I know people have made comments before about the "xp faucet" that influence and aetherspace have been allegedly providing, compared to conventional bashing. The "curb raiding" thread has turned into a topic of this nature, so I figured I'd split it off to coordinate discussion.

Here's my admittedly biased opinion: I've always been opposed to denizens (besides villages) having territory to enemy to. Does it really add anything to the game besides giving griefers free reign over the only efficient mid to high level hunting grounds? Is it any wonder that people will gladly sit and influence guards for hours on end instead of enjoying the wonderfully-written areas and well-coded mobs that our builders make? When I was grinding to 80 (which used to be a semi-high thing back in the days before i started guard influencing), I would rage over losing hours of bashing from one griefer catching me off-guard in the Undervault or Gorgogs. There's no way you'll find me hunting gorgogs these days at level 96, in fear of losing hours of work from a bit of lag or Ethelon, when I could just sit back and empower Daughters.

This, to me, is odd. Why are the most interesting parts of this game the least rewarding to play in? And now the admin seem keen on defending their decision to make it even more risky for Demigods to hunt, even moreso than mortals now. The topic was curbing raiding, I fail to see why Demigods who wish to bash are being punished for doing so, when they clearly have a penchant for grinding that got them to that level in the first place. The complaints from players were that there was zero risk for Demis to raid player orgs on a whim, which I feel this latest change has at least mitigated. The essence loss from bashing seems a bit ridiculous though. So many risk factors go into bashing compared to influencing and aetherspace, with relatively little exp/essence reward to compensate it.

TL;DR, how many people feel the game would be a bit more fun/worthwhile to bash in if denizen enemy territory like kephera and gorgogs were done away with, or at least have the penalties for hunting there mitigated? Griefers would still have Astral and Catacombs to prowl in, all the major conflicts would still take place in villages and off-Prime like normal, but hunting would be brought more in line with the rewards and fun it is in other IRE games (i can only speak from an Achaea/Imperian standpoint, but bashing seemed a lot more fun there).

Hell, I wouldn't even mind if instead of there being exp loss and free pk, being enemied to a territory simply meant that every relevant mob there aggroed you. Seems a bit strange that I can still beg from the Kryden aslarans after wiping out half their tribe.

I always liked that Lusternia gave people incentive to care about the denizens of the world. (even if it's just a "poor rp excuse") The incentive is there.

That's fair. Maybe there should be a focus on adding in more high-level non-sentient monsters to kill then. People kill gorgogs and kephera because they're efficient hunting compared to mammoths and UV trash. If there were more valleys inhabited by evil doomwyverns or whatever, that dropped good gold and exp, I'd certainly be more inclined to hunt instead of influence.

I know that enemy territory is not just a good idea, it's necessary. Merians/gorgogs, kephera/illithoid/, and in the Inner sea/Sea of Despair there are ways you can do damage to other orgs or benefit your own without risk. I know for a fact that a certain someone kept releasing the gorgogs once upon a time and stayed hidden behind status so he could keep doing it. Having them enemy prevents that.

IT WAS SHUYIN WASNT IT? COWARD! FACE ME IN THE MERIAN ISLES! *runs away*

Maybe I'm just naive about the quests then, not having done many. I just find it odd that pretty much every hunting area on Prime that isn't mind-numbingly slow to hunt in is tied to some quest or other. Sure I like that my character can see illithoids are more than walking % gain for Serens who defend the kephera, but I'd certainly like some high-level trash to just hunt for hunting's sake, and I'm sure Demis would appreciate it as well, given the changes.

No argument there, I'm just saying that enemy territory has a purpose. And that purpose is to prevent jackassery to an entire org.

I don't think the problem is the existence of NPC org enemying, it's just the explosion in how many areas have it and how few don't. It's a side effect of the "every area must have a tie into Lusternia's history" idea, which tends to lead to every area being important to someone, which leads to the need to defend it. A few areas have enemying that is of dubious merit, but generally... there aren't more consequence-free bashing areas because Lusternia encourages its builders to avoid it. And then there's a chain of effects where "making this area something more than a FPS maze of zombies" turns into something that makes bashing impractical, and while each step on this chain of effects makes sense, the ultimate consequence is bad.

The Undervault tunnels are a beautiful exception. Builders could probably justify more things like that, where the tie into Lusternia's history doesn't tie them to anyone defending them. Muud's internal parasites are also good for that. A few more like that, and revisiting some of the questionable changes to enemying, would probably be the best fix.

Failing that, a mechnical change that flowed through that chain of effects would also do it. Make it so there's different kinds of enemyings, and the NPC org enemyings have some effects that PC org enemyings have (such as "denizens attack you"), but not others (such as "double exp loss"). The big sticking point there is whether "Avenger ignores it" should be included. It probably should (that's the whole reason that NPC org enemying starts on that chain of effects), and yet that makes senseless gankings too practical and cripples the virtue of Avenger. Thus, it might be best to leave the basic idea as it is now, warts and all, and just focus on changing a few areas back to not enemying if they do for dubious reasons, and creating a few more areas that don't.

(Then again, I like that this makes aetherbashing more attractive. If I get active again, I hope to get back into that big time, especially if I get that T1 line.)

Suggestion: only grant enemy status to these areas in response to completing the associated quest. For example, killing merians won't get you enemied to them but releasing the Gorgogs will, and vice versa. As for demigods, I'm against any coddling of the wee deities. If they want to remain a demigod then they'll do whatever they need to - if not, they can sit at titan. How bad it the experience loss at 99 if you darkrebirth/conglutiate/whatever within enemy territory?

The problem for a lot of demis (and regular folks) is that "doing whatever they need to" usually entails influencing and aetherbashing. All reward, little risk. Reducing the reward for these activities would make it so nobody bothers, so I see no problem with taking some risk out of bashing to compensate, whether by reducing essence/exp loss in these territories, doing away with denizen territories, or just adding new high-level bashing areas without associated enemy territories.

More higher-end bashing areas would definitely be appreciated. As long as none of them are more rewarding than Astral/Catacombs/whatever else is up there. They should also be located off prime, to add a bit of risk without the now-large losses associated with enemy territory death.

I'd just like to BUMP this brilliant idea of mine. Doing away with enemy status entirely could lead to abuse, but as it stands it's even more abusable. If someone wants to kill you every single time you step into the Gorgog caves, then there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing just that. Enemy status + a desire by an opposing org to see you die = an area which is no longer bashable. I've been hunting aslarans and krokani for the past week 'cause I know that it's one of the only places I'm safe from the gank squad.

Which I guess raises another point: enemy status, as it is, discourages low-tier and mid-tier combatants from participating. Raiding and defending against raids are great ways to get yourself on peoples' kill lists. You elevate yourself from "some no-name glom" to "that glom that kills angels", and soon enough find yourself being targetted by enemies who are either much stronger than you or who come in much greater numbers. If you're not top-tier then you can't deal with top-tiers striking every time a Gorgog has you down to half health.

Raiding, yes. Defending, no. I've never really heard of serious combatants specially targeting people who dare to defend against raids. Will they target you first while they're raiding if you're the biggest threat or can mess up their offensive? Sure. But I don't hear of many going out of their way to grief you while you're wandering around because you defended.

If you raid, yes. And that's how it should be. Only a handful of people from each org actually do raids, really. By raiding, you're putting yourself on the short list. Also killing named mobs and/or killing mobs that have significance to that org (Demons/Angels/Daughters/Merians/Viscanti/Fae). Again, only a handful of people actually do that stuff from each org. Most people just defend their own territory and otherwise go about their little lives.

Like... I'd never heard your name until you killed Gil. But I knew it after that and kept my eye on you. Glom right now has a larger portion of "people we need to watch" than the other orgs, but there's still a vast amount of your population that I personally don't really pay attention to because they don't bother Celest overtly.

So long as my thread is being semi-necro'd, I might as well restate my position:

More cannon fodder mobs please <3. Not every area has to have sentient mob orgs to tie into lore. My favorite places to hunt are still Astral, Grey Moors, and UV trash. Muud would probably be up there as well if I had an easy way to get there. Catacombs sounds nice, but apparently it's so filled with clots of 5 garwight rooms that only the hardcore ever bother. Some more random monstrous beasties on Prime that every org loathes equally could be just what the doctor ordered. It'd make bashing a bit more viable of an alternative for grinding, compared to guard empowering, and everybody's obvious new favorite (mine included!), the infamous abash.

Mwahahaa, numen + quickening + radiance + blind panic = dead garwights or dead Razenth.

More relevantly, I've stopped seeing bashing as a way of making essence and more as a way of making gold.

I've actually experienced and seen the opposite, so long as the person defending is a poor combatant or a lowbie. Like Azoth said if you defend against a raid, you get ganked while you're hunting as payback, although most times they don't care to wait until you're in an area with double loss.



And a whole lot of this. More areas like these would be nice for bashing.

Only that in Azoth's case, ganking noncoms on Prime can be added to any 'list' someone might have. Some people bring it onto themselves.

EDIT: On topic: Bashing is best for offering essence and making money, in my experience, although I haven't been on a ship for a long time, maybe gold earning from aetherhunts is better than I remember. Essence from offering is probably still horrible, though.

From the numbers I've heard, people who aspace-bash particularly to get gold are better off doing that rather than bashing unless they have the crit rate of a 90+ character. Can't really say since aspace isn't really my cup of tea and I haven't tried to track it myself, but it sounds more appropriate to say: bashing is what you do when you can't find a crew.

My first enemy statuses ever were obtained whilst defending. I was then subsequently ganked several times because I "was an enemy of ".

Oops. I thought I'd written it in during that post, but I guess I only thought it. Yes, every org has newbie killers/asshats. I was talking more org wide attention, not just the attention of one or two bored people who like to gank. Although, you're kinda old, so maybe it was a different time/environment.

But back on topic, regular bashing (vs. aetherbashing) I'll agree with you Vendetta... maybe. I haven't had a low character for some time, so I can't really remember how quickly I could amass gold even in the lower levels, but I know it was still fairly quick. If you're over 90, you certainly should be able to outbash an aetherbasher gold wise per hour assuming the aetherbashers are splitting the gold evenly. Also remember that just like bashing, aetherbashing is effected by number of people doing it. If people trade for all the good stuff before your crew does, you'll sometimes get HORRIBLE trades.

I think it's reasonably balanced gold wise right now. Experience is still out of whack risk vs reward. Basically if you're lower level or lazy, the gold output is good enough to do it. If you're higher level and not lazy, bashing is a better choice.

Essence (Demi/Ascendant) wise aetherbashing is nice. Essence (Offering) is horrible.