Right on. Let's mix it up and make it not always good vs evil.

And apparently my previous post went through, only for me not to be able to see it until I posted a second time. Thank you forums <.<

NP

Whoever's idea the 10k power was, I actually like that. Or 20k so you can't chunk half of it out with Supernal killing. That way people don't just want to stock up endless amounts (and power imbalances don't matter so much, AND they're easier to observe and fix.) Between that and nexus worlds actually power use more useful, I think that'd be a -great- change.

Wouldn't address the conflict problem though, which is where Xenthos' post that Gwylifar quoted comes in.

Forgive all the tangents that I know this post is going to contain before I even start writing it.

Raiding is frustrating and annoying. It pits one superior fighter or a small group of elite fighters against cannon fodder. On a good day, I could kill dozens of Serens before getting dislodged from my demesne. On Narsrim's good days, the combined force of Glomdoring couldn't stop him, period, end of story, time to log off, n00blet. I can't speak for Narsrim's experience, but...if the defending force isn't there, it's not fun for the raider, and it's hellacious and demoralizing for the defenders.

Conflict quests helped to mitigate the presence of an unstoppable combatant. However, conflict quests had a tendency to demand a ton of time, and the desire to win put a lot of pressure on people, big and small, to participate. If conflict quests were more engaging than blasting fish, chasing squid, and spamming "Help" or "Candy" in front of a falconer, the time commitment might be less annoying. As it stands, I don't know how feasible dynamic quests are for something like this. Even our typical honours quests can only be repeated so many times before people understand the whole system, and you can rest assured that orgs will figure them out fast.

More to say, but life calls. More later!

With the removal of conflict quests, 99% of conflict these days are raids. In a raid, one side is vastly superior to the other, every time. When the defenders are far stronger than the attacker(s), the attacker(s) just run around kicking things and running away, being extremely iritating and not fun in the slightest. When, as it is far more commonly the case, the attackers vastly outnumber the defenders, then either I feel terrible for griefing if I'm on the offense, or feel terrible for being *forced* to die repeatedly to a superior force if I'm on the defence.

The only time I enjoy conflict these days is in Faethorn, where it is completely optional for either side to join in the battle or not. There's nothing *forcing* the gloms to come over and kill us if we're sitting there, and there's nothing *forcing* us to come and kill gloms if they happen to be amassing in Faethorn, but either side can go and fight if they wish. However, every time we have fun fighting in Faethorn, the Admins mobpossess Maeve and tell us to go away, which makes me very, very sad

Raiding is pointless in my opinion. I think that there should be ways that are much more devastating and much less annoying to get at the enemy. I hate raids because I know I'll ALWAYS get my arse handed to me.

I posted this on another thread. I think it belongs here too.

I think we need a new event that would stir people and get them to play.



This way, people who love pvp will get what they want. A human player behind these supersoldiers would make sure they dont grief players and org.

My two cents:

I liked the conflict quest we had in Faethorn, swaying Faethorn by getting the fae - although, I much prefer influencing them to the honeycakes we used to have. It gave you something to do that you could get favours for if you did it a lot, and you knew it was part of a bigger quest, and you got karma and experience and gold. Now it's boring, just like getting essence from grubs or whatever on elemental planes. The thing I liked about it, though, was that if Faethorn wasn't for Night, it wasn't devastating. It just meant Serenwilde was getting 10 power/day and we were getting none. Granted, that's not a good thing, but it's not something to panic about. You just try harder for the next battle. You didn't NEED to do it.

Give me back my conflict quest!

And that's my two cents.

Things are dull.

This is an unfortunate side-effect of the much needed change that fixed when things were obnoxiously annoying and conflict was constant. I hate to say it, but I miss conflict quests. There is a part of me that believes there is SOME way to have our cake and eat it too, but the other part of me thinks I'm not being very realistic.

What I think is most sad though is that Krellan does kill the Aspects of Crow multiple times a day, and really, no one cares. Even when I try to make a bit of fuss IC (I mean they are, after all, an IC big deal), no one cares at all.

Where oh where is the happy medium? There's got to be something between frustration and apathy!

Right now conflict is at a good level. I say this because all of the conflict is pretty much driven by players so it increases or decreases at the will of the players.

There is a "requirement" to defend when raided but I don't think this is unbearable really as long as organizations don't get too rabid about herding the newbies up to die. If they volunteer though, great. They might find they like it. They definitely like going on the retalitory raids.

I agree with Athana and others that demenses make things very boring and turns raids into a staring contest more than anything else. They are also what allow for the really long drawn out raids. I don't see anyone volunteering to stop using them anytime soon though. Maybe a change where you just can't demense non-prime planes or to make it less of a total nerf, allow it so you can demense but can only put up the beneficial effects for yourself and your allies, nothing that targets the enemy. So if you can get a demense, that's cool but it's not the be all and end all of raids.

I think more varied conflict would be interesting as long as it's not in the form of anything that is forced. Conflict quests just quickly become too much.

Aetherspace is a good area for development with this. Being able to "conquer" territory in Aetherspace and build little outposts that gather certain types of resources for your city. Power, commodities, gold, whatever. Initial conquering would require clearing an area of aether beasts and such and any space pirates that were operating there. People could raid your outposts (which you can guard with guardships naturally for a cost) to steal some resources. If they wanted to conquer parts of your territory, it would be more involved with them having to be abutting your territory, etc.

It's not a complete idea but I really think Aetherspace is where any expansion of conflict should happen. It doesn't have to just be ship on ship combat. When you board an outpost or fort or something it turns into a land battle. A lot of the boredom for current conflict stems from either you're a fighter and find it bearable or you're not and die in two hits repeatedly. I think Aetherspace could really involve a lot more people into voluntary conflict depending on how it was done.

It won't have the same "meaning" as the more traditional conflicts but whenever there is a lot of meaning attached to something, it forces people to participate and then wears them out. We have enough chances to hit at the heart of an organization I think. Events like wildnodes are fun to an extent but would get boring if there were a lot of them. Take out the demenses and they'll be a lot more interesting!

I have to disagree with this assertion.

You're right, it's driven by players... but if you really look into it, it's actually nearly always driven by just one or two players who push it to an extreme. This means that the "will of the players" doesn't really have much of an impact at all, because it's not the playerbase as a group, it's a small handful of individuals.

I also have to disagree with Aetherspace as being a good expansion for conflict, as there are many people who just don't care about Aetherspace at *all*, as well as it being a relatively inefficient (and long!) way of doing anything. If you go into aetherspace and land on a bubble, you're cut off from all communication. You have to spend the time flying, which is rather spammy. You need to know your way around (well, just the pilot does).

I've not really liked the fact that events tend to utilize aetherspace as a "necessity" for completing them recently. Trying to make any kind of conflict change Aetherspace Only would be a mistake, in my opinion-- it's easier to just do the Standard Boring Raid than try to get involved in an aethership with a crew.

It actually kind of is the playerbase as a group. I say this because if the playerbase did not want these sorts of people running around doing this sort of thing they would deal with it the way they deal with thieves.

I understand that in the Communes right now you're dealing with a few people who just don't know when enough is enough but it's the Serenwilde or Glomdoring communes that are allowing those people to keep doing it - and I'm gathering it's more the Serenwilde that isn't controlling players that lack their own common sense than anything else.

Perhaps some sort of mechanic could be put in place that if a person kills the Aspects of like the Earth/Water lords too frequently there is a consequence. I'm not sure what would make sense. Mabye allowing other players to call down a curse on that player if they've wracked up enough grief? "The Aspects agree with you that Joegriefer is a nuisance that must be dealt with and lend their strength to power the curse." It shouldn't be completely debilitating though the curse can be strengthened each time they continue their activities until it gets to a point where it is debilitating. It wouldn't be anything that would hinder the normal raider who went in here and there and killed things but if someone was constantly doing it, it'd be a nice little RP ritual to warn them they're overstepping the bounds of decency.

I don't know really. My only point is that it is not the administration forcing this conflict on us through required quests/events/etc.

In terms of Aetherspace I have to completely disagree with you there. Recently some people in Celest have been making a push to get people involved in doing things in Aetherspace besides just traveling around. It is a lot of fun, total newbies can participate in it, and it's something of a challenge. There has been a LOT of interest once the opportunity opened up for people. (to the tune of 35 active players participating in it with at least one fully crewed aether hunt a day with no actual official city support and it only being something very recently implemented) So I think to say no one cares about it is not really seeing the big picture. It is more most players don't have access to it or do not understand how to go about doing things out there. I think it is a feature that can be easily expanded on.

Thieves tend to be pushed out by their own communities. This means they are left out alone in the Big Bad World, with no real safe place to run to (unless they want to stay at Avechna / Portal of Fate forever). If they leave, they can't hide in an organization with guards. Thieves also tend not to have the best combat skills, which means it's far easier to deal with them.

Not so with a raider. Narsrim, for example. Those who transcend Running Away to safe territory are, essentially, untouchable. You can't "deal with them." If they die... they conglut, and they generally won't even die. If you lower yourself to stealing from them when they didn't steal anything in the first place, then you're tossing out the whole "We dislike thieves" ideal.

I do not see the two as the same. Not controlling someone IS a Commune decision, yes-- but it doesn't change the fact that if that person didn't exist, conflict levels would be SIGNIFICANTLY lower, because that one individual is ramping it up to an extremely high tension repeatedly every day, and there isn't really any way to "discourage" a combatant from being a combatant, short of trying to grief the other organization into the ground (also a Bad Thing).

I also did not say nobody cares. I said that many people do not, which I believe is completely factual. I also said that making conflict changes dependant upon Aetherspace Only (not expanding into Aetherspace, but existing SOLELY there) was a mistake, because many people will just continue with the MUCH easier normal / boring raiding that they've got now instead of trying to deal with gathering crews / dealing with aetherspace.

Xenthos, I'm not saying that it's up to the opposing communes to control the players, it's up to the commune/organization they're a member of to do it. Having the players control their own people is a heck of a lot more preferable to the administration coming down with the hammer and wrecking it for everyone. There are RP ways to do it and if you can't find one of those, just draw them aside OOCly and point out it's excessive. Or the curse idea I had.

We'll have to agree to disagree on Aetherspace. My experiences with it lead me to believe that since there is a lot of interest given the opportunity now with the only real things to do being killing aetherbeasts, collecting power, and trading dust that if there were more things to do, it would increase the interest.

This would be great for aquas, but it would render geo demesnes worthless.

I think the level of conflict now is pretty good, or could possibly even increase a bit. I think the biggest issue people have is with the type of conflict, not so much the level. We'd like to see a little more variety, but I've heard very few productive suggestions. I don't really like the battlefield idea, unless there is SOME sort of cost to get involved. I don't doubt that a lot more people would participate if they had no chance of losing anything, but I don't like the 'get something for nothing' philosophy. If you want to gain something, you should have to take risks. If you'd rather not take any risks, then maybe combat isn't really for you.

It is kind of a pain that raiding/defending is completely cost inefficient until you have at least trans planar. I would like to see more conflict spread to the nexus worlds, with no demesnes allowed, and org conglut active for defenders. I'm interested in seeing more that will draw people into aetherspace too. Aetherspace stuff seems like a lot of fun, but it's a 'bottom-of-the-list' type skill that comes after a lot of more important things, so skilled crew members are usually limited to people who have very high might. Also, I haven't been out lately, but past aethership trips really haven't seemed very worthwhile, and aethership combat just has a high bar for entry and doesn't really offer much that can't be obtained from simple raids.

Overall, I love the combat system; it's what keeps me around. I definitely don't want to see conflict removed or limited further. I think there's a problem in some organizations where the pacifists complain about any fighting at all, and the fighters complain that there isn't enough fighting, so it's nearly impossible to get a good gauge of what works. Right now, I think things are about the best they can be with the current system, I'd just like to see some new ideas added to spice things up.

Spot on. Narsrim + one other could successfully screw Mag or Glom over for hours, if he picked the right time - which he did. Every day. For weeks and months. Many Celestians / Serenwildians didn't really want constant war and conflict.. and they didn't have it - but through the actions of a tiny minority, the rest of us did.

You're neglecting the fact that if you tell people not to grief, they think you are oppressing their Rights to do Whatever They Want. They complain to the administration, and the administration tells you to relax your laws / regulations.

I was basically ordered to stop caring about the (minor) infractions of griefing-- could still do something about the larger ones, but had to look the other way for the little things. Now others are reinstituting my original policy. We'll see how that goes this time around. Doesn't change the fact that too much "control" and you're accused of wrecking someone else's fun, which could drive them from the game and lose customers every bit as much as their unchecked actions could drive others away.

The admin are already involved in this. The fact that it affects their playerbase (and potentially has a very large impact) makes it a priority.

The Admin encourage this conflict, or at least Viravain does. When she's instructing us to burn Seren to the ground, defile all Charune's shrines, and all that good stuff I am absolutely refuse to say "Xavius, Daed, Kaervas, let's cut back on the raiding a bit. Yes, that's right, don't go attack our sworn enemies. I don't care what Lady Viravain says, Glomdoring needs to get a handle on you."

That just doesn't make sense.