Obvious, there were some unforeseen bugs and bumps along the way, but we had our first order war! Apologies to everyone if some of the bumps were rougher than others, but such is life when testing a new system. Overall, I think this has a lot of potential. I didn't really see a "celenwilde" zerg or whatever you call it overwhelm one side (so I'm still not convinced of the need to limit access to realms during order wars). That said, I'm sure there is other room for improvement!

Please use this thread for constructive feedback on the Order War system. If you want to rant, there's already a thread for that.

1) Some mechanical advantages for the defending party. I would think that an Order should be quite powerful in their Elder God's Realm with powers and what not above the average person. Likewise, Avatars should play a more important role in all of this.

2) Time limits. There should be a maximum amount of damage that can be inflicted in a given period of time followed by a cool down period where both teams can regroup and start from scratch. This would remove the whole "I have to sit in a room holding it in lockdown for 5+ hours" and lead us in the direction of a sustained conflict experience (read: war).

3) The entrances to the God Realms on Prime should ONLY work for the Order connected to the given Realm. Why would anyone fly an aethership to Eventru's Realm when they can just walk there?

Also, there should be multiple aetherdocks to a God Realm so it's not as easy to just lock down a single room.

Well for one, I'm suprised there was no Celenwilde. Of course, I don't think many of Seren's fighters were actaually around.

Secondly, I think there's an issue with the godrealms themselves. Eventru's, for example, is just one long 15 room line while Fain's is a massive sprawled out area. It's pretty easy to turn Eventru's into a fortress with masses of clustered mummers and people waiting at the arch.

Additionally Romero's point that Eventru's entrance lies in enemyable territory so a lot of us were auto declaring just trying to get there (I was luck enough to get amnesty before the fighting began) while Fain's is in the middle of a neutral river.

I know Lisaera has addressed the length, but this one wasn't so much of an Orderwar as an Orderstaringcontest. I'm not sure what the solution to that would be though.

I do think it should be Order vs. Order, not Organizations versus Organizations. You didn't see a huge amount of Celenwilde because (as Desitrus put it) there weren't any Serens around. Xiel also said he'd have been there if there was any chance for "his side to win" (related to the invasion-mobs that were summoned). Though this isn't on my buffer any more.

The truefavour for winning was only 5 minutes. :/

And those who already had truefavours got nothing. ;_;

I think all of Narsrim's points sound very reasonable.

What if you could blast open other portals into the godrealm from aetherspace?

Orders with inactive Divine should be able to participate!

We can have little mini-wars against each other.

@estarra And yes, you didn't see a celenwilde zerg this time, but that doesnt mean it won't happen. Godrealms should still be closed off to the two divine at war to prevent this from happening in the future.

Orders without godrealms yet should get theirs. Kinda depressing to want to have your Order involved and not be able to.

Yeah, I didn't even see that. I had to QQ for about an hour, and when I got back, all I had was the message about gaining some experience from it.

Sorry, but even though I realize this was mostly a test, it wasn't worth 5+ hours if my life for a 5 minute TF.

Probably safe to say that's a bug.

Let's assume the 5 minute truefavour is a bug, and the other realms will be released when ready and that talking about them isn't relative to the topic at hand.

Let's stick to order wars.

Five hours is a pretty nasty length. It's too long for a skirmish, too short for an event. I was expecting something more like an event, but it played out more like a long skirmish.

Players should never get essentially locked out by invasion mobs. If you keep that aspect, I'd go with Supernal health, but piddly damage with emphasis on room attacks and afflictions, or perhaps heavy damage and health, but make them non-aggressive and require substantial player input to summon.

Can someone in Eventru's order post logs of all the essence drains?

This would be helpful to the rest of us trying to give suggestions regarding the godwars.

For the sake of guiding discussion/giving points to brainstorm on:

One of the big issues some people have with godrealms/wars, at current, as I understand it, is the varying size - while they will never be a standard, uniform size (they grow under certain circumstances), we're certainly open to ideas/suggestions on how to make realm size a positive thing.

That is to say, at current, I have a small realm. Granted the design is painful (it was designed with aesthetics in mind, not combat) at current for playing king of the hill, it also means Eventru's realm has very few denizens. Fain's, conversely, is much larger with more denizens. It certainly leaves Fain more susceptible to essence loss during war (as realm mobs count towards the 'war loss'), and arguably makes his larger realm a drawback. One positive side of having so many mobs is that his order is able to influence them and more quickly gain blessings for it.

Anyone have suggestions or ideas towards making a larger realm a more positive thing?

A few things I am curious on:

How long does an invasion shrine have to stay up before the amount of essence that it's mobs drains is greater than the amount you lose from having it destroyed? That would be helpful to know, I'm really not sure on the relative values of how much each act you do drains essence.

On that note, I don't like how invasion shrines work right now. I guess I just don't see the point of having aggressive mobs which make it even harder to remove someone who gets entrenched in a demesne, and other passive defenses.

Edit: Also, I love Narsrim's suggestion of time limits. Order wars should be short bursts of fast and furious action (battles), which end in an overall result (the war).

Invasion mobs really are not that bad. It calls about three a RL hour. They only get bad quickly in small realms, and even then it takes several hours for them to get to the point where they're stacked upon one another in such a way they're really a problem.

They are the exact same mobs that a regular invasion calls, and generally in fewer numbers - and by and large, it seems like invasion mobs aren't much an obstacle 90% of the time for anyone outside of realms. Am I wrong?

You're probably right, I just know that there were about 16 in Eventru's realm at one point (though that is probably more our fault for not getting rid of the shrine faster). Which brings me back to my original point: How fast do those shrines drain essence? If they are only putting out 3 mobs per real life hour, they must drain it pretty quickly in order to make up for what it costs to destroy them.

Yes, you're wrong. Invasion mobs are frickin' lethal. And if there are 3 per RL hour, how come Alban was talking about 16 mummers? Was he wrong or was there a regular shrine in there casting invasion mobs too? I dunno.