Not what I was referring to but anyway.

The lockout seems a bit clunky but I guess we'll have to see how the mechanic is received once it's implemented.

Just a thought for a mechanic that time forgot, but if power costs for guardian shells were dropped significantly (and/or lasted longer, and/or refunded costs when they explode), you might see squishy systemless lowbies participating in raid defense more and feel semiuseful. Established combatants aren't going to use them :S The other problem with it is that you can't heal any damage other than leaving it and hoping it slowly regens. Active heal would help it become useable.

Doesn't it also kill you when it explodes? It should probably also give you a health readout on the prompt.

The only things really on the table right now are Planar Resistance and the Dharma Initiative, as discussed in the first post. While we're open to tweaking the ideas, we're not looking to broaden the discussion to prime plane raids, manifestations, who's the better sportsman, analysis of specific skills, etc., etc. So, in an effort to refocus this thread:

Planar Resistance: The obvious reason for this is to reduce hit and runs and help regulate raiding. It was my understanding that there was a general consensus that raiding is now just a method to grief and annoy orgs, without meaning and without goals, losing any RP significance. Open to the following changes: (1) Initiates only upon an aggressive action on the plane; and/or (2) assuming we go forward with dharma, allowing organizations to use dharma to remove the resistance on individuals (thus, to avoid the resistance, organizations can allow it but it would most likely not be for frivolous reasons).

Dharma Initiative: The reason for this is to give an RP outlet to raid during regulated timeframes. If people feel it is too mechanical, too cumbersome, too whatever, then we probably will just go with Planar Resistance above. I'm on the fence right now honestly but I do overall like the idea, both mechanically and for RP. Open to the following change: allowing organizations to completely cash in on all dharma at the start of their phase so they can 'opt out' of conflict that day (though this would give them only minimal dharma for the following period).

There seems to be two camps. One camp thinks raiding is too difficult and the other camp thinks raiding is too easy. There probably will never be a consensus between these two camps, which is why I think the Dharma Initiative falls somewhere in between. Right now, I personally do not think raiding is too difficult and will most likely do Planar Resistance with or without the Dharma Initiative.

However, nothing is set in stone! Nothing is decided! Please feel free to continue to discuss. Know the admin are reading this thread. Know that engaging in histrionics, ad hominem attacks, haranguing or pushing the thread to irrelevant tangents is not appreciated. (Also, know that tone matters! The more condescending you are, the more you'll alienate the rest of us.)

Suggestions:
1. Extend the current proposal for the planes to also cover prime. People popping in to kill one denizen, then pop out only to come back 5 minutes later and attack another is just as annoying as doing the same thing with cosmic mobs.
2a. Don't allow dharma to be spent to ignore planar resistance. Doing so means that whichever side loses the dharma initaitve (ie. the weaker org in most cases) is also the side that ends up at a disadvantage in raiding outside of initiative fights. So not only do they lose the fight, but they also end up being beat up on by whoever they lost to in order to add insult to injury.
2b. If a way is needed to bypass planar resistance, give each org 1 "ignore planar resistance" pass every time they claim one of their dharma centres, to a maximum of 8 passes. Using one doesn't cost dharma, but you only ever get 8 per dharma cycle.
3. Please please please move the dharma cycle to an 8 month cycle rather than a 7 month cycle. I am 100% sure that people will moan and complain if they end up with the misfortune of getting a weekend dharma day rather than a weekday dharma day. And justifiably so, since that is a legitimate disadvantage for their org for as much as 16RL months for whoever gets picked to have fridays be their dharma day.
4. Minor concern in the grand scheme of things, but please consider changing the names of the lunar fae/night fae/rock demons/golden angels so that they have a unique name to target them by. For preference, spriggans in Serenwilde, hodekin in Glomdoring, archfiends for Magnagora and golden seraphs for Celest.

Planar resistance along with 1 are needed. 2 along with it would be nice though. Dharma idea is still great.

I'm all for Planar Resistance if it only happens on an aggressive act. Though I don't not really have any problems with raiding on Planes, even hit and runs.

However it would be nice if this included prime city/communes. Running in and out of a city/commune so you can play metagames with Avenger is annoying, no matter who is doing it.

^ This. How about implementing Planar Resistance first, and see how it impacts the game? Give it a few weeks and it should be clear if Dharma is a good idea to go ahead with or not. Implementing both at the same time can make it a lot harder to assess the situation.

I agree. If the planar resistance thing doesn't work to prevent kick-and-run raids, or just pushes the people who do them to doing some other equally petty and pointless grind-em-down tactic, the dharma thing won't end up helping at all. The point wasn't just to make something else that people can win at, it was to make it so raids only happen when in pursuit of something that has a definite end, and this idea looks like it has everything we needed except the only thing that we actually needed, that word "only". As it is, it's more of what we have; it's just another reason to raid on top of the ones we already have, and another way for superior numbers to earn more superior numbers, the two things we need least.

Greleag:

...
2a. Don't allow dharma to be spent to ignore planar resistance. Doing so means that whichever side loses the dharma initaitve (ie. the weaker org in most cases) is also the side that ends up at a disadvantage in raiding outside of initiative fights. So not only do they lose the fight, but they also end up being beat up on by whoever they lost to in order to add insult to injury.

A city or commune can accumulate up to 10,000 dharma.

Given that there is a maximum amount of dharma that an org can have, Depending on the cost, this wont be too much of a problem. If it cost, say, 500 dharma to ignore resistance once, then, assuming the winning team had a full load and didn't use any of the bonuses, it would only allow a total of 20 uses for one RL week (or however long the dharma cycle ends up being).

If I read it correctly, the maximum you could get every cycle would be 8000 (8 centres, max 1000 each), which further decreases the use of it in this manner. Edit: Read it again, Since raiders can gain Dharma It could theoretically be used more often. still, i think my point still stands

Realistically, the dharma blessings are much more likely to be used than planar resistance resistance.

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As for my thought's on the actual mechanic:

If it occurs almost every RL day, then It should probably be shortened. Perhaps rather than an "opt out for the day" clause, the defenders could claim the dharma centers at any time, regardless of how much was stored in it. That way it doesn't end up a choice between, all, nothing or fighting for 8 hours to secure something.


Also, I agree that this doesn't stop pointless raiding, but it does add purposeful raiding. Personally, I'm willing to put up with the occasional pointless raid if there are ones with purpose as well.

Yes, I didn't mention it in my post above but doing Planar Resistance, then waiting a while to see how that goes before trying Dharma is an excellent idea.

I have a suggestion that's a little out of left field but we'll see how it goes...

There are quite a few outlets for group oriented combat at the moment; villages, wildnodes, aetherflares, cosmic/ethereal/elemental raids to name a few.

My suggestion is for a means of competing for org buffs with some 1v1 combat, where members of each combatant's team are able to assist indirectly.

1v1 helps get past some of the problems with imbalance of numbers on each side. I'm confident that each org is able to put forward someone forward has a reasonable chance to win. The likelihood of winning is boosted by having an active org helping out, but is not guaranteed by it.

Example sequence of events:

-A Dharma event occurs for an organisation

-That org and a competing org select a champion each who fight it out in a separate location. The champions are not announced until both have entered the combat location. When they both enter, combat begins and the dharma mobs begin to spawn.

-Other players from each org kill and influence beings on the plane which is having the dhama event to damage or afflict the opposing champion. The damage/afflictions from mob influencing and killing starts out fairly minor and gets more significant as time goes on.

-The winner of the 1v1 combat claims dhama points for their org. The amount could be scaled based either on the duration of the fight or the number of mobs influenced / killed.

I know this comes pretty late in the discussion, so haven't gone into much detail. I think something like this would definitely be a different way of getting some org v.s. org competition going though!

My suggestion four from above can actually just be replaced by letting all of the dharma creatures be targettable as "dharma". So ignore that one.
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More interestingly, I did some ciphering using a 7 month cycle (as much as I dislike the idea) and the proposed costs in the OP and came to the following figures:
-If an org takes the mean value (500 dharma) of their centres, either by fighting and doing only average or through some sort of "opt out" system as proposed in an earlier post AND completely fails to capture any dharma at all from any other org's initiative, they get 4000 dharma every 7 months, or 5714 dharma every 10 months. That's enough for any one blessing of their choice plus a bit extra.
-If an org takes the maximum value (1000 dharma) of their centres but still somehow fails to gain any dharma from other people's initatives, they get 8000 dharma per month, which comes out to 11428 dharma every 10 months, which is 6 dharma critters short of the 12000 needed to keep the three most expensive dharma blessings up constantly.
-Assuming that only 40 total dharma mobs (5 for each of the 8 centres; the absolute minimum required to allow an org to claim all maxed out centres or to completely shut down all 8 centres) are spawned per initiative, a maximum of 4000 dharma can be gained through raiding per initiative, split however many ways between the various raiders.
-Taken all together, the absolute theoretical maximum dharma gain for a side that completely dominates the dharma initiatives is 8000 for their own initiative plus 5 * 4000 for everyone else's, or 28000 dharma. Even if they take all three of the most expensive blessings, that's still 16000 dharma left over.
-A somewhat more realistic scenario would be for an alliance to decide that each org will get all of their own dharma (8000) and all of the opposing nation's dharma (ie. Mag get's Celest's, Glom gets Seren's, etc.) for 12000 dharma per dharma cycle, which is conviently the exact number required to get all the best blessings. As a side note, that's 17143 dharma per 10 years, which is enough to max out their blessings and dharma reserve after donig that twice.
-An even more realistic scenario would be for each alliance to do roughly equal, taking half of the other side's dharma during their raids and keeping half when raided back. That comes out to 4000 of their own plus 2000 of the other side's for 6000 total. Enough to get the Gold & Dross blessings, the XP & Movement blessings or the Dross & Crits & Movement Blessings.

I prefer the planar resistance over the dharma thing.

If you can "opt out" of Dharma then that right there will kill the idea of "productive raiding". You will opt out if you feel outmatched, and there will be nothing from it.

I also repeat the request for it to be elemental/ethereal planes only, and disable discretionaries if consensus is if dharma should be done

I have otherwise said my general thoughts on it.

I should have said the other things we are considering for the Dharma Initiative is only on Elemental/Commune Ethereal and disabling discretionaries.

And presumably Avatars become invulnerable when it's active on Ethereal.

Lendren:

I agree. If the planar resistance thing doesn't work to prevent kick-and-run raids, or just pushes the people who do them to doing some other equally petty and pointless grind-em-down tactic, the dharma thing won't end up helping at all. The point wasn't just to make something else that people can win at, it was to make it so raids only happen when in pursuit of something that has a definite end, and this idea looks like it has everything we needed except the only thing that we actually needed, that word "only". As it is, it's more of what we have; it's just another reason to raid on top of the ones we already have, and another way for superior numbers to earn more superior numbers, the two things we need least.

Not sure I follow the logic that it does everything "except the only thing that we actually need" (italics yours). I guess I'm not sure what the only thing that's needed is (in your opinion). Stopping all raids completely? That's not the point as I saw it. I was aiming to reduce raids, especially the hit and run variety. If we accept the fact (and maybe you don't) that freeform raiding is a valid and valuable outlet for a large number of players, then the point is to continue to allow it but somewhat regulate it. I'm also not clear what the solution is to prevent superior organizations from having an upper hand in these conflict systems. I suppose we could remove all combat altogether and have everything RPed but I don't think that's the direction most people would agree with! Note we are considering an opt-out where organizations who don't want to deal with the conflict system to gather some minimal dharma so I'm not sure there would be any real must-have "grind".

For those who are focusing on the idea being considered of allowing dharma to be used to remove Planar Resistance, the reason for that is that there may indeed be valid reasons and times for organizations to want to focus on an attack of another organization. In that case, it makes sense to me that there should be a way to avoid Planar Resistance. However, if (for example) it costs 100 dharma to remove Planar Resistance on one individual, I would certainly imagine it would be used sparingly as it would prevent the use of dharma for blessings but still be an option for special occasions.

Anyway, again, nothing is decided, we're listening to your input and still in a consideration phase.

Malarious:

If you can "opt out" of Dharma then that right there will kill the idea of "productive raiding". You will opt out if you feel outmatched, and there will be nothing from it.

So if you outmatch an organization, you want to be able to hurt them and claim some sort of 'victory'? I think that's the sort of philosophical question that some people have issues with. I don't know if there's a right answer here as I see both sides, but I really don't see it as killing the idea of productive raiding. If you force an organization to opt out, there is some moral victory even if you can't enjoy actually physically beating on them.

Estarra:
Not sure I follow the logic that it does everything "except the only thing that we actually need" (italics yours). I guess I'm not sure what the only thing that's needed is (in your opinion). Stopping all raids completely? That's not the point as I saw it.

Right now, most raids are someone who's bored coming in, killing two things, leaving again (unstoppably), and repeating in ten minutes. Most raids that aren't that, are that, except someone gets a lucky hit in at the right moment so they don't get out, so they come back with friends and do the same thing only in a slightly larger group. This stops not when you beat them (you never do) or when they win (there's nothing to win), but when they get bored.

What I think the ideal situation would be is if a raid were something that took a little organization and preparation, were done in pursuit of some specific goal; that could be won by one side or the other; that had some effect either way, hopefully one that wasn't totally dispiriting to the perennial-losers; and that, when it was done, it was done for a while, you couldn't just keep coming back. And, and this is key, because of the existence of this kind of raid, the other kind of raid was no longer possible.

Note there's a key difference between that and the pipe-dream of "if there were enough conflict-things in the game that mattered, people wouldn't spend so much time on petty raids." I kind of hope we all know that's not true by now. Make yet-another-domoths-system, and for a short time, the petty raids will decrease. But it only takes one bored unsportsmanlike person per organization to ensure the petty raids would not stop even if you had a machine that gave out free lollipops and ice cream. And there is always at least one person per organization like that.

I have been hesitant to try to propose one because I doubt any idea I propose would fly no matter how bad or good it was. But I'll propose one as an example here, with the caveat that I haven't worked out all the details, the purpose of this is to make clear what kind of thing I mean:

• In order to kill an enemy's Avatar/Supernal/etc. you have to do some preparatory quest. It's a very simple quest and one you can do privately so the other side doesn't know it's happening. For instance, maybe it's as simple as asking your Avatar/Supernal/etc. for a magic doohickey. Once you do this to start the period, you have one RL hour to finish.
  
• You can only go into the enemy territory with the doohickey. Period. If time runs out and the doohickey resets, you get kicked out. (Of course, your whole side can go in, not just the guy who happened to get the doohickey. The point of the doohickey is that it breaks down the shield until it resets, not the actual carrying it.)
  
• Once in, if you kill the smob, you get to do the same things you can do now. Maybe you get even more bonus to you (dharma, for instance, or more power).
  
• If the time runs out and you haven't killed any of the enemy smobs, the doohickey's decay costs your side some resource (power, dharma, whatever), but not a huge amount, just a token penalty.
  
• Whether you succeed or fail, the doohickey is not available for some period of time (say, 36 hours, or whatever planetary cycle is closest to that, so you can use that cycle as the explanation).
  
• Efforts would have to be made to address side effects of this like "inability to harvest herb/poison/etc. that's only available in an area that happens to be part of this conflict system" as well.
  
• We'd also need a little bit of change to balance what it takes for the loser of a raid to restore their losses. (This is mostly about how essence can be locked out far more effectively against Glomdoring than Serenwilde, and far more effectively against Serenwilde than the cities. Easy fix: just make it so there's some second thing communes can do to restore their Avatars, that's just as onerous as the city's way, but not as easily locked out. That would avoid skewing any other thing balanced around the relative availability of essence.)
  
• It might be necessary to adjust things about what enemy skills get disabled when you kill a smob. I'm not sure if that's imbalanced or too prone to making people miserable.
  
• A number of defenses now in place to make smob raids too hard would have to be recalibrated or backed down.
  

Again let me emphasize I'm not saying this is ideal. There may be problems in it that would be hard to balance, for instance, the 3/5/12 disparity might need something to make sure that the failure penalty is fair), and there may be other factors I haven't considered. But look at what this would accomplish:

• Raiding means something.
  
• Raids can still be done by surprise.
  
• Raids start and then end.
  
• Raids stop when they're done.
  
• Raids aren't a constant stream of just enough annoyance to make sure you're worn out and can't do anything fun.
  

(Though one big problem I see with this is that those people who do constant raids now would just move to doing raids in other places, like villages or prime cities/communes. Still, we have some means of adjusting that.)

Please don't focus on the flaws in this specific idea and just tell me, can you see what objectives I think we want to be working towards? And whether you agree with them.

Lendren:

Please don't focus on the flaws in this specific idea and just tell me, can you see what objectives I think we want to be working towards? And whether you agree with them.

Just a side note: I see the objectives some subset may idealize--I don't want to paint a broad brush and make an assumption that "we" means everyone (except me/the admin).

I'm not sure I agree that it would be a good idea to close off a plane except if a quest is done. Again, the planes were originally designed to be an open area and I think your solution is pretty extreme in the other direction. However, I don't want to discount the idea and wonder if there's a way to incorporate some of these sentiments/ideas into the Dharma Initiative idea on the table. Generally, I think it is a little complicated, especially when you get into adding quests (quests can take months to come up with/implement!) and it touches a lot of aspects of the game that could be a little problematic in terms of resources to implement (recalibrating herbs, quests, defenses, etc.). Not saying it wouldn't be worth it, but something to consider. Also wondering if it still wouldn't lead to a constant, demoralizing grinds if an org endlessly camps the quest (36 hours isn't that long but extending it to days may be a little much).