Unknown2006-06-04 01:29:39
I've been thinking over the past few days how exactly group combat seems to be encouraged over that of individual battles, and I believe it is due to a number of factors. First, while combat is forcefully shunted off plane, only Astral is relatively organization-independent. All other areas have some significance to one of the nations (and are therefore protected, important, and defended by the whole organization). Astral itself suffers from being difficult to move quickly about in without a cubix, and it is generally considered bad form to jump those who are already attacking the high level Astral mobs. This means that to take advantage of conglutination, you have the option of either raiding a foreign owned territory (and eliciting a group defensive response) or attacking those who are bashing (and face being accused of poor form and griefing).
New neutral areas on the planes aren't really going to help terribly much, in my opinion. The only way to entice people to frequent these areas is to either
1) make it a bashing/influencing area, in which case jumping people using it is annoying and cruel, or
2) make it significant to an organization, in which case fighting there will draw the attention of the whole org.
It will eventually be nice to have more neutral planar areas, but it doesn't really change the underlying problem.
Suggestion:
Revise the suspect and karma system so that:
* One PK on Prime has no tangible effect other than to start a countdown of 10 RL days, during which you should not kill the same person again.
* If you do kill the same person again in that time, you are added as a bully and they have the option of karma cursing you within a period of 10 RL days, and you will retain bully status for 20 RL days.
* If you attack the same person again in the next 20 days, your victim gains vengeance.
* Remove direct karma gain for offering/questing. Instead, these two activities will raise the rate at which every character gains karma each RL day. This amount should be 1 karma per day if you have not affected your karma rate at all, up to about 30 karma if you are at full karma rate. It would be nice, though not essential, if the rate decayed by a certain percentage each RL day, so bashing/questing the rate up to 100% would mean you gain 30 karma that day, if you do nothing the next day your rate goes down to 70%, so you get 21 karma, if you do nothing the next day the rate goes down to 40% so you gain 12 karma, etc.
* Decrease the experience loss of praying by at least 1/2. The difference between conglutination, vitae, and ressurection skills vs praying is far too severe.
* Remove the added experience penalty of enemy territory.
Intended effects:
* Blessings and curses can now remain as strong as they are, since both are more difficult and weighty to achieve.
* Combat on prime is limited, but not entirely prohibited. Not all PK is forced onto the planes, but a great proportion is.
* The karma and avenger systems are not so easy to utilize, and only apply when there is obvious bullying/targetting going on.
Essentially, I'm adding a free PK on prime -before- the justice system starts to kick in. It was originally this way, but the addition of karma made even one death have potential automated punishment.
New neutral areas on the planes aren't really going to help terribly much, in my opinion. The only way to entice people to frequent these areas is to either
1) make it a bashing/influencing area, in which case jumping people using it is annoying and cruel, or
2) make it significant to an organization, in which case fighting there will draw the attention of the whole org.
It will eventually be nice to have more neutral planar areas, but it doesn't really change the underlying problem.
Suggestion:
Revise the suspect and karma system so that:
* One PK on Prime has no tangible effect other than to start a countdown of 10 RL days, during which you should not kill the same person again.
* If you do kill the same person again in that time, you are added as a bully and they have the option of karma cursing you within a period of 10 RL days, and you will retain bully status for 20 RL days.
* If you attack the same person again in the next 20 days, your victim gains vengeance.
* Remove direct karma gain for offering/questing. Instead, these two activities will raise the rate at which every character gains karma each RL day. This amount should be 1 karma per day if you have not affected your karma rate at all, up to about 30 karma if you are at full karma rate. It would be nice, though not essential, if the rate decayed by a certain percentage each RL day, so bashing/questing the rate up to 100% would mean you gain 30 karma that day, if you do nothing the next day your rate goes down to 70%, so you get 21 karma, if you do nothing the next day the rate goes down to 40% so you gain 12 karma, etc.
* Decrease the experience loss of praying by at least 1/2. The difference between conglutination, vitae, and ressurection skills vs praying is far too severe.
* Remove the added experience penalty of enemy territory.
Intended effects:
* Blessings and curses can now remain as strong as they are, since both are more difficult and weighty to achieve.
* Combat on prime is limited, but not entirely prohibited. Not all PK is forced onto the planes, but a great proportion is.
* The karma and avenger systems are not so easy to utilize, and only apply when there is obvious bullying/targetting going on.
Essentially, I'm adding a free PK on prime -before- the justice system starts to kick in. It was originally this way, but the addition of karma made even one death have potential automated punishment.
Unknown2006-06-04 02:52:48
Any thoughts? Or is prime combat/death not a concern to anyone else?
Unknown2006-06-04 02:55:31
I swear you have a fetish for making things more difficult than they need to be.
Unknown2006-06-04 02:58:10
Simpler would be removing large parts of the karma or avenger systems.
Shamarah2006-06-04 03:06:15
If the cost for praying goes down, the cost for other methods of resurrection needs to go up. (I'd like that.)
Unknown2006-06-04 03:49:13
I actually like most of your suggestions, you should also add that if you use vengeance then you lose suspect on that person. I believe that the loss for praying should stay as is or only take 1/6 away from its current loss. Also like Shamarah said the other forms of resurrections the loss needs to slightly go up in my opinion cutting praying loss in half is way too much.
Unknown2006-06-05 13:23:08
Aye, vengeance would work the same as it does now (I haven't heard too many complaints about it).
The reason I'd like to cut praying deaths by so much is so that losing a few times in combat isn't that devastating. That way people are more willing to accept a greater risk on Prime, and more willing to participate without excellent ability.
It is also important because if it takes 2 deaths before suspect kicks in, this means vitae does not automatically spell the end of a battle.
The reason I'd like to cut praying deaths by so much is so that losing a few times in combat isn't that devastating. That way people are more willing to accept a greater risk on Prime, and more willing to participate without excellent ability.
It is also important because if it takes 2 deaths before suspect kicks in, this means vitae does not automatically spell the end of a battle.
