Okay, at the moment all organizations can regard a non-member as either an enemy or someone of no consequence, and that's about it. I would like to propose this be changed.

Instead of being able to brand someone an enemy, or brand them an ally, you would be able to add or remove reputation, as described below.



There are some key changes in this system to what we have now:

1. Ongoing power costs: Keeping lots of enemies is taxing on the org's reserves. The drain is small enough to be acceptable for those that really are going to cause problems, but means that if someone wants to try repairing their reputation, it is in the org's interest to help them. This is justified by considering the effort that must be taken to keep all guards, totems and forest/flux energies focused on that person.
2. Hardcoded ways to adjust reputation - If you do something to hurt an organization, it is automatically noted. If you do something to help an organization, it is automatically noted. The organization leadership can still impose fines or enemy people according to its own desires, but the player in question has some control over their standing with the nation as well.

Partly this is driven by my extreme frustration at dealing with nation leaders who seem to forget that this is a game, and sometimes what seems like reasonable beaurocratic precautions can mean a week of downtime or more. I understand that things can't always move swiftly and that fairness is not always to be expected when other players are making the rules, but sometimes the game mechanics themselves can make it too easy to work against these ideals. That's not to say that everyone that I've dealt with hasn't been helpful, on the contrary, they've been exceedingly nice and done their best... I just think that the black and white nature of hardcoded 'enemy'/'nonenemy' is too broad given how much roleplayed hatred there is between nations.

I'm sure the people that deal with real enemies all the time can suggest better effects of each status, which is fine. I definitely believe however that a spectrum of relationships suits Lusternia much better than what we have now - we are just too different when compared to the other IRE games to use the same enemy systems.

Okay, putting on my flame-retardent suit... what do you all think?

So... the more you grief the org, the more you hurt their power?

No.

That's right. If you constantly kill every single critter that is loyal to them every day for two weeks, you cost them... 140 power. Or the equivalent of two nation members drawing in a day.

How much power is out there now, surely these amounts are small enough to be worthwhile to maintain?

Edit: Wait, that's only with this system, I have no idea how much power you can actively attack in a foreign nation.

I realize it's a difficult concept to accept if you look at it from a certain player perspective, because it is definitely a powersink and increases power consumption from where it is now. I still think the effects overall will be positive though, especially for those like myself that are enemied for frivolous or non-existent reasons.

I'm happy for the numbers to be tweaked if that's too high, but I was going for about the cost of a nation guard to maintain an enemy. Ideally, you could comfortably have a few dozen enemies and maintain a nice growth in power supply but if you just enemy for the hell of it and never reconsider, you're going to have to pay a heavier price for it. It also naturally decays enemy status to the lowest maintenance cost over time, so if enemies stop attacking, their maintenance cost should eventually decrease as well.

I disagree. We don't need a way for enemies to passively drain power from Nexii. It's bad enough that we have a conflict quest doing it, and that isn't at the level that something like this will be.

How much does a guard cost to maintain each month?

I'd like it more if the thresholds between "levels" required player input before raising or lowering them to that level allowing the nation to actually choose it.

Like

CITY/COMMUNE BRAND

Given the numbers Friend and Nemesis could be revoked easily.

also security effects should still affect enemy level people

25 power for a single guard.

And yes... this is far too expensive. Want to drain power from an enemy? Just kill their demons (power stolen), and then passively steal more! I like the idea for graduated enemying, but your desire to force orgs not to enemy people is still apparent. Just being able to graduate it would likely help in that regard (so that it isn't 'all or nothing').

I think there needs to be some cost to excessive enemying, yes. I think this tiny amount of power is both realistic and visual, but maybe a gold cost would be preferable, or something else similar?

I just don't see player imposed enemying as it stands now working well. There's no incentive to not blanket enemy anyone who looks at you funny, there's no incentive to review enemies, even those made RL years ago, and there's no recourse for characters that want to change organizations or guilds and have massive amounts of interference. The game mechanics are strongly weighted towards stagnancy and permanence - individual diplomacy amounts to debasing yourself as the organization demands and throwing as much money at someone as they feel like taking, while hoping that someone deigns to type a command over the course of the next few RL weeks.

There is absolutely no influence on player governments to really think about the effect their decisions can have on player experiences nor on the benefit for the organization, because there really isn't one. I find myself in the situation where I'm offering to add my support and resources to an organization, ready and willing and with absolutely no history of interference or assault, and I have to jump through hoops and pay through the nose for the privilege.

In the end, I've got no options - I have no power to change anything other than by asking nicely... a system like this at least gives some potential for the situation to have multiple resolutions or thought processes.

I'm quite aware it probably will never be used, but its certainly nice to dream!

Yet at the same time, why should an organization incur a cost for / have to "review" someone who is a well-known known combatant fighting against them, and still is doing so? That's certainly not "excessive enemying" in any way, shape, or form. As well as there being very little drive in regards to thoughts about how what you're doing as a combatant "affects the playerbase experience." The main tool at an organization's disposal for this is... enemying. Which you want to weaken by tacking on a cost.

Sure, for the most part it's positive, but there are always those few who will take it too far... and this suggestion of yours is just making it even easier for them.

Don't they do that already though? Under sustained attack, more guards are necessary, costing much more power than I've suggested here. I really don't think 3 power a month (using the lesser figure) is going to be that brag-worthy or grief-causing, to be honest.

It's not like more guards are necessary. You just move around the ones you've already got.

And with your solution, you'd have to both do that and spend quite a bit of gold to 'enemy' people who are first time raiders (or have recently had their reputation rise above a certain level) to even get them to do their job.

Wait, why? As soon as they kill 5 loyals, or 1 player in nation territory, or do 2 anti org quests, the guards will be aggressive

This is silly. I can think of multiple ways to game/cheat. For example, let's say someone just wants to spy or cause trouble by harassing people - there is no mechanism to take care of this. What if someone is robbing another person? I can't just instantly enemy them?

Yes, you could.

By paying gold? Seems lame to me.

While I can appreciate the frustration of people having to jump through hoops to join a different org of their choice, this seems like far too excessive of a response.

RPwise an organization should be able to say, with impunity, who is and is not welcome in their territories. And they should not have to have a good reason for it. Why? Because it's a RP game. If Magnagora wants to enemy all Merians because they're stinky fish, they should be able to. As a Merian I don't have some inherent right in the interests of the game to go prancing through the streets of Magnagora inflicting my fishy presence on them and making them spend gold (on top of the gold and power they're already spending to guard the place) just to get me to go away. The thought of the paperwork alone constantly reviewing enemies is the stuff of nightmares.

Many enemy fines and waiting periods and whatever other tasks are excessive. Orgs use these as a way to determine the true intent of a person seeking to join. Are they really interested or is it just a passing fancy? Once a person has left another org or is clearly willing to leave another org there is some question as to their loyalty after all.

Yes, it is a game. A very conflict driven game. In the long run, organizations that make it impossible for enemies with no serious record to join them are just hurting themselves and I think the end result of that is pretty clear in org populations. Even major enemies should have a chance of getting in assuming they jump through the proper hoops.

I think a far simpler version of this might be interesting with being able to brand people friend or enemy. Without the punishments in place for an org daring to have enemies. Unless of course they randomly get rewards for having friends. A notion that makes about as much sense.

Overall, I really like the idea. It has great potential. However, the costs and effects need to be adjusted (don't ask me how because I'm no expert on the subject, either) and players need to be able to adjust a person's reputation or you end up with another Avenger-like policing system that has loopholes.

Unless all loyals start being flagged like Supermobs, only the person who gets the last hit would actually lose the reputation. With a group, odds of you getting 5 loyal kills is rather low most of the time. Player-kills would have to be tied in to Avenger (did I declare? Did I swing at this person? Aaaaagh, Estarra help me!) What about off-Prime areas with mobs loyal to, say, Moon? In an area that isn't actually org-controlled?

And what counts as an anti-org quest? Does me releasing those little demon-things in Hifarae count as anti-Seren? (They flood out onto the road and kill Seren novices walking around just outside the Forest, for example).

Then we have the novices / problem alts created specifically to cause trouble. Let's say a novice goes spitting at Thoros at the Megalith. He can either spend a large pile of gold to enemy the thing, or attack it and get suspect...

There are just a lot of extra cases that would need to be worked on, and the last is an annoying loophole that would definitely get exploited. I just don't think it's feasible to implement. :/

While I also understand the idea and concerns about excessive enemying, I'm not sure this is the way to go either. I think the problem is less with excessive enemying than it is with the obscene fines associated with unenemying. Org leaders thing it's rather fun to assign huge fines and tasks to unenemying because they feel it is "equal payment" for the pain you have caused them not as characters, but as players. If a way can be thought of to control the fines without opening up ways to abuse them, I would be more in favour of that. But I fear that the only real way to control the fines is for the players to stop taking everything so personally.