Please help me find the flaws in this proposal and suggest ways to fix and address the flaws. In particular, those of you with devious minds, figure out how you could abuse this system, and then how to prevent those abuses. I've tried to identify abuses and put in provisions to prevent them but I bet there are abuses that I didn't think of.

Denizen Org Protectors

Player-run orgs can enemy people, and have protectors. Denizen-run orgs can enemy people, and under this proposal, can also have protectors.

In STAT under the line that says "You are an enemy of: Nil." there will be a second line: "You are a protector of: Kelpies." (for a permanent position) or "You are a protector of: Kelpies (6 mos.)" (for a temporary position). Being a protector is a public thing: POLITICS KELPIES will show a line saying "Protectors: Nejii, Forren, and Gwylifar." (Doesn't show if it's permanent or temporary.)

How To Become A Denizen Org Protector

A new Influence skill, Allegiance, is added. It works precisely like Amnesty: it's just as hard, and anything that offers a bonus to Amnesty also offers the same bonus to Allegiance. As with Amnesty you can only use this on denizen organizational leaders like Ladyfinger, and not including villages (since they already get protection by swearing to cities and communes). Obviously, you can't use this in an area where you are an enemy, even an enemy on reprieve. As with Amnesty, you can influence on behalf of another, and that other person has to be present throughout.

If you win such an influence, depending on how well you win it, you will become an organizational protector for 1-10 months, or if you did really good, permanently. Unlike Parley, however, this time only counts down when you're online. (Internally, the game actually counts a number of days, and decrements it if you're online at game-midnight, though it only shows months in STAT.)

You will also be given a payment in gold, equal to 1/3 of what Parley would cost for a parley of the same time in the same organization. (For instance, if it would cost 60,000gp to get 5 months parley to Pastries, it will pay 20,000gp to become a protector of Pastries for 5 months.)

(It would be a lot more interesting if you also had to do a quest, unique to each area, to obtain some "token" which you had to hold while you used the Allegiance skill. For instance, before you can attempt to persuade Ladyfinger of your intent to defend The Pastry Revolution, you need to complete some quest to help the Revolution which yields a token, bring the token with you, and then attempt it. However, it'd be lot harder to implement this. Someone would have to make these quests for every single area before it could be rolled out!)

How To Stop Being A Denizen Org Protector

Either time runs out, or you become an enemy of the organization. (You cannot rescind protector status voluntarily, save by becoming an enemy. So be sure of it.)

Costs Of Being A Denizen Org Protector

Whenever denizens in this organization are attacked and you're online, they send you tells crying out for help.

When a denizen you protect is killed by an enemy of the organization while you are online, you lose experience. How much depends on how often this has happened. The first time, it'll cost 10% of the amount of experience you'd've gained by killing that denizen yourself. The second time, 20%. The third time, 30%, etc. However, if you kill an enemy of the organization in its territory, that will reset this back to 10%. (That reset does not happen if the person has a no-exp-loss death like lich/transmigrate/etc. unless that person is also an enemy of your city. That's to prevent just getting your buddy to come there with you and let you kill them at no cost to them to reset it.)

Benefits Of Being A Denizen Org Protector

Attacking an enemy of the denizen organization in its territory makes you immune to Avenger. (This is how things work now for everyone, but under this proposal, it would only work that way for listed protectors.) Killing them also gives you karma, the same way it does to kill a player-run org enemy within its territory.

Advantages Of This Proposal

It eliminates an Avenger loophole where people who bash in areas like the Observatory become vulnerable to ganking by opportunists with no real reason to "protect" the denizens there, people who only want to use the chance for random mayhem without Avenger oversight.

At present, admins might want to make areas like Castle Djarrakh an organization because it makes the krokani there react in a more reasonable way when they meet people who regularly slaughter them. But they can't do that without the "side effect" of making the area a lot less useful for bashing because the Avenger loophole makes it a good ganking ground. This proposal would remove the disincentive and turn it into an incentive: while making the krokani behave in a more realistic fashion, you're also providing more opportunities for players to build relationships with the world around them.

It affords another opportunity to engage in a form of conflict that is voluntary and "opt-in". No one is forcing you to become a protector of Kelpies or Pastries or Tosha monks. But if you choose to, you now have a roleplay-justifiable, roleplay-enhancing opportunity to engage in conflict. Thus, it fosters conflict without fostering griefing.

So...you lose experience every time I kill some Merian. Even assuming that the experience loss stops at 100% of the experience of the guy, there's over 30 merians (37 I think, if you get them all). That means, every run I do through Merians, in addition to my gaining experience, I'm draining you 100% experience on 28 merians, and a total of 450% of the value of one merian, on the remaining nine. Ultimately, you lose experience for 32.5 merians. Not just you - anyone who's a protector. If five people decided to be guardians of the Merians, each person is losing that experience - I don't have to even -meet- you to grief you. I just have to kill them faster than you can kill me.

Or I can just kill a few, run when you come, then come back later and kill a few more. Slows me down, but if I run fast, you're still harmed while I lose nothing.

I really don't like this idea for two reasons. One is what Ixchilgal just posted. The other is that you'd be forced to be a protector of the places your org defends all the time (Inner Sea, Shallach, possibly others) and every time someone decides to raid one, you lose oodles of experience or can only kill the person once in the area.

A better idea is to remove the "bashing ground" protection of enemy territory. That is, fix it so that certain warring tribes, like aslarans/krokani, can enemy you, BUT do not have their territories watched by the Avenger. That will make it harder for people to kill you consequence free, but will prevent you from massacring the krokani to sell them to aslarans, then switch.

Of course, Lusternia isn't completely about bashing, and there are multiple areas you can bash in without worrying about Avenger. Sharks in the Inner Sea/Sea of Despair, rocs in Oleanvir, Balach Swamp, orcs in Shallach, etc. Then again, it's the risk of ganking that makes some bashing grounds relatively available: people simply don't risk going into these places if it means being enemied. Being a guy who generally only kills mindless enemies or those antagonistic to my city's ideals (a shockingly Celestian attitude, I know!), I've rarely had to deal with bashing ground ganking a la Achaea's Underworld. But, you pays your sovereigns and you takes your choice.

You could always just make it an extra reward in the allready existing honours quests for each area.

terrible idea, next? 1: basicly enforces a i gank you when ever you hunt approach to pk which in itself is lame as hell. 2. it stops people from being able to hunt in places that are made just to be bashed.

Yes, 32.5 merians. So if it takes you 10 minutes to "grief" me, it takes me about 9 minutes to make it all back. The amount you "griefed" me by in this way is a ten-thousandth as much as I stand to lose every time I enter a fight even if I get immolated. Are you really suggesting it's too much? Is a fraction of a single bashing run in a single area really "oodles of experience", as Acrune calls it? Is there anyone who wants to be in PvP fighting that would really be put off by the fraction-of-a-percent-of-a-level that a single bashing run represents, even if they choose to do nothing at all?

I think it's too little -- I'd set the cap at 200%, because the whole point is to make it so if you swear to defend someone, you might actually get off your behind and do it. Even at 200% it's still a fraction of a percent of a level. Who is going to sign up for PvP but consider losing that "griefing"?


If there's ten protectors online at the time you raid, you can "grief" ten people with these tiny penalties at once, at the cost of the fact that those ten people are simultaneously being asked to stop you, and they probably outnumber you. (Yes, even you, Ixchilgal.)

I like it but theres issues.

Problems..

- Free gold for this? Just only be logged in when they dont tend to die? Or do it to powreful orgs
- Experience loss for failure.. oww.
- This really seems to be a griefer tool.. hang around, wait for it, then bam I know when I can slay someone in Grey moors?

The experience loss would kill... I could kill merian while someone is raiding Nil and take some experience from people? Grieferish.

I would make a fortune off Celestia, Nil, Moonspirit, Nightspirit and several different non-mining villages. Then I would make myself protector of a relatively low-level bashing area where I don't stand to lose much xp and probably won't find a real fighter coming to harass me.

Can't protect villages.

Really, if the best abuse you guys can come up with is that I could cost you a ten-thousandth as much exp as you'd lose being immolated, on those occasions you happen to not bother to do what you swore to do, maybe this proposal is stronger than I thought.

But I don't think anyone has really seriously read it yet.

I can see where you're coming from, and looking at it from the perspective of proving to people that they aren't -really- willing to defend mobs and that these places shouldn't be free-PK for bashers, it's great.

I can't help but feel that if it were implemented it would be annoying for everyone though.
People bashing would get ganked without PK status with no real way of telling beforehand - unless POLITICS ASLARAN only shows those people's names if they're online, and even then it's tricky - and it's not like most people are equipped to tell if the protectors are entering the area to gank them.
People actually doing it would run into situations where people from their own orgs bash those mobs (except Celest, who can do whatever they want.) I guess it's a lot better for them though, the experience loss isn't that major. This even encourages people to jump for bashing because they start getting alerts for it. I suppose you can just start bashing in teams that protectors can't handle, since they can't effectively bring non-protector reinforcements (or can they? Defend could be awkward) but that's a huge hassle.

This is simply one of the worst ideas I've heard. Really, its Krin-idea level. At least I can understand the post though.

its not opt in, the basher does not opt-in to the gankage. Yes you can argue that they opt in when they get enemied, but you want to make Merian, Krokani, and other current non-enemy bashing areas enemy areas, and that screws over pretty much anyone in the 30-50 range.

Short sighted idea that will create more griefing, and reward for it.

It's always good to see constructive criticism!

I already explained why I think its bad *point post #3* No point in suggesting changes, because the whole thing is bad (except what its trying to fix)

I just felt like being snarky, really.

I think you missed the part where under the current system, everyone can gank you in those areas any time they like. This proposal significantly reduces that factor.

Anyway, nevermind. After this many "bad idea, it just is" posts without any concrete objections that weren't based on misunderstandings, I don't think we're going to get any serious consideration of the actual proposal. I guess this one was beyond my ability for clear explanation.

Ok to exploit the idea.

Say Kaervas and I find out you are a protector of all the Hives in UV. We both go out and start bashing hives, killing every hive mob in all the hives. We are doing this seperately so you have to decide which one of us you want to go after.

Now. We clean out the hives, go to turn in the corpses for the gold. If you happen to come into the Illithoid area to try and stop this, we could have an empress user waiting to pull you in (who also may have chosen to be a protector. Kill you and not only do you end up praying or such, you have lost the exp from all the hive people we killed)

Now, the whole killing you in Illithoid area is just an add on. But lets nix that part for a minute. Say we killed all the kephera every time they repopp'd. Now say that maybe 10 people are protectors of the kephera. We will be messing with the exp of 20 people per run. If they don't catch up to us. Which is quite possible especially if we use a puzzle box to hop around to get in and out of the hives.

Now think of higher end bashing areas, that are in space. Like maybe Xion or Candyland. Now there may not be that many mobs there, but would the 25% exp bonus we get for being on an aetherbubble equate to an extra 25% loss for the protector? Space is pretty hard for someone to get to before the whole area is bashed out. Especially if they don't have a flashpoint for the area.

I just don't see it being in the best intrests of the protector.

I actually had thought of this, and then thought not to bring it up for one major reason: some things make a lot of sense, but just wouldn't be fun, especially in the case that no one is griefed. (NPCs can't be griefed.)