Actually, I feel that it's really simple to encourage raids with purpose and discourage raids with no purpose.

1. Introduce a goal for smaller scale raids.
2. Increase the -time- cost before raiders can return, with repeated failure eventually locking a raider out of the area.

The first idea gives smaller, non-supermob raids a point aside from annoying enemies. It will help spread your ideal, mete punishment, whatever IC thing you want to get behind in order to do this.

As an example, perhaps we can introduce a system where raiders can 'capture' territory on a plane. If a plane has x rooms, then the raiders must secure and capture about 75% of those existing rooms. If they succeed, the area falls under their influence and they get power into their nexii/reserves/health blessing/etc - something tangible but not overwhelmingly awesome.

This gives smaller raids a goal. You can make it so if the raiders succeed, people of those orgs can't enter the plane for until x time, wherein the area reverts back to normal.

Such ideas aren't as great unless you institute a failure condition for the raiders. This part is easy.

Just make it so that for every death by a raider in enemy territory, it will take longer and longer for him/her to get back into the fight, eventually culminating in either total lock out from the area or a rezz time so disturbingly long, you'll get bored/fight's over by the time you're set.

For example, if you die once, you can come back easily without any hassle. If you die again, now it takes about a minute to get back into the fight. If you die 3 times, now it takes 3 minutes, and so on. You can even cap this at 5 deaths, where if you die a fifth time, you're considered out. 5 might be a bit too high, but I won't go below 3.

Places where you can artificially lengthen the time between death and return is during the praying/conglutination/phoenixing stage. Simply delay the time between entering 'pray for salvation/phoenix/etc' and actually rezzing.

Sojiro:

As an example, perhaps we can introduce a system where raiders can 'capture' territory on a plane. If a plane has x rooms, then the raiders must secure and capture about 75% of those existing rooms. If they succeed, the area falls under their influence and they get power into their nexii/reserves/health blessing/etc - something tangible but not overwhelmingly awesome.

Does the enemy org lose power or anything? If not, what's to stop two orgs from ganging up together, you capture my plane and get power today (or blessings or whatever), and then I'll do the same to you tomorrow. It may shock you to consider that orgs may metagame like that but we have to take it into consideration!

Sojiro:

Such ideas aren't as great unless you institute a failure condition for the raiders. This part is easy.

Just make it so that for every death by a raider in enemy territory, it will take longer and longer for him/her to get back into the fight, eventually culminating in either total lock out from the area or a rezz time so disturbingly long, you'll get bored/fight's over by the time you're set.

For example, if you die once, you can come back easily without any hassle. If you die again, now it takes about a minute to get back into the fight. If you die 3 times, now it takes 3 minutes, and so on. You can even cap this at 5 deaths, where if you die a fifth time, you're considered out. 5 might be a bit too high, but I won't go below 3.

Places where you can artificially lengthen the time between death and return is during the praying/conglutination/phoenixing stage. Simply delay the time between entering 'pray for salvation/phoenix/etc' and actually rezzing.

What's the motivation to kill a raider, especially if what they do doesn't harm you? Yeah, you may want them to stop spamming your CT and death would be nice but it's a lot of trouble to chase down and kill gadfly raiders. If they're top combatants, maybe you need to get a party of your own, use discretionary powers, maybe shrine powers, etc., etc., and the reward if you kill them is that it is a little harder for them to raid. I'm just not convinced it gives people that much motivation to stop raiders. Again, this all depends on how harmful it is to the org if their plane is "taken over" by another org.

Would killing raiders who pop up in this manner potentially generate a Good Thing of some sort for the defenders? This also raises the problem of "what if they metagame," though.

I'm a big fan of having to open up windows of opportunity for plane-raiding, especially if there's a way to check for it only after a period of time has passed after successfully gatecrashing (so surprise attacks are still possible and people are rewarded for planning in advance). It might be possible to "repair" a rip in your plane to keep power/essence/gumdrops from leaking out, as well.

I do like the idea of there being some sort of cost for rendering an org raidable, though preferably nothing that couldn't be done by a hypothetical stomped-into-the-ground solo city/commune.

Estarra:

Does the enemy org lose power or anything? If not, what's to stop two orgs from ganging up together, you capture my plane and get power today (or blessings or whatever), and then I'll do the same to you tomorrow. It may shock you to consider that orgs may metagame like that but we have to take it into consideration!

That's a valid concern.

What if there was just a flag for orgs that declared who their enemies were? Sort of like how orders currently show who they like and who they're hostile with:

Estarra:

What's the motivation to kill a raider, especially if what they do doesn't harm you? Yeah, you may want them to stop spamming your CT and death would be nice but it's a lot of trouble to chase down and kill gadfly raiders. If they're top combatants, maybe you need to get a party of your own, use discretionary powers, maybe shrine powers, etc., etc., and the reward if you kill them is that it is a little harder for them to raid. I'm just not convinced it gives people that much motivation to stop raiders. Again, this all depends on how harmful it is to the org if their plane is "taken over" by another org.

Yeah, truth of the matter is, if people don't want to defend, they won't, there's no way to stop that. Hopefully though, some (dis)incentives mentioned will prompt them to get to it.

Problems with raiding:

-Raids with 1 to 2 attackers either end immediately (because the raiders are instagibbed) or last indefinitely (because the raiders are able to escape/avoid death)
-Raids with 2 to 10 attackers tend to fizzle out once all the demons/angels/daughters/whatevers are killed because there's nothing for the attackers to do and nothing left for the defenders to protect.
-Raids with 10+ people are very very rare because it's hard to get that many people to all raid at once.

While #3 is pretty difficult to resolve and is arguably undesirable to change, #1 and #2 are easily fixed by adding additional objectives beyond "kill all the denizens" that the raiders can complete. And, better yet, we have some additional constraints that will help narrow down what sort of objectibes those should be:

-Small scale raids should end, one way or the other, within 30 minutes of the first attack. Raids should not be hour long stalemates or several hours of kick-and-run attacks that don't accomplish anything.
-Small scale raids should, much like larger scale raids, have a definite sense of someone having won. Either the attackers should beat the defenders and accomplish something, or the defenders should drive them off and prevent further raids.
-Raids should be over after they end. If the attacking force is soundly beaten, whatever they were trying to accomplish should be thwarted for an hour or two.
-There should be no penalty for a failed raid. We don't want to discourage raiding in general, only certain variations on a raid.

So, here's the proposal:
1a. Add mini-quests for Continuum/Vortex to turn in corpses from the opposite plane, similar to how angels/demons can be turned in.
2a. Add in a second phase to said mini-quests where if you get enough corpses, a denizen is spawned that will follow you to the opposite side's elemental/ethereal archway.
3a. Once the denizen is brought the archway for the opposite side, they need to be defended. The denizen should be aspect/elemental lord tough.
4a. If the denizen is still there after 10 minutes, hostile angels/demons/dopplegangers/sentinels/stags/crows are spawned on the raided plane and need to be killed.
5a. After this is done or if the denizen dies, the quest cannot be done for 3 IC months while the denizen in question recovers/recharges.

But that only takes care of cosmic/avatars, not elemental/aspects? What do we do to encourage mini-raids there? Simple!
1b. When you kill an empowered Elemental Lord/Nature Aspect, it drops the Sands of the Dreaming that it had. These sands can then be used to empower your own side.

Greleag:

But that only takes care of cosmic/avatars, not elemental/aspects? What do we do to encourage mini-raids there? Simple!
1b. When you kill an empowered Elemental Lord/Nature Aspect, it drops the Sands of the Dreaming that it had. These sands can then be used to empower your own side.

Goodness please no. That's a horrible idea.

Sojiro:


This gives smaller raids a goal. You can make it so if the raiders succeed, people of those orgs can't enter the plane for until x time, wherein the area reverts back to normal.

For that, you mean the raiders couldn't enter, or the defenders couldn't? I read it as the latter at first, and even though you said this was just an example and I'm sure I misread that, if you did mean the latter I just have to say please for the love of god no that is a terrifying idea. Allowing a small group of players the potential power to kick people completely out of their own plane? I can not imagine a better way to frustrate and piss off players on the "losing" side even more than they get now.

Okay, that aside. Personally I think the real issue with raiding is just that the majority of active players that actually like to pick fights just for the sake of fights, along with the majority of those who are good at rallying and organizing groups, are on one side of the org alliances. And there's really not much to be done about that besides players themselves taking actions to change it. <_<

Yeah, you lost me on that part, though I agree with your analysis of the problems with raiding/conflict. How would that work for forests anyways? And archway is a bad place for both forests to have to do anything!

The problem I've always had with getting into any pvp outside of the arena is that the fights I'm all for hopping into never stay that way. Any time there's ever been one person I don't consider it suicide to fight, in no time there's four more people that I can't hope to touch, and we get defenders, etc, etc. Even once when I was totally ignoring someone because they were like 10% of my might, they decided to start attacking me, I killed them, then it was a huge deal and Glomdoring decided a raid was in order.

Small raids wouldn't be nearly as annoying if they actually ended, somehow, and if after they were done, they were DONE. Having three people running around being jerks, then dying, then coming back with their entire forest because we dared to stop them, that's not fun at all.

Lehki:

For that, you mean the raiders couldn't enter, or the defenders couldn't? I read it as the latter at first, and even though you said this was just an example and I'm sure I misread that, if you did mean the latter I just have to say please for the love of god no that is a terrifying idea. Allowing a small group of players the potential power to kick people completely out of their own plane? I can not imagine a better way to frustrate and piss off players on the "losing" side even more than they get now.

Okay, that aside. Personally I think the real issue with raiding is just that the majority of active players that actually like to pick fights just for the sake of fights, along with the majority of those who are good at rallying and organizing groups, are on one side of the org alliances. And there's really not much to be done about that besides players themselves taking actions to change it. <_<

I meant the raiders. Defenders can come back over and over.

No one liked the idea that once you enter a plane not associated with your org, you can't leave for, say, 15 minutes?

I read in an earlier post that a limit on number of raiders/defenders was suggested. While it does (kindof) make sense to balance raiding parties out, there is one drawback of it though: It actively discourages orgs to take younglings up to defend/raid. If the choice is between Urist McRandomNoob and Awesome McAwesomeRaider, the choice is pretty clear, and poor Urist wil get far less experience fighting if he's constantly punted off the team. And if he _is_ selected and the defense fails, he'd probably feel pretty bad for taking someone elses spot anyway.

Estarra:

No one liked the idea that once you enter a plane not associated with your org, you can't leave for, say, 15 minutes?

From a non-fighters perspective, I kindof like it. It'd stop kick-and-run raids, but leave actual raids largely unaffected. The only "problem" I see is that communes won't benefit from it, since their exit isn't to another plane (but the same problem exists with distort, so it's not a problem with the idea as such).

EDIT: Just thought of one majorly bad thing: If I go to harvest merbloom (Water isn't associated with Glom, after all) I wouldn't be able to leave for 15 minutes. Make it enemied instead?

EDIT EDIT: This would also extend to planar transversing, so going from Prime to Cosmic would take 30 minutes if it's not within your own control. Eww.

Estarra:
No one liked the idea that once you enter a plane not associated with your org, you can't leave for, say, 15 minutes?

Not a fan of the idea at all.

Estarra:

No one liked the idea that once you enter a plane not associated with your org, you can't leave for, say, 15 minutes?

Should be enemied planes, not just non-associated planes, imo.

Shedrin:


Should be enemied planes, not just non-associated planes, imo.

Or planes connected to an org you're officially you're at 'war' with.

Is there an official way to declare war? Or is that something you'd have to code? Either way, that could run into trouble for newbies doing their planar quest, unless people in the collegium were specifically excluded from the limitations.

Estarra:

No one liked the idea that once you enter a plane not associated with your org, you can't leave for, say, 15 minutes?

That probably would kill most small raids just for hitting mobs or baiting people. For some larger raids it may also be fairly frustrating. Some groups that hit super mobs tend to aim for get in, hit the smob, then gtfo fairly quickly 'cus we don't want to fight in ripple/liveforest+gravity+distort+demesne (Except for Continuum/Vortex 'cus there are 12 of the damn things)

Was gonna say something about being annoying for harvesting essence/herbs from elemental, but people covered that.

15 minutes seems overly long, and there's already distort that prevents raiders from leaving.

Why not just make it prevent people from entering an enemied plane once you get in (have it start the 15 minute timer the moment you get in instead of preventing exit?

Edit: More on this idea - I like this because it's a simple solution to part 2 of my analysis. It prevents raiders from repeatedly returning (which contributes to the Forever Raid) while being simple enough to not involve any large changes to code. You can even start this counter the moment you do something "aggressive" to help infiltrators out.

Have a cooldown on entering, you mean? That sounds like a better way to implement it, although from a forestal perspective I have to make a point of saying "that should work on archways too."