Shattered Kingdoms

Get rid of CRS and you'll start getting your votes, plus you'll most likely go back into the top 10. Until then voting is pointless.

I might point out that peak hours counts have started to have averages closer to 50, and at times arc into the low 60s. This is not because of adding anything other than awareness to our existance, and possibly a few people getting sick and tired of mmorpgs such as WoW.

CRS has been modified greatly since it's implimentation, and is still being reviewed and considered for changes. It will not simply be removed any time in the near future. In the mean time please focus your energies instead to innane posts, but to adding flavour and life to the game. That is what will get our numbers up, not blaming things on a single series of game mechanics.

So everyone, please ignore MZ's ignorant bellyaching and vote.

I guess the promblem that I have seen with this is that D keeps us in the dark about what he wants to do with CRS. Most everyone who has played for a while knows that the system as it stands now is not good. I understand that players saying that it sucks and we want it removed it pointless.

But on the other hand if we knew the goal of CRS and what D wants to get out of it, then he ought to explain his plans for it so that we are not so quit to judge.

I know that D has a life, but as it stand I have not seen that much focus put on CRS. I mean there has been like 3 additions to CRS sense it was put it. Far far far to few. I would like to see D view on this and perhaps some things to look forward to.

What you've seen and what's actually been done with CRS is an ever-evolving, always (I hope) improving item. There's been only 3 announced updates, but there's been a lot of behind the scenes work to add to and work with CRS that may or may not be recognized.

Economy kind of stems off of CRS. NPC intelligence has been improved because of CRS. Mechanics that make SK work better behind the scenes and in the nuts and bolts of SK work better, probably in some part due to CRS.

I'll be the first to admit I hate some of the implications of CRS. Cabal secrecy is a real challenge to keep up, if you respond to one attack, then you're obviously of that group. Another side affect that I don't really care so much for is the loss of cabal history and RP support. That's something that happened a while ago. While there's been efforts to re-introduce some of the more subtle aspects of cabals, oftentimes it gets outmoted by the need to protect the cabal from invasion by pre-emptively attacking an enemy. Its not to say that combat and fighting aren't part of playing a role in SK, I just believe the groups could always be doing more to preserve history, uphold tradition, or even break new ground RP wise.

I'm willing to discuss CRS in a manner which benefits the game, but not to simply argue, take it out or no.

I would like to say that the quality of raids has improved over time, but we're still not reaching the goal.

The goal as I see it was to make a structure which opposing cabals would actually battle each other face to face. Now, this idea is great, and the face to face battles would happen, if there were enough people in every faction to battle regularly and absorb losses and bounce back.

There's a couple reasons in my book that CRS isn't its "ideal". Low numbers in factions is the first reason. Low numbers wouldn't be a problem if taking a relic were done easily enough by an average number of players online in an "active" cabal. Right now, I'd say if you've got 4 or 5 on at once, that's a decent amount. Ask anyone if they would take a 4 man group into a cabal HQ when there are an equal number of defenders on and they'd laugh in your face. To do such, you'd need more than double that to even have a chance, probably still struggle with a group three times the size of the defenders.

I've wrecked raids in the past with a defender. Me. One guy. That's all it takes to stop a hefty group from winning against a guardian. Equal number of defenders? Never going to happen. The guardians are too freaking tough to actually consider facing even a smaller force without killing them all off first. Even then, they can reskplzthx, get some quick gear, and perhaps still wreck a raid that would occur shortly after their death.

Second reason I think that CRS doesn't meet its ideal is because its a huge risk for a player to even enter a cabal HQ. At least half the times you'll do this, you'll need to get a brand new set of equipment. If I had equipment I'd spent 50-100 hours gathering, enchanting, and assembling, then I'd think really hard about ever going into a cabal raid.

The idea I think, was to have players consistently battling enough that they would actually lower their enemies accounts by raiding, even if they didn't take the inner guardian on. It happens sometimes, that you'd actually go in just to find someone or something inside. Its not a common occurrence. Its not often something that equates to a battle that players enjoy.

Maybe the playerbase likes their equipment too much to really enjoy the benefits of CRS. Maybe there aren't enough people. Maybe there's too much angst against the whole idea, for whatever reason. I can't really fix those, except in ways which seem like a band-aid.

What I can do is add to it, help fine tune it, and do what is feasible to make it more fun for players. Perhaps it would be more fun if there were simultaneous tribunal and cabal membership, allowing greater numbers in the cabals, but I see a few tribunal members along on raids. I think it would bump up the numbers for defending against or initiating a raid.

All of this is my opinion, my own observations, and doesn't necessarily apply to what Dulrik sees as the vision for CRS. I just thought I'd reply, saying I'm willing to listen to appropriately tuned feedback. I'd stopped asking for it a while ago. I'm still willing to listen.

A

I guess I just do not understand the nuts and bolts behind the matter. What I see is something that is broke and has been broken for a while and we have had no direction on the matter. This is very discouarging. I know that D work very hard RL and he has very limited amounts of time but we still have something that is broken with very little done about it. I do not mean to sound bitchy but that is what it SEEMS like.

You bring up great reasons why CRS is broken. I am glad you hear that you are willing to fix this but your words are meanless if I cannot see any product. IMHO

From reading Achernar's post, and having done a few cabal raids, both successful and unsuccessful, I can see that he knows what he's talking about. I also agree with the cabal secrecy, numbers of attackers needed to be successful, and so on. Here are a few suggestions:


1. Please give us a "What's Coming to SK" section in Announcements. Let us know what the implementor/imms are working on, without giving a specific time frame.

2. Cabal raids are too fast, too furious. From the gate opening, to successfully killing the Inner Guardian, it takes but a few minutes to make or break. Inner Guardian's offensive powers are too powerful, when it's supposed to be a 'defensive' golem. It would be nice to see the Inner Guardian outlast attackers by other means instead, where more tactics may be involved. Currently it's just massive numbers and raw attack.

3. Modify the actual purpose of the relics. Instead of disabling cabal powers, which can seriously take away interests of SK players, it could grant the cabal holding relics an income or bonus on hitpoints for cabal members.

Regarding equipment loss, that will always be an issue as long as corpse can be looted. I don't have a suggestion in that department.

I really like these statements. I would MUCH rather see buffs for having one or more relics than a mass wimping.. Cabal powers are great tools that could be used in raids, and I think they should be. Why make it to where you can't use them when you NEED to raid?

For about a year, nearly the only thing I worked on was CRS. There has been a huge amount of changes to it since it first went in. But after awhile, I had to put further major ideas on the back burner because there were other game systems in need of attention and everyone was boycotting it anyway. As far as tweaking goes, I made a change to the way the outer guardian works just last week. Lately it's been being used more, which I think is cool. Do I think it's perfect? No. And I am open to more changes in the future. But my feeling was that it's not a priority.


After bards, I don't make promises about what will be delivered. I have ideas for things that are still on my list after 10 years. Things are implemented based on what seems most important at the time.


The first idea that comes to mind would be to disable the gas attacks of the inner guardian if there are a certain number of defenders.


If losing a relic doesn't sting, what's the point? In order to encourage people to show up and fight, you have to threaten them with losing something important. In the end, a cabal consists of the use of the HQ and the powers. To hurt a cabal, that's where you have to hit them. Sure they have a bank account too, but let's not take the idea of economic warfare too far. SK wars should be about sword-and-sorcery battles, not about lawyers-and-brokers.

Big D, your suggestion on disabling gas attacks if there is a certain number of defenders is one really good suggestion.

Because one of the stated goals for the system was to provide a resolution to conflicts. A cabal that loses its relic was meant to be crippled, with a view toward it accepting reasonable demands.

Considering this goal, a lot of the things complained about make sense: high-risk, requires an army, yet still easy to stop. If it were easy, these relics would be bouncing around like basketballs.