To explain the situation, I'll use an example of what happened tonight:

Xanon set up a meld along the road to the southwest of Celest, right up to the gates. Thoros, Revan, Estwald and eventually Krellan joined him. The problem lies in that Xanon and Revan have suspect on me, and did not ever declare me. Meanwhile, I have almost every Celestian defended. However, because of game prime mechanics, I am unable to attack Revan or Xanon even if they attack someone I have defended. Due to this, many Celestians died in trying to clear the Taint simply because Xanon and the others were pretty much immune to the big fighters in our groups. The only thing I was able to do was kill Thoros once, fight Estwald a bit till he ran, and chant laetitia to people being mindblasted by the mages. I also used the Champion rescue a few times in order to save certain people that were about to die.

Now, as far as RP goes, setting up a tainted meld right up to the gates of Celest and shouting taunts at Celestians is, in effect, an offensive raid. But tonight, the Avenger system was only helpful in protecting the raiders (READ: Myself and others were unable to attack as they picked off the little people trying to defend, and then Wuylinfe even had the avenger called on him). Thus, the argument that you could just ignore them is not very well founded, it goes against most Celestian's RP to do so in the face of such a blatant offensive action.

In addition to this, you cannot beckon people into enemy territory(guards), however people can be beckoned out of that territory. I don't think this is very fair. It should not work in either direction, as you are forcing someone into territory where they would have to pray as opposed to conglutinate.

But as far as the avenger mechanics, the use of avenger protection in this situation is obviously not the way it was intended. In actuality, it is conducive to their 'griefing' in that they are protected from being killed by people that could kill them and stop their attacks on people who would die. I understand the importance of the Avenger system, but really, situations like this should not be possible. In my mind, this is 'abuse'.

I've also heard the argument that they are using suspect merely to get fair fights. Well, when assaulting the doorstep of Celest, you should expect to fight all of Celest. As well, pitting 4 of Magnagora's fighters against 4 people from Celest who are not the typical fighters is not 'fair'. What it is is using game mechanics to pick and choose fights that are in their favor.

So, my proposition is this: Fix the avenger system so that if I am defending someone and they get attacked by someone who has suspect on me, I will still be able to engage the attacker without fear of being vengeanced. This will not remove the suspect status, but it will prevent situations where I am unable to defend those I'm supposed to protect. If anyone sees some problem with this idea, please let me know. To me it still maintains the intent of the avenger system without allowing loop holes for the above situation.

Wow, I could have sworn you were one of the people arguing with me when I said this exact same thing after some Celestians did it to us. Maybe I'm wrong though.


I agree. You shouldn't be able to jump -anyone- without their stronger allies able to protect them.

If you really think it's abuse of the system though, you should issue.

Was I?? I dunno, maybe, the whole Seren war was a while ago, and my memory isn't that good concerning arguments I get into. If I was, I need a foot-in-mouth emoticon.



I thought issues were strictly concerning bug abuse, and technically this isn't a bug. Therefore I haven't issued yet. I don't want to just issue though every time this happens, I want the mechanics changed so that this sort of thing doesn't happen.

I was wondering why the heck you and Forren weren't engaging...

you can issue me questions if you don't know if it's supposed to be a bug. really you just need to get people to stop declaring them. if they're that bored to pick on people don't break their meld and wait for them to declare or sit in a stand off since that's what you do, waiting for a zerg rush anyways.

I think you can issue stuff that isn't bug abuse, but I'm not sure if they'd take it since after all it is how the system works right now. Anyway, wanting to have it fixed rather than having to issue it every time is fair enough.

yeah and I can understand not wanting to just stand there in a stand off.
it sucks cause the mechanics work fine in some cases just not in others. like if breaking melds was peaceful then it could be done while graced or in sanctuaried rooms. which if it could be altered not to be done under grace that would be awesome and just make melding aggressive cause that woudl take care of unbreakable melds in village revolts. less people hiding behind sanctuary if they want to meld or save the end.

Yes I know this problem - and so does probably all of Seren. There was a case when Shamarah had suspect on all of our even half experienced fighters.. so when he came back in we couldn't attack. Even when the smaller people he went after allied us and we defended the avenger stopped us from being able to do ANYTHING. Needless to say that a lot of people died.

Please please can this be fixed?

EDIT: Whether this is actually a bug or a design flaw, it should really be changed in my opinion. You should be able to bloody defend in those cases.

that came from the serens -not- listening. they kept declaring so defending doesn't work unless they are declared upon.

it's definately not a bug, at loophole at most. the only other way to stop it would be to have the playerbase not use vengeance based on situation. I heard about this one mag raid where some of the celestian defenders got vengeance and didn't use it because it was a raid. the only other way around currently without changing things is for the raiders to not use vengeance if they're doing it to look for a fight. or to not declare/break do anything silly like that.

It should be changed.

It's really not fair when a Mag initiates conflict, then abuses the Avenger system to make it a 'fair fight'. If you want to raid Celest or Celestia, you're not going to fight one or two people. If you want to do that, you ask for a duel.

EDIT2: (yes I am. Nico, you should've let me win that FFA!)

What makes it worse is that all a Mag has to do is lich. They can raid continuously until they get bored thanks to that, and they have no worry about losing experience.

There were a few Serens that claimed to death they hadn't declared. I can't prove it either way.. but still. This is the second time I hear about this now, and I doubt Nico declared without noticing.

PS: I can't say I'd actually care much about getting avengered even though it costs 1m essence. It's rather the fact that I doubt the demigod-avenger bug was fixed yet.. so it would kick me back to titan and that would be annoying.

As far as I'm aware, Shamarah didn't get suspect on any of you at that time. This change wouldn't affect that at all. If you declare, you take full responsibility.

However, if you declare, you SHOULD take full responsibility. This means the people you declare on should also be defendable by others, even if they have bullied you-- after all, you're now bullying someone else. Suspect wouldn't go away, but they should be free to defend. You yourself declared open season, for five minutes at least.

I've not understood why it hasn't been this way, but there've been multiple threads about this and other failings (raid, walk out, die outside enemy territory-- vitae and laugh as every single defender gets suspect). Pretty sure you could also harvest vengeance this way, but nobody's been low enough to actually do it yet. That, and I'm pretty sure that actively doing so would earn some Admin ire.

Edit: The downside to this change is that any defender would be open game for 5 minutes to any of their bullies, since defending auto-declares you. Raider could go stand in enemy territory, get attacked, run-- tell his buddies all to defend him, and any defender is now fair game. But that's an issue with the game auto-declaring, instead of just letting defenders attack without having to declare at all.

the people that claimed to death they didn't, didn't let the timer freaking end. so while they thought they didn't the timer was resetting over and over with each attack.

When raiders are saying things like "I'm going to get vengeance on all of you! Ha!" on OOC channels while doing something like this and they actually USE whatever vengeance they get regardless of who it is actually on (people who only ever defend, low level people, etc) , it's pretty clear abuse of the system is going on. Something needs to be fixed. The problem I've always seen with the avenger is that it tries to takes pk rules and put them in code form without the benefit of any sort of human oversight to be able to say in certain situations "Well, that clearly wasn't a pk violation".

Also I'm curious as to why Champions even can get vengeance? Isn't that their job? It seems a bit odd. If a Champion calls vengeance on someone that should just strip their title heh.

On a side note, this is why Celest doesn't like the crypt to be standing. It's not because we're mean and just want to make Mag suffer by knocking it down. It's because when it is up and the entire city of Magnagora has lich, prime raids and idiotic behavior like this increase tenfold. People can say lich isn't that great at all but when it allows this kind of thing with pretty much no risk that sort of speaks for itself.

I'm a little bit afraid to admit it, but I actually agree with Nico on everything he said...

First off, you should not be able to beckon out of loyal territory (though a lot of Celestians argued that it should be possible not that long ago, when they enjoyed beckoning Serens out of village guards, it's easier to see the problems with it when it happens to you). Second, you should be able to defend without fear of vengeance. It only makes sense. I also can see Catarin's point about champions being unable to get vengeance. On one hand, it would suck for a champion to be hunted and griefed constantly, but on the other hand, that's what you sign up for when you take the job. I would support removing vengeance completely for champions, like Mark members in Achaea.

For those who are turning this into another lich complaint thread...please save it and take up that discussion elsewhere. This problem isn't even remotely related to lich, it's related to problems in the avenger system. Lich is useful for prime raids (like this one), and there is nothing inherently wrong with that or with the raid in and of itself (actually, it sounds fun). The problem was that people couldn't defend. If they could, Xanon/Thoros/Revan/Estwald/whoever else would have been dead - and most likely, would have been killed again after lich, if Celest was paying attention and watching for them to reform. Let's concentrate on the topic at hand, and save lich ranting for where it applies.

I do have to agree, I think the "you can't defend people if you have suspect" thing is very lame. You -should- be able to defend... there's no reason why you shouldn't. It's like... Avechna's saying "Now now, it's fine to let your allies be killed because you've been a bad boy". Anyway... no Catarin, this isn't because of Lich. Xanon did this even when the crypt was down. In any case, fix this problem... it's really lame.

Actually, no...he didn't heh. The entire time the crypt was down this didn't happen. It's just a correlation we've seen. But as Derian said, this isn't about lich.

I know I am one of the main supporters of it still being possible to beckon, barge, etc out of allied territory. I still feel my argument applies to this situation. People can use shields, blocking, and ice walls to stop the forced movement attempts. If there are not enough people to block effectively, they can move one room in, effectively moving themselves outside of the range of the beckon attempts.

For the avenger problem, I have experienced it too and it is downright annoying. I remember trying to save a near novice from someone, but I could not attack because the attacker had status on me. Was nothing I could do but curse the Avenger and apologize to the person killed. I do support the idea that being able to defend a person should be possible, even if the attacker has status on me. I also agree that people on all sides use the knowledge of how broken the Avenger is in this particular respect to their advantage. Last, I strongly agree that Champions should not be able to acquire status on anyone. A Champion should be his/her own Avenger.

I'm not going to debate the first paragraph. I'll just say I disagree, and move on-- it's not what's at issue here.

As to the second one, overall, I'd say you're right-- but consider Champions who have access to skills that remove them from Avenger's protection anyways. Crow users, ecologists (Dark Rebirth, Transmigrate), are no longer protected by Avenger. It's part of the price of using these skills. Removing Avenger protection from other Champions wouldn't hurt the ones who've already lost it in return for other benefits.

Now, you may not really see it as a huge issue, and it may not be. Just wanted to mention it.

I can understand the idea that champions shouldn't get Avenger protection - it's logical enough. But I think Champions can be harrassed just as much as anyone else can. Sure they should be able to protect themselves in general, but there's normally people who're better, and if the best fighters really wanted to kill the weaker champions over and over they could without straining themselves too much...especially when you factor groups in. I don't think there's any need for it really. If you think a champion is wussing out and hiding behind Avechna too much, make fun of him or something. That's really all it deserves.