Shattered Kingdoms

Its not about testing AI. If it were about AI, the guardians would be more about tactics than just being adamantite hided GM barbarians with gas blast, immunity to a wide range of spells, and hp tanks larger than almost anything in the game.

I know its not about testing AI. Its supposed to provide a PK arena for the cabals. Of course the whole system is based on larger numbers of playes. If our playerbase was larger, there would be no need for dual membership, no need for less HQ defenses, no need for tiered leadership in factions. I rue the idea that we will need more players to make these system work. In an ideal situation the system would work regardless of the number of players. I'm not saying that there's a solution that's staring us in the face. I owe Dulrik lots. I really do my best to show my support, but I'm able to form my own opinions. If Dulrik had all the right answers, I'm sure he'd have done it all by now.

I just wish that I had a personal fortune with which to pay his salary and have his undivided attention for a couple years to finish all the projects that he's got planned and had planned for longer than I've even played the game. I could work for a decade as hard as I have over the past three years and never do as much for this game as he has. Even if CRS remains as is, its only a minor facet of SK. I've enjoyed CRS a few times, died plenty, and will overall say it is neutral for me. I don't hate it, I can't really see it leaving, but if it can be improved, lets try.

So basically Dulrik failed. His system is broken and not being used as he intended it. He knows this. He has logs of this. Everyone agrees it is a failure, it is a detriment to the game...

So Dulrik: Explain to us why you feel it should remain a part of the game in its current state. Not with standing insane overhauling. Pretend we're players of the game and we determine its future by playing it.

Please use the words "I'm too stubborn" or "Inexperience in coding a more advanced system" or "I've not got the time" to explain your actions. Because short of that...well, let's just say nothing will remotely shed a positive light on you for why this still exists.

Ummm... QFT?

<---- runs and hides.

Yeah, the balance is still not perfect. It's like trying to balance on the head of a pin. I'd rather have it too difficult than too easy.

You got so busy being sarcastic that you missed the fact that I stated the reasons back on Page 1. It accomplishes what I wanted it to do and working on it more is not a valuable use of my limited time. I think everyone would much rather I work on things that will add new aspects to the game. Things like Minotaurs for example.

As much as you folks love to whine about CRS, it's as Achernar said, a minor facet of the game that has already drained too much of my time from other projects.

mmmmm Minotaurs. So when do we get Talent trees? Or Feats? Or an more in depth leveling system?

PS, Already lost all hope on Cabals/CRS, no point in beating that dead horse any farther.

This is exactly what I was saying. Not a failure, not a finished job. Not enough hours in the day.

Uh, no. Here's how you balance CRS:

Remove the spawning guards, and instead, have guards already in the headquarter's that repop like normal guards. Secondly, remove the three-room rush to a guardian tactic by having those guards stationed before the guardian. Thirdly, remove the gas breath. Just have it be a big, barbarian tank. Next, make CRS remove the top two cabal spells, not all of them and give a morale bonus to the winning side that lasts as long as they have the relic. (Morale being +50 hps, +50 mana, +25 moves to each cabal member). If 3 or fewer opposing cabal members are online at the start of the raid, increase the guardian's power by giving it gas breath, petrification, and chaos. Last, but not least, at the end of 30 IRL days without a raid attempt to reclaim the relic by the cabal, the relic returns to the cabal and their cabal coffers go to 0, all of it going to the relic holder and an auto-truce is implemented.

All of this can be done in a day's worth of time, Dulrik, and will promote PK arena.



A working cabal system is way more important than minotaurs. It's what makes this different than most muds. You knew that from Carrion Fields, that's why you put cabals here. Your limited time is only limited because you refuse to hire on coders to touch your code when you, openly, admit you haven't the time to do what you want.

That's your fault, not ours.



We whine about it because you don't get it. How hard would it be to remove the relics and stop the system until you actually get a real, working system?

Answer me that. Then tell me how much time its worth defending your system that you've done endlessly.

It's okay to admit when it didn't work. We all understand.

I can think of one cabal that would be able to completely ignore this, and another that would be able to also bypass them easily without much difficulty.
If you did this, Cabal defense would be harder than city defense, having only one NPC which you can't control and does single-target damage similar to one PC. He could just be tanked while you killed all the PCs.

The losing faction is already penalized by loss of spells/skills. Why would making the gap even bigger solve problems?

Interesting idea: But all it does is change the numbers. Instead of 5-6 people trying to raid against 1 or 2 (I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air currently) you'd just end up with 8 people raiding the HQ as soon as 3 defenders logged on. A flat number of defenders that impacts a huge change like this would only cause confusion.

That would completely destroy the necessity for RP, and makes no sense.



All of the changes you've mentioned would definitely not be able to be coded, debugged, and balanced in anywhere close to a day's work, not to mention that many of them would induce severe balance issues. It's nice that you've thought of your own ideas for fixing CRS, but they are far from perfect.

I personally really value secrecy in cabals: It was one of the coolest things I thought about the game when I started playing. When CRS was implemented, I was sad when I couldn't walk into Castle Morea anymore, and that many organizations were forced out into the open via unmoveable hideouts (Harlequins and Adepts). Without CRS, it would be harder for wars and such to achieve real "ends," but it would also allow for more secrecy and RP to play out. It's a two-edged sword, and although I don't completely hate CRS, I wish it hadn't happened.

Perhaps you should re-read the thread. Dulrik had implied his aim was to bring more players into the game. New players aren't exactly going to care if there's a few more NPCs in a cabal defense. Instead, they're going to go, "Hey, wow! I can play a minotaur".

As of right now, I think the way the cabal defense works is great. I like making it hard to steal relics. Its still doable and I've been in many raids that have been successful after the guards were put in place. Ironically, I could have sworn the CRS system use to be attacked because people were always losing their relics. What's with all the hate because you keep your relics? As it stands, with NPCs there have been far, FAR less cabal raids meaning everyone has their relics most of the time. No more Adept-style losses with months of no relic.

A few of the tweaks I was thinking about was already stated by Minette because she's omniscient like that.

What I would also like to add:

- Make defense relative to how many are currently within the cabal defending. If there are three defenders, spawn six guards. Equal this up to nine total. But! Make this for how many actually are defending. That way, there won't be any misconceptions of 'Oh, I saw 9 Harlequins online, but 9 guard NPCs...its not fair!'. In the example Konrin has used, yes, eight were online, but when I came during the second bit, I really only saw four or five actually in the cabal. Many just don't defend.

- XXXXX Gate: Does this have to be used when only the Inner guardian is attacked or can it be used for the outer guardian as well? I suggest allowing such usage (if it hasn't already) during the initial outer guardian attack. While I understand a most cabal raids are surprise attacks, sometimes you're given notice before it happens. Allowing this to happen would benefit the first thing I said. You would then better gage the amount of defenders vs use of NPCs. (I realize people will then say "But that makes attacking those HQ's even harder! They can group up and attack us faster! Just remember that most raids are ninja-style --- all surprise).