Shattered Kingdoms

To Dulrik, Immortals, and fellow players,

Can we please remodel the game so the inns, with the exception of perhaps Teron, to be relatively safer than they are now? Yes, I had considered to post this under one of several threads regarding bounty NPCs, or "NPC wars", but I strongly believe this deserves its own thread. Please see below.


The current issues with the inns in most major cities are that:

1. Gate targets directly into cities are readily accessible and in most cases a few leagues away from the inns. This is a huge and glaring issue.
2. Due to the short proximity between the gate anchors and the inns, law breakers pretty much bypass the majority of gate guards, city guards, and bounty guards in general.
3. The importance of the local guards have detections and/or the strength/level off the guards are greatly diminished. The defense of the cities are greatly neutralized, and deceiving in terms of safety because the majority of the time their intended targets are - yes, you guessed it, hanging out at the inns.


The aforementioned issues contribute negatively to the game because:

1. There is low safety resting in the inns, in fact it is often suicidal. You as readers know this. Most veterans know this. Unless there is an overwhelming presence of allies in the said inn, and even then, they do not ward off surprise attack sometimes.
2. When veterans avoid or refrain from staying long in the inns, the new players, both new to the game and low levels don't often get to directly meet with the big characters by chance. It is a lot more fun to meet them at the inns for fountain roleplay.
3. It encourages cabal headquarters guardian sitting. We have scried many leaders/paragons at multiple occasions that just chill at their guardians when they log on.
4. The inns often cannot be used as a meeting place once a character joins a cabal/tribunal with warring factions. This has happened in the game a lot; "Hey want to meet in xxx inn?" "Nah I can't do that... I've been ganked a bunch already. How about a-location-not-at-the-inn instead?"


Suggestions for making inns safer, but not attack-proof:

1. Drastically reduce, replace, or remove gate anchors within inn proximity. Law-breakers who want to attack can still go through the conventional attack the front gates to get in. Now I understand that, "What about those who send a spy in before they gate?" This leads to 2.
One of these suggestions:
2. Scripted protectors that are either present, similar to Exile's inn, or rush-in should a fight break out in the inn, similar to Vaerlain's bar.
2a. Strong inn peace keepers standing right outside the inn, gives a buffer warning when the attackers arrive, and wards all inns completely from transportation spells.
2b. Greatly increase the levels of current version of bounty NPCs, increase their hitpoints, but reduce their damage slightly, and reduce the locations that they can spawn. Why increase their level? Currently the bounty NPCs spawn everywhere and it hinders the law-breakers even when they are in the wilderness. This is a big nuisance. However, most of them sadly bounce off Sanctuary and Intimidation a lot of the time due to level difference.


A lot of us enjoy the social aspect of SK, and want to play it for the fountain roleplay. It is fun to meet big names by chance. It is fun to chill in an inn with a lot of people meeting and talking to each other. Remember the first bonanza? Yes. We don't have to have a bonanza to pull that off. People don't need to always go sit next to their cabal guardians. When there are many enemies on but few allies? It is still okay to go see who is in the inn. Finally, if the anchors in the cities are replaced, and inn guards are put in, fights are more likely to happen at the portal stones or wilderness - a win-win situation for everyone.

Thank you for your consideration.

/disagree

That would make anyone who has to defend a city bring the fight INTENTIONALLY in the inn, since there would be the most powerful guards who would defeat the invaders.

Inns were never a safe place in the history of mankind. There were all kinds of brawls and fights breaking up there. If you want to have a quiet tea-party, you can always buy a key and go lock yourself in a room with your friends.

QFT

You are completely wrong about the bounty hunters bouncing off of intimidate. In many, many cases of dealing with them, I have never once seen a bounty hunter bounce off of intimidate.

I could agree to have gate anchors removed from inns, but dealing with 3+ bounty NPCs a room is a pain in the [REDACTED].

I tend to find myself agreeing with shadow's assessment.

This is more a player problem than a code problem with the described cabal hq camping. The only way to deal with it is for cabal leaders to take a firm stance on not allowing their cabal mates to sit in cabal hqs idling hours.

I find that the PKers tend to go for specific targets and don't run into inns to kill everything that stands there.

Just remove the gate anchors, ward cities against gates, make access points to the city have groups of guard NPCs and problem solved.

Simple, elegant, brilliant.

Of course it is, I proposed it.

Bounty NPCs are not affected by intimidate, but they are -heavily- affected by sanctuary because they are low level and naked.

Are we trying to remove PK from the game, or what?

Trib members would just do their best to hide in one of the "entry" rooms that is stacked with like 3 pike-wielding giants, 2 hunting spear wielding centaurs, a sorc, a priest. Oh, and some dwarf mercs too, just for kicks. Like the rooms in Nerina.

This will work just fine. Please.

The inns were never supposed to be safe havens. In fact, there aren't supposed to be ANY safe havens in the game. All of the gate targets have been (or should have been) removed from inside the inn itself and replaced with targets 2-3 rooms away, which is pretty much as safe as it's going to get in the immediate future.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.