You people who are suggesting counters to tack on things for violence and penalize organizations aren't properly thinking how easily this can be exploited in my opinion. Lets face it people already save up Vengeance for a village, find ways to effectively try to lock people out with status and all kinds of tricks, now we want to produce a way for some loser to run in and guarantee loss?

Personally I don't see why people are so mad.. I think the level of conflict is WAY down in Villages and it has DEFINATLY become more of an influence war than a PVP war. Stewartsville showed this genuinely as Seren/Celest played the bullies and Glomdoring buckled down and won. Same thing has happened in reverse when Glom/Mag focused to much on being bullies and Celest/Seren locked down and influenced, as I felt happened in Paavik. It swings both ways really and always has. Personally I like it how it is because it forces people to make a choice.. do we want to Crusade and win faster or sanctuary and avoid any chance of violence.. personally Glom picked crusade and win faster and as a result.. won.

That being said I think there is room for a few changes.. I kindal ike Alger's point that I dont get why villages have to be completely and utterly random so it ends up depending entirely on whos online at the time to who wins.. In the end this only forces cities/communes to favor up a bunch of more people in hopes of throwing enough ranks out there that they'll get lucky, I don't like this kind of idea. Some sort of more solid idea of when a village will revolt would help people plan out their strategy and be around to make the battle for it truly more fair to all. But we cant of course guarantee anything that because of this Mag wont end up more on than Celest or whatever.. life is what life is, you can't always win.

Also as a side note to the comment on Mag doing our fighting for us.. really Mag didnt do much at all, couldnt do much at all. We were grossly outnumbered on all sides and best Mag could do is try to run decoy, not effectively protect us. We didnt let that throw us though and buckled down and kept working. Really I think things are pretty good how they are.. violence helps but I can tell you from our perspective <> We're always running around worrying more about debating people out, diverting, holding a mob etc etc than slaughtering people like pigs. At one point this was the opposite where in Mag us all organise up to slaughter, now I see us all organising up to debate and influence. Hell you even conglut for free now for gods sakes what more do you want.. not only is conflict WAY down but it almost cost you nothing at all to die.

And for the record making villages totally peaceful and then in some attempt to buy off PVP supports by giving them something else just isnt going to work.. there's nothing else more valuable than the commodities flowing in to your organization except maybe the Herbs/Alchemy that support its hunting/PVP. Outside that the only thing to funnel into an organization is power and power is not as valuable as comms is at this point.. especially since power ALSO comes from villages, making them a two fold venture. Villages are and deserve to be partly conflict, I dont mind the list of changes stressing more on influencing really and they have done their job cause every village I been in lately I haven't died excessively and besides Stewartsville the winner hasn't been guaranteed. I just hate to see the whine machine shooting into high gear now that Glom is organised up and backing Mag enough that Celest/Serenwilde arent as effectively bullies as they were before.. and once again I can't help but blame those who decided to raid Glom like bloodlust happy fiends and drove us to Mag for your chance to not face taint/non-taint going to dust. Really I see more people in Serenwilde begging for conflict than I see people anywhere else doing it.. thre are some PVP thristy people in that commune. People came to Lusty to get away from overly anal PVP restrictions like Achaea had where passing wind to offend someones nostrils were cause for issues and new rules.

Q: So what prevented you from making the place into an aquademesne?

I'm assuming I'll get this answer:

A: There weren't enough people on Celestwilde's side to break the Geodemesne while getting massacred by the ur'Guard etc.

So what are the potential problems?

1. Geomancer's got the demesne first. However, as Ixchilgal said, he had to forcetaint all the rooms, and re-meld it. He was simply faster to get there than the Aquas or the Hartstone.

2. You were horribly out-numbered.

For problem #1, I'm going to have to say, "He got there faster than you did, so it's your fault." Now, I do understand that demesnes play a vital role on who regulates a village influencing. But, remember that one time when Magnagora got screwed while trying to take Stewartsville and Delport (when they popped one after another. This was when Celest started to dominate for a short bit)? I'm not sure about Stewartsville, but WE Magnagorans had control of the demesne in Delport first. We still lost. Why? We were terribly out-numbered.

In the most recent revolt of Shanthmark, Mags got a good demesne going at first. But, there were Aquas towards the entrance that were actively breaking the geodemesne. Shiro, Eiru and myself and a couple others had to ward them off, and we were relatively successful although they were able to breach a little bit in the village. Why did the Aquas lose? They didn't have enough people to back them up.

It is extremely possible to destroy an active demesne in a village - you just need to make sure you have enough people with you. This is where the problem lies right now. There is a large imbalance of active Magnagoran fighters/influencers vs. Celestwilde fighters/influencers. I voted keep it the way it is and fix the bugs, because demesnes are not the reason why you guys are losing. As I stated above, we lost Delport while we had an active demesne (which was overtaken by Aquas over-time). The Aquas were doing an okay-job of trying to break Shanthmark despite with some resistance. Demesnes are just easy to put the blame on because:

1. They are annoying.
2. It kills you.
3. It screws up your rhythm. (Lodestone stun/knockdown, Aquademesne knockdown, and the worst: Hartstone pull you up in to the trees and hurl you down. )

Solution: Break the demesne.
How?: Have more fighters/influencers.

The solution, is easily said, but nearly impossible to accomplish. Gimping demesnes is not the solution though. As for the middleground option, I really don't know what to say - I'm neutral on that stance.

That's Estarra's idea. Mine was to make some always peaced (when open), some always violent, and some occassionally choose to peace themselves upon revolt and sometimes not. There are other ideas as well, like the owner of the city could order the village to peace itself, and the peace would remain through the revolution until a new master city tells it to remove the peace. Lots of options there...

That last one's a bad idea there. It doesn't need to be static in a way that provides an advantage to the city that owns it in quite that way. (And you make it sound like it would be peaced BEFORE the revolt, which kills raiding more than it already has been.)

As I said before, I like your idea. It would just make sense for Estelbar/Delport to not approve of violence, and how Acknor would view it as weakness if violence WASN'T involved.

Reading all this, as Cwin would say, makes my head pop. We still can't decide on whether Influencing should be combat based or mostly peaceful. It seems like everyone would have absolutely nothing to do if they couldn't be involved in village influencing.

(excuse me for the poor attempt as proper quoting)

Gwylifar


Devris


tarik


Note that I'm not singling them out (ok, I DID but I didn't mean to ), their all three groups seem to be saying "Influencing is the only place where that style can be played."


Perhaps why EVERYONE is fighting to keep Influencing 'thier's' is because it's become the only thing that matters to many people. It does seem to be the most effective way to not only empower your city and yourself (better access to quests and comms) but ALSO the main way to attack another nation.

Perhaps what we REALY need is something to draw attention away from the villages; not weaken their influence but something that lets you say "Darn, we lost another village, well, we'll get them back by...".

I hear alot of.

One side: "Well, the other groups have PLENTY to do instead of Influencing.


Other side: Where'd you get THAT idea?

As a non-combater, I have to say that Influencing realy is the bar-none thing to aim for, other than the comm quests (and only some of them: that I can't seem to do ANYTHING to help bring more ores without killing an enemy is UGG). Once the nation is blooming with comms and nexus power I'm not needed anywhere until it's time to Influence. Then, if I'm still Rank 1 in my commune, I can still Analyze to watch for free denizens, Debate down the enemy, watch for movement, and bring supplies. With commune ranks I can BE an influencer, bringing the village over. That's exciting, knowing that your actions make that much of an impact.

True, there's plenty I can do for my own gains (begging, alchemy, most honors quests, bashing) but for the commune, there's nothing like a village in-play.

I bet people who are combat oriented, AND people who use demenses can give a similar story. What else is there REALY that can affect the world truly as much without being TOO overwhelming (that was the problem with Faethorn city people; imagine one of your villages being assaulted at least once EVERY SINGLE DAY and having to player-watch it 24/7 to keep it from being 5 raids, 10 raids, ext..)?

Perhaps once we have enough equivlants to influencing, we can give the villages over to one side (either make it purely combative, non-combative, or demensive) and let the other aspects be given to others. If we already DO have equivlants, then we just need some prodding to make that as effective as Influencing in some fashion.

Until then, splitting the villages might be the best option, or setting up the Diplomat/Army idea Quidgyboo brought up (I'm the forgotten author, btw, thanks for the reference)

Someday, SOMEDAY, I'll be able to post something that takes less that 5 pages.

To avoid making a really rude comment towards Syrienne, I'm wont address her post at all! Or wait, I will say this. When you've gained even one village without Magnagora's help, brag. You haven't. Serenwilde has taken villages without Celest. Moving along! Me and my tangents. Will they ever stop?

Devris, demesnes control the outcome of an influencing run. With the situation in Delport, yes, it was completely tainted, but Super Suicidal Shamarah got in there and broke it, melded it. It was game over for you guys from there.

I've said this in another thread, but I'll say it here too! No organization has lost a village when it's been fully demesned by their people. That doesn't say much of anything?

I can't do anything about player numbers. I liked some of Alger's points too, btw.


I hope to see some changes, but nothing major. To be perfectly honest, I personally preferred the longer influencing runs, bcause we had time to kill the opposing influencers, clear demesnes, influence, wait until influenced-denizens forgot so that we could have another round at it, etc..etc. It's all too fast now. We have to go in, not worry about fighting, clearing demenses and just try and influence, clinging desperately to sanctuary in hostile demesnes.

In Glomdoring's defense, they did take Paavik without Magnagora's help.








They just didn't have any opposition. Kthnxpwnedc.

I'm Gerald.

In all honesty - me too. It wasn't one-sided to who had the most people to smash/bash.

Read back, Devris posted with much the same viewpoint as you did.

ROFL

I've got your back. Even if I disagree with you. Kthnx.

Incidentally, Cwin, I'm not trying to keep village influencing "mine" or make it mine, because I'm out of that game anyway, so it won't actually affect me. I'm saying what I'm saying from a game design and balance standpoint.

To me, villages are a fool's game anyway. Any standard to measure a nation's "success" other than "number of villages" shows no correlation to villages. What they produce is largely countered by their costs. Ultimately if you add up the numbers, they're only a burden you take on because your roleplay says you need to, and that can only go so far before it becomes intolerable, and you have to find IC reasons to give it up. That's precisely where I am now.

Ironically, this is exactly the same reason I've abandoned the adders, and they are marching towards extinction. The quest is a bunch of boring no-fun (4-5 hours of it, in fact -- I have to schedule it for a time when I'm going to be around that long) with absolutely no payoff. The adders are entirely a burden, and the amount of burden is so unreasonable that everyone but me dropped them since about the third time. I made a half-dozen or so attempts to get some kind of change to it that'd make the roleplay more interesting and/or reduce the burden to more reasonable levels, all of which were shot down in flames, so I made up an IC reason to abandon them, and now they're going extinct. Village influencing is the same in every respect.

I'd be content with a middle ground.

If the decision is made to make village influencing non-violent, I'd like to see a parallel system created that -is- violent. Granted, many of the aspects in the world are violent, but having that regular battle crop up is very nice (as there are some of us who don't influence/debate at all).

How about the already made celestia/nil conflict? I mean, come on. You've all abandoned it. It's like saying, "We've got our cake, we're eating it, now that you're getting a few crumbs, we want our cake to be fat free with the same great taste - and at no cost to us. With a diet coke."

I'm not too familiar with this conflict, but there are cerainly a few drawbacks to it just from the locations:

1) This won't effect the whole world, only the cities. Village influencing effects everyone, it's a basin-wide event.

2) Half the guilds don't really care about Nil/Celestia. It's pretty much just the Nihilists and Celestines that have real connections to those planes, is it not?

3) Many people in the Basin couldn't get there even if they wanted to (due to skills or planar connections). Everyone can get to villages, regardless of skills and affiliations.

There's probably other reason, but these are the ones that stick out in my mind immediatly. I should get back to work now

There is the Faethorn conflict for the communes, so point one is moot, as is three, given that anyone with gate in cosmic (just before Master) can transverse straight to Cosmic - and Mages can transverse elemental/cosmic. Knights will be forced to follow a mage/guardian - boohoo.

As for point 2, they best care. That's not only their power source, it's their power. We're talking thousands upon thousands of power lost every couple hours. Hourly, the necromantate/Star attack the city. Each attack destroys spikes/supplicants. When they hit a certain point, the shield around the city falls. Meaning A) I can summon you out, and the Star/Brain attack the Megalith/Pool DIRECTLY - draining power in the thousands, and replenishing the attacker's power supply. And, as the Supernals/Demonlords are killed, no more supplicants/spikes can be added for that supernal/lord. And I THINK if the supplicants/spikes for any supernal/lord falls below an arbitrary number, the shield falls.

That said, perhaps the cosmic conflict should be looked at. I am uncertain as to the variables involved (it has been a very, very long time for them to even be USED), but perhaps the number of supernals/demonlords given to the opposing side should affect how much power is drawn - if it isn't already.

The availability of a commune vs. commune conflict, and city vs. city conflict does -not- make my point moot. Village influencing is the only real basin-wide conflict that involves -everyone- on a regular basis. Its outcome affects -everyone-. That's what's so cool about it. The availability of a city vs. city, and equivalent commune vs. commune, battle doesn't not change that fact.

Point three isn't as big of a deal, to me at least. But then again I'm a trans Planar mage. The accessability of Village Influencing is very nice because it gives Novices something to participate in that involves the rest of the world. Stronger players will always find a "ride" to the necessary battlefield, Novices and smaller players will not.

That is an utterly rediculous point. Those same novices are able to get to Cosmic/elemental planes (Unless Nihilists/Celestines stop getting Cosmic as a novice - and Geos/Aquas stop getting Elementalism?). Even then, they shouldn't BE in conflict. Magnagora doesn't WANT them there, and tells them NOT to be there.

Basin-wide conflict is rediculous ANYWAY. You want Basin-wide conflict? Ask the Glomdoring to help defend Nil - because Celestwilde will, indeed, be banging on that door together, if at all.

Let's get some elemental conflict going - between the Rock and Tidal Lords. Let's get them in a FFA with the Hart avatars, and the Crow shadows.