Attached below are some of the ideas/feedback shared by participants that I found particularly valuable. I haven't attached any names, but the contributors offering these suggestions feel free to claim credit:
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2 of the main issues I noticed was the wording of the economic portion. I'd like to figure out if there is a max amount that sales tax can add to the coffers. Technically, in week 3, was it? We both had the max amount, but their coffers had more than 100 black. I think it should have been a tie that week. Second is the king of the hill vs casualty aspect of "holding Grahme." I think the rules of holding it could have been more clear. But I liked the "you now hold the hill" tells that went out in the last week. ----- Economic: I've never been fond of farming coin or other factions NPCs. While this part makes perfect sense from an IC perspective, I didn't participate much because I don't care to do those things. Diplomatic: I wasn't in a leader position so I didn't see much of this. The Alliance "on paper" thing I found amusing. Whereas there were a large number of Alliances, but little to no aid to be seen (even opposition sometimes) from said allied factions. I loved the set up of this challenge because it creates interactions between all factions. Rather than a straight forward murder-fest, it promotes communication and as the title covers, diplomacy. Additional Challenge: Fun and difficult. For the MC an outer guardian is of little consequence, I've recently seen it taken out by 2 people without difficulty. Inner Guardians are easy with the right group, a nightmare without. The Guardian's warparty/King group were pretty tough. The King's especially with an Archmage actively trying to charm and confuse entire enemy formations. Add in having to deal with bounty NPCs, fairly even. Multiple enemy targets, each with a separate skillset, I personally think would be a harder fight for players than an Inner Guardian, however I've no data to back that hunch up. PvP: This was the best part for me. Win or lose I had a blast. I've never been particularly good in pvp and it was nice to be a part of large group combat. It is unfortunate the no-junk/loot terms were swiftly disregarded based on a technicality, however looting has always been part of SKs pvp and it was likely to get thrown out the window eventually anyways. The main downside I saw to the pvp was that I (think) I witnessed less logons of some players for fear of getting ganked and losing all their things prior to the fight. While this makes sense strategically, it is unfortunate that players would avoid logging into the game in general. Overall I enjoyed the event. ----- I very much enjoyed this opportunity, I personally prefer the idea of a set goal to the normal PK cycles. Though as stated, the actual win conditions were not clearly known. My own assumptions proved to be slightly wrong. The idea of room-claiming could be good as well, perhaps claimed rooms temporarily changing ownership to the holding kingdom, with guaranteed spawning of enforcers to fight off the invaders? Combined with the idea of shifting control points, where that room and adjacent rooms are the only places available to be claimed. Allowing the first one there a chance to gain a defensive benefit. Scoring perhaps based off of player death count + control point duration held, with an added final king of the hill bonus. ----- I would like to suggest a point scale for the Raider bonus with a few more objectives. Maybe three bonus objectives during the week where the score could be determined similar to the proposed economy score. If both teams manage to do all three then they both get three points. If one team does three and the other does zero than it could be all 5 points for the team that did the objectives. This would make it more difficult to balance the challenge but would possibly give more options for different group makeups. ----- It was hard because as we gained momentum, the point disparity was hard to overcome. We couldn't get a raid off, so we were losing those points, diplomacy went stagnant so we were literally losing points every week, and then the no magic room happened and... Mostly it was that we got stomped 2 weeks in a row on the points and there was no coming back. ----- Would have been nice if the initial no junk/loot agreement had been kept, would have probably been a little more civil then. But by the end of the first week, it seemed to turn into who could demoralize the other side most. This is at least personally what I think led to the lack of Legion on during normal play hours, if we wanted to be geared for the upcoming fight in Grahme, we had to avoid the constant lighty attack squads, including double voodoos. ----- In other news, I thought of a new bracket that might work for diplomacy: +1 point for each alliance, -1 point for each alliance broken. It would be a one time thing, not scored every week, so it ends up being overall a bit less important, but it doesn't feel so bad once those alliance stagnate, as they would be wont to do since who would sign an alliance that isn't for the whole terms of the war? ----- Just a small point to add... I don't know about everyone else, but having the event every Saturday evening for five weeks was a bit of a strain for me. Doing every other Saturday for 6 weeks, or changing the Saturday event to a different day once or twice during the event might be useful to give the players some Saturdays off. -----
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