said before, catering to non-coms the way the orrery does essentially cranks it down to easy-mode. serious question: Is anyone even actually enjoying this event? More importantly, spirit-side, do you all truly feel accomplished on the two orrery wins so far, given it's essentially king of the mountain and a number's game?
@Trikal, @Toz, @Zenobia, @Ellenia, and @Ilyon all have monk, and I've seen them active in the past 24 hours.
Spirit has @Mileta and @Serrice for Syssin. The situation is hardly as dire as you're making it out to be.
I could see it become more interesting with multiple control points. Numbers will always be an issue, though from experience with majors(specifically the hotspot mode), can't say it'll change much from "one large group vs another large group", it'll just be a mobile one instead of a standstill one in a room.
Someone suggested giving noncoms a separate quest with negligible effects. Why not give them a separate quest with a meaningful effect, that way both styles of players can participate and influence it.
Secondly, if there was a quest that gave a meaningful effect for the noncoms, then it would stop being a PK event. Because why kill people when you can just run quests for 48 hours and get the same result?
The idea of the orrery event is to give PKers an event in which we can let loose and have fun by mindlessly killing each other for (in my opinion) very minimal rewards. But that's not why we PK, we PK because we enjoy killing each other. Making a quest mean something to non-PKers or making it so non-PKers have a more meaningful role, essentially makes it so the PKers go, "Fuck this." and leave.
So, because of this, I disagree with a quest being made for non-coms/non-PKers having a viable effect in the grand scheme of things. Sure, give them something... but it shouldn't hold a flame to actually doing what the orrery is designed to do. Globe gathering and slaughtering each other. But the multi-point would be cool to see.
Also: Enable open PK on ALL globe gatherers. I'll never stop promoting this.
In large group scenarios, people are starting to bring more inexperienced folks there to increase body count and damage output, as even an unascended character with a good statpack can deal some serious damage in a damage class. With two tekura classes that newbies can get dropped straight into, Spirit has a clear advantage here.
Saying "learn monk" or "learn syssin" is essentially demanding that players spend extra credits to tri-trans a new class in order to be comparable, or that their younger players neglect guild/class learning to spend their lessons on a different class than what fits their org's lore.
I also support that anyone holding a globe should have the hostility aura! Either people are involved or not, does not matter whether you are a good combatant or not, its a choice. And one that is easily avoidable for those who dont want to fight and/or die.
Since the last 12 hours are the only ones that really matter, this means that people who live in Europe/don't work day shift/are unemployed have total control of the orrery -every- round that it's active.
I spent 12 hours yesterday bashing my head against a wall doing suicide distraction runs to bring that damn thing from spirit level 3 to shadow level 2 just to wake up this morning to see that 6 hours later, all of it was undone because Spirit side has the luxury of being awake at this hour. By the time the orrery locks in another 5 globe spawning rounds, they'll at least be at level 3 because we just won't have the numbers to contest.
Until the times on the orrery get staggered, we won't see anything other than Spirit controlling it. I don't like working my ass off so that people who go uncontested can sit there and take it all away.
And honestly, those suicide squads last night were annoying primarily because Shadow was just throwing themselves at us while a bunch of random Syssin or non-combatants went in and infused. There's hardly any risk to it and I think you should be motivated to at least have some semblance of control over the Orrery before you're able to have any noticeable effect with infusions. I'd be in favor of weakened infusions while individuals of the opposite tether are present in the Orrery and not phased/lightformed/blackwinded within the Orrery itself, proportional to how many are in there. That's just me though, and I'll leave it up to the administration on how they feel about it.
Edit: I'd like to add that I don't think there's an absence of counter play towards the Syssin and non-combatants doing sneak infusions while the main group engages, but it really doesn't make sense at how this can set back the side that is repeatedly repelling the main force at least ten times nor with the fact at how much escape utility Syssin has at their disposal. It took cubes, monoliths, icewalls (which affect us as well), and other various forms of active hinder just to stop ONE Syssin from infusing repeatedly. Additionally, we hardly made any noticeable gains in infusions despite defeating Shadow until they stopped completely for a bit.
The back-and-forth doesn't feel balanced. I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong about my interpretation @Fezzix, but that he's not saying MOVE the start/end times entirely to -favor- US residents/Other time zones, but that you're proposing a staggered change that would have it sometimes start in one time zone, sometimes in another, so that, on a particular 'cycle' of say, 4 Orrery 'rounds', there's a far more equal chance of a 2:2 split where 2 can go in favor of one time zone and 2 in another? (I'm terribly at explaining this, I just got into work, but I hope what I'm saying is clear)
TLDR: No hard time change, but make it a bit more 'randomized' so some time zones don't feel heavily left out. I don't think this is a Dark/Light issue, more of a 'Ensure as many players as possible can access it effectively' issue.
And as regards to the numbers, it does depend on the time zone. I was there when @Fezzix and Co help the room with 10+ people, still didnt stop me from fusing a few globes. And I'm sure the other side has sneaking in a few themselves while we held the area.
However I have an idea that might fix the problem with the time zone problem. We could have either completely random start time for each consecutive orrery (and then it ends 40 hours from start time) OR each Orrery starts 2-3 hours after the previous one's start time. That shifts the time zone around continuously, so people in different time zones at some point get the Orrery at a time where its best suitable for them.
Saying all that, I wouldn't mind having it start at random times. This way people can't complain that it's better for certain time zones.
By "stagger," I mean have the event's start and end times shifted eight hours forward each round. It starts on 10 Variach. Next round, it starts on 12 Midsummer, followed by 14 Variach and so forth.
Yes. I know. I'm going to point out the fact now that I realize how much your solution benefits the side that has it at the end, depending on which time zone it's in. It almost guarantees that time zone the win. If it is in a time zone that benefits Spirit, we are guaranteed to win if the final time block does not benefit Shadow and vice versa. This is objectively worse than what currently exists. The Orrery has large benefits and that is why it is a slog, but it is nowhere near the level of commitment that war was by comparison of conflict systems with large time sinks. This is also why the Orrery's activity is spaced out, so that people DON'T get burned out by it. Eventually, Aetolia's community has to come to a conclusion: do you want conflict systems with largely irrelevant benefits that occur so commonly that no one cares about them? Or, do you want conflict systems that require an investment of time but make you feel as if you gave a large contribution to your organization and made some kind of noticeable change on the world itself? The major/lesser/minor system is the former and the Orrery and by extension, war, is the latter.
I play a number of classes and I swap between the ones that I feel benefit my group more at the time or, more likely, I'm playing whatever I feel is role play appropriate at the time. Shaman is one of them. I specifically played Shaman, however, because I wanted to try it and not because of any deep desire to counter Shadow. However, I can yank past mass in Overgrowth and Shadow realized that they needed to actually bring a Teradrim after it happened a number of times to you. Once you brought one, however, you weren't immediately yanked. The odds of you still dying regardless are large, however, because you're a target caller, you're artifacted, and you snipe. Thus, Spirit will remove you quickly regardless of a Shaman being present if we have the ability to do so. We also could've, and did, beckon you or someone else as soon as you entered regardless of me yanking. Spirit was coordinated on this front and we specifically had it out to target you first. Believe me when I understand how frustrating it is to die first, but such is the life of being a high-priority target.
As for Icewalls, we did put up Icewalls. As I said though, they affect us adversely and in order to get around short of tumbling everywhere, our fighters have to melt the icewall to come assist the person who is attacking the Syssin and trying to hinder them. What happened yesterday though, when our fighters came to assist and rout the Syssin that were sneak infusing, is that they immediately evaded once the icewall was melted. Icewalls are in this case a double-edged sword. Naturalism Hinder is also a double-edged sword as it affects everyone, including myself. I CAN consume it, but that will get rid of my manually raised overgrowth as Greenfoot overgrowth will fade when I move. I need to sustain my manually raised overgrowth in the event that Shadow re-positioned their group elsewhere. Also, checking my logs yesterday, Rizgar was using Kai Cripple on Syssin, including you. Please note, I'm not arguing that there's counter play against Syssin nor that Evade is the issue. I'm arguing that the risk involved is smaller and one Syssin can unphase outside of the main group and can undo a lot of progress made by the side that has been in actual control of the Orrery and has been routing the other side repeatedly. This is a disproportionate amount of effort by comparison for the parties involved.
Regarding Squelched: If Squelched doesn't stop Devotion Deliverance but Lust/Empress IS stopped by Squelch, then BUG it or liaison it. I'd support that change. However, there is the issue that Lust/Empress has an offensive AND defensive use while Deliverance is purely defensive. Otherwise, monolith up the place. Deliverance has counter play in the form of a commonly available enchantment, but it is a double-edged sword to some extent. However, monoliths can be destroyed. If you drop multiple in other rooms, however, Deliverance probably won't happen. You hitting the person by themselves, however, is not going to stop them. Just as me trying to hinder you yesterday didn't stop you from getting away when I tried to pin you down. Aetolia has always been a place where if someone doesn't want to fight, they'll get away with ease usually. This is a necessary evil, however, as gank squads would be more powerful than they already are otherwise.
Edit: Worth noting that you guys had more people than us a lot of the time as well. However, once you were pulled @Fezzix, your group didn't immediately come to help you and entered a Rite of Warding'd room individually without a Teradrim for the first few skirmishes. This allowed me to move out and pull your fighters out repeatedly and split the group up. If I noticed my side was dying, I immediately went in, picked up bodies, and revived them. Did this to @Aisling a number of times. Spirit really was coordinated during those fights, and I don't think this is something they should penalized for.
Yes. I know. I'm going to point out the fact now that I realize how much your solution benefits the side that has it at the end, depending on which time zone it's in. It almost guarantees that time zone the win. If it is in a time zone that benefits Spirit, we are guaranteed to win if the final time block does not benefit Shadow and vice versa. This is objectively worse than what currently exists.'
Objectively this is more fair than what exists it sounds like because currently that is ALWAYS a spirit strong side. The event opens for us, and ends for spirit, and the side holding it at the end will tend to win. So, no, quite the opposite- objectively fair would be staggered times so each side has a turn with their peak at the end, not as it is currently where spirit is at its best at the end always. Honestly though they should just up globe value by 33% and delete the catch-up mechanic. Side that holds longest should be rewarded.