I dunno about you guys, but do you really want all these mechanics to stop an org from owning everything (domoths, villages, demigods, etc)? You guys seem to just be swinging to the other extreme where in orgs (who shouldn't have much of a reason to work together, i.e., Taint and Light getting along happily and hanging out in each other's nexii) are working together for these mechanical buffs.

I'm not outright against the idea, but I don't think it should go completely the other way either.

Not completely, no, but small changes (such as a low exponential curve for increasing difficulty in claiming domoths, villages, etc) will swing the balance just enough to encourage people to go back to their own ideologies and stop hanging out with the others so much.

There's already a penalty against getting multiple villages, and it's not trivial. I missed most of those revolts, but Glomdoring must have given out beatdowns like peanuts at a seedy steakhouse.

Well i think making it harder but not impossible would be the way to go rather than give them diminishing returns or hard coded limits.

We just have to keep in mind that at one point or another we are all likely to find ourselves on the bottom and top of things and that's how I'd rather seen it done if I was on top now.

The penalty has never been that serious for trying to get an opposed village.

Out of curiosity, what are the ways the mechanics have been changed in the past year so as to "curb raiding"?

And then there follows about twelve hours of other things he says. Hell, by the time he finished listing things, the envoys would have created more. Really, conjunctio isn't even considered an attack!

The problem here isn't that he did this to a novice. The problem is that he did this. That he did it to a novice only makes it more painfully obviously ridiculous, but my comments are about the fact that he can do this, regardless of to whom. We're getting two conversations mixed up here. You want the "streamlining combat" thread...

The tradeoffs between positive reinforcement (in the game theory sense) and negative reinforcement come on a scale with an infinite number of gradations. Saying we shouldn't have this heavy a runaway "if you're in the lead, you're going to be more in the lead" system doesn't mean we're advocating that the more you have the harder you get beat on, until power is like a steam engine's regulator. It just means cranking down a bit to where gaining a lead is worth doing, but not completely overwhelming. Lusternia's done that a few times, but then everyone forgets about it, or imagines that the much-publicized turnabouts are actually counterevidence instead of exceptional events; and there's a gradual trend towards more positive reinforcement, and it gets out of whack again.

What about adding back in the reduced-cost-discretionaries constructs? In the recent full-scale raids, there's little/nothing Seren's been able to do, with or without discretionaries. This would curb kick-and-run, without really changing the effects of full-scale , as I see it.

They were never taken out, you guys just decided to keep the altar instead, and I agree with that decision.

I assure you though that you don't want to reduce discretionaries, then we will be back to the good old days of perma ripple/liveforest and now distort.

I think the best idea out of all these pages and pages of "moar mechanics solve our problems" is make death a penalty again. Simple solution that affects everyone and causes you to think twice about whether the risk is worth the thrill.

Only up the penalty for dying in enemy territory. I'd stop defending entirely if it had a big XP penalty attached for dying while defending or hunting. In enemy territory, I can understand. General XP decrease-bonus on deaths? Please, please no.
For most demigods, it'll probably still not be an issue; for little people, it'll be too big an issue. The result would be an even harder gap to close between top-tier and low-tier, as low-tier folk would have a harder time getting to higher tiers while still getting involved.

I disagree, really. IMO, that'd discourage people from learning how to act offensively, but do relatively little to keep out the people who are already capable of avoiding death who come back over and over. Estarra's healthleech aura on nexus guardians suggestion seems to work better than that.

We kill most of them these days. Death penalty would mean after the fourth or fifth time they stop bugging us.

That doesn't make perfect sense. I mean, consider Celenwilde when they were sharing all the domoths. Eventually Celest stopped caring and stopped really trying much, but if the alternative to "more difficult" was "Glomdoring or Magnagora will get one," I can bet you that Serenwilde would have stepped up their game to keep Celest involved and happy instead of just absorbing the dropped domoths without really batting an eye.

It seems to me like in that case it would cement mixing of ideologies simply because, at that point, the orgs really are wedded together on pretty much every front.

I think increasing the loss for deaths on enemy planes may have some merit, though what are the suggestions for what would be reasonable and still be a deterrent?

Regarding xp gain from killing demigods/ascendants, keep in mind that they lose a flat amount of essence. The balancing act is that the xp gain has to be proportionate to the amount of essence loss from death, or otherwise demigods/ascendants would just start letting people kill them for huge leaps in levels. So, with that in mind, what are the suggestions?

I'm standing by on a percentage. Some people have more essence than you could ever possibly deflate, plus death protection skills that allow them to negate it to an extreme. I'd say start with 5% and a minimum of 500k and if that's not enough, crank it up.



So why aren't titans letting themselves be killed if this holds true? They give a gigantic pile of exp off when killed. If Demigod was worth the right amount of exp (one level higher than titan) and had a REAL death penalty, they wouldn't do it. Also, you should crucify the first people to try that garbage with a double 365 day shrub. Make an example. People tend to report same side farming, I think some even issued over the killing of own city mates during kill rankings and that meant absolutely nothing in the long run. Don't let people lawyer out of it either.

I think instead of making it a flat rate, that the loss due to death on enemy territory is %-based from total essence reserve, as mentioned previously, would make it a sufficient deterrent, -especially- to those with omghuge essence reserves.

Also, you could make PVP-kills based on level instead of "essence", that way you don't get a ridonculous amount of XP gain for killing a demigod with wtf-huge essence reserves, but killing a lv 101 player is still worth more than killing a lv 80 player. Plus, I think that this method would be easier for you to oversee and tweak as necessary.

We ought to explore penalties/rewards for conflict besides experience loss/gain. I think lowering the cost for conglutiate was one of the best moves the admins have made in a very long time... the lower boundary for PK needed to be lowered. Why defend your territory if all you'll get for it is a chunk of missing experience and a meaningless cityfavour? However, the cost for PK at the top level is just too low. In fact, it's nonexistant. How about for every death a demigod/ascendant suffers, their rate of essence gain declines for a certain period of time? I.E. 5 deaths = 50% reduced essence from hunting, etc. with each "point" of the death effect fading 24 hours after the death. This wouldn't do much to discourage the people who already have fifty billion essence, though. How about some weakening of their demigod powers, or their DMP, or something. It could be applied to everyone rather than just demigods. Let people keep raiding as long as they want without suffering much in the way of permanent losses but have the effects of too many deaths in too short a period make it worthless to bother continuing. Sort of like astral insanity.

Titans lose a huge amount of xp too, so that's really besides the point. The issue arises when we go into essence territory. While I get the points you raise of punishing abusers, I still don't like leaving wild discrepancies. If we were to up the xp gain as dramatically as some think we should (i.e., titan level), then upping the essence loss to be commensurate would probably be too much.