Shattered Kingdoms

Forsooth, there is one problem with what you are suggesting. Suppose the Hammer's has the Adept's relic. What are the chances that the Hammer's would make reasonable demands for the return of their relic?

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Every cabal just needs to have a GM-level warlock on 24/7, noone would ever try to raid HQ's then.

They DID bounce around like basketballs originally. That it plays so differently now is evidence of the huge amount of work that has gone into it since the beginning.

The goal was to make it easier to raid against PC defenders than against the system (without making the system impossible). I think that is largely true at this point, but it is very counter-intuitive. Perhaps disabling the gas attacks when more than a couple of defenders are around would help in reinforcing that idea.

Ok, there are a few problems here. As stated before, it is impossible to match groups and have group on group warfare with the system as it stands. Any smart defender will wait until you are attacking a guardian or meet you while you are in battle with guard NPCs. Thus, the aim of the system has completely missed.

If you have equal numbers, the attackers are dead, period. It would take a huge stroke of luck or some really inept defenders to not thwart a party with equal numbers. This all breeds the attacking while you see no defenders on.

Thus we had the changes to make it harder to ninja in when everyone logs off. The only problem with that is that you made it impossible to do so otherwise, referring to the points above. It isn't a nice circle.

I've gone after these things with groups with two necromancers with a decent set of wights/wraiths, about 60 NPCs overall, and half what we would need to do it group wise. We met a group with, correct me here guys, about equal numbers with PvP and were thoroughly smoked.

It should be hard. They shouldn't bounce around like they used to. I liked it when there was a boycott. That made me come back to cabals. The only reason why it even started again was someone apparently thought they could be used as an RP tool.

Now my cabal has been without for over a month? Something has to give. I can't increase numbers for us. I can't make people log in. I can't, by myself, make this fair or even. I can do things that may make things somewhat attractive to play on our side, but without the relic we lose one of our main attracting powers. This only increases the feelings that people don't want to log in or play a darkie.

And a large part of the problem is the fact that I know if we get it back we'll just end up losing it again. Rather than making me want to PK and play the game, it makes me disheartened and want to join the rest of the crew in not playing at all. This is what Mage Z is talking about.

Now I don't want to cry forever about this. I know that the responsibility of getting this thing back is on my shoulders, and at points we could do it. But unless I can get other factions to listen and help me out a bit, which just plain comes down to OOC/IC trust, or I can get one of the few necromancers we have left to get lucky and solo it all, I won't be getting it back any time soon.

But what is clear amongst all of this is that it isn't coming back to my hands at any point there are people to defend it and the system gears people to not want to fight each other, and maybe even to not log in as much.

My solution, and I'll probably get a little bit of hate for this, is to maybe make it to where if players of cable X are on, if they are killed it gives a few ticks of weakness to one or both guardians. Beef up the guardians to be hard to kill, but make it more because they are slow to go down, not shredding groups.

Maybe even gear the guardian NPCs to account for allies online as well. Let's say there is cabal X again and cabal Y is allied with them. You have one cabal member X on and then five of allied cabal Y. Now it isn't that hard to get the Y members to help you defend to increase your numbers to six defenders (which is really nice the way the system is now).

Yet, unless I am horribly wrong (which could be true), we end up with the same number of guard NPCs as if there was only one member online. It may just be based off of the numbers for the attacking group, though I think it should be changed to how many defenders they have if this is the case. Because if you add in a big attacking group, plus cabal X's tribunal/cabal allies that could come just as easily, you get a very much wasted attacking group that stands no chance.

I don’t know, I can see people logging in and just hiding the whole time to keep their guardians beefed up, and then waiting for the attacking party to engage the guardians anyway. And I don't think an ally should count if there are no cabal members online to tell them there is an attack, and certainly shouldn't count for a full cabal member as when counting defenders. But I still think some kind of change is needed to make it more appealing to fight the players and THEN the HQ, or make it a little more even for them to happen at the same time.

Also, though I'm not purposely making this epic post any longer, I've always thought the outer guardian should be harder than the inner. I know many will disagree with this, but once you are in you should have it pretty much taken care of aside from any guards (PCs or NPCs).

Post summary (because I'm nice):

-You can't be successful attacking with equal numbers.

-People would rather stay logged off than to keep fighting senseless fights.

-It should be hard, not impossible.

-Make the guard NPCs spawn based on defenders and defenders' allies online at the time.

-Weaken the situation by some means for members killed for some time. Making it easier to take relics after PK.

-Make the outer guardian harder, inner guardian a little softer. To create urgency to defend and PK in between.

-Make all guardians do less damage, but tank harder so that they are more like walls than a counter attack. (leave the counter attack for the guard NPCs/players.)

Just my 6461516516852.5464 cents,

-Randy

I'll start by saying that attacking an HQ is a skill with a learning curve. Given that for a long period of time there was a boycott, many players have either never learned this skill or at least become rusty. I read a log of one of the attacks that Gremlin24 is talking about and it seems obvious that this is one of the problems with the attacking group.


I can agree with this somewhat.


Here, you are in fact horribly wrong. The system already factors in any allies that show up to help the defenders.


I disagree. The outer guardian is more of a speed bump than a serious challenge. Any party of 3-4 players should be able to take him out. The HQ is a safer area, but not absolutely safe. Making the outer guardian harder would just serve to make the HQ safer.

I remember a time after CTF was installed that there was a soft-code level prerequisite to enter a cabal. If you were expert or below you were told to get lost and come back when you're stronger.

Having the inner guardian scale even more than currently compared to members online can implement that soft-code again if not done with exceeding care. Truly, what business do a pair of apprentice cabal members have trying to defend the HQ against a force of GMs? Why should the fact they're online have a detrimental affect to their guardian?

I have other opinions on the matter that I won't discuss because they've been deemed unacceptable and unresponsive. I'll just say those opinions are why I haven't voted on TMS in six months or so.

I like the idea of making the inner guardian less likely to kill if more cabal members online. But players take time to get orgainized perhaps if in turn for Gas blast lost when X players log on the HP went up. This HP bonus could be for cabal members alive not online it would mean if you could get the drop on a few cabal members you could remove this bonus before the cabal raid started.

The guardian would be with out gas because of numbers online (or recently logged off) and lose the HP bonus to let players respond quickly because they should already know something is up when a few of them get killed.

Maybe rework some of the cabals backstories. When I played an adept I felt horribly outnumbered just for the fact that three cabals were instantly in my face. Adepts get screwed.

Horrid idea. The Adepts are one of those groups that depends on secrecy to work. Before the CTF was implemented, almost no-one knew who was in it. Now a lot of people know Adepts, because they're forced to be more open.

Kirina is right about secrecy being hugely important for a cabal such as the Adepts, but I think Yana's suggestion (which is a good one in my mind) can be done without sacrificing secrecy. A little more identity, more depth and internal history would do well for a lot of the cabals.