Shattered Kingdoms

Instead of being punished for not having your relic by losing skills, let's have it so that if you hold the relic of a rival cabal, you are granted partial or full immunity to their cabal skills: So if the Crucible holds the hammer relic, the hammer can still conjure up an <adhesive medical strip> but it just won't damage the Crucible members any more than a normal weapon: And in fact, said crucible members can also ignore the <adhesive medical strip> that the Hammer members may conjure up.

If no, why?

The first reason that this might be a "no" that comes to mind is the pain-in-the-ass nature of the code it could require. Just off the top of my head and purely guessing at how the already extant skill checks and such happen for combat code, I could see it being a nuisance to add another check that would have to be calculated at every hit in every encounter (even if characters are not factioned, or there have been no relic exchanges).

The second reason that this might be a "no" is that Dulrik has previously stated that he wants there to be pain involved in not having your relic.

I voted no mostly due to OA's first paragraph. Yeah, the second is also true, but the pain does not have to always necessarily be today's version of pain. But I don't think there is enough bang for the buck in making this change, given the large amount of work. Certainly it wouldn't get a high priority, which puts it on a bardic timeline.

I don't necessarily like the idea that much given how complicated it would be to code. I would, however, prefer that losing your relic didn't remove all but the most marginal of benefits for joining a cabal. It's not fun at all to have something which you cannot control limit your characters' effectiveness. It isn't fun at all to join the Hammer of Light so that you can more effectively fight evil, and then realize that all it takes is some jackoffs ganking your relic whenever no one is online to all but eliminate the benefits you get from the Hammer of Light.

If anything allow some SKILLS to remain active even with a relic taken. I mean there are some skills in each faction that aren't necessarily supernaturally based and thus would make sense that they are retained. I think it would lessen the blow enough to make CRS more enjoyable.

+1

This was the first comment I made when crs was implemented and it has remained my opinion throughout.

I don't know if this would be hard to code, or if this would even be better, if all of the skills were temporarily capped at ohhh... avg or something.

I vote no because I would rather do away with the CRS system entirely.

Instead of the current CRS system, why don't we simply RP defeat/loss scenarios. Is your enemy faction not RPing defeat? PK them into the dirt, then. Instead of a loss of a relic, lets, instead, RP this thing out. I believe the player base will rise to my high expectations for this RP-centric solution.

In a world like SK where death is just a stroke of bad luck or simply the whim of the better equipped and skilled character, you shouldn't expect Fear of Death to be incentive enough for someone to RP defeat. There are occurences (I admit I am among them) where dying simply doesn't matter.

What do I lose? Loot? As a sorc all I need is a good charm, a storebought massive weapon, cheap armor that I don't really care if it gets shred to pieces (it's for the charm anyway) and I'm back in action. If I want to take my time I can enchant my cheap clothes or scribe a few survival scrolls. So, I do not fear about losing my loot.

Money? Travel around the world and you find ways to make money easily. So I'm not afraid of losing my money either.

Wasted time? Yeah, ok, but with the right friends I can be alive and on my feet within the hour (if I also take the time to do the above.) so I'm not afraid or losing my time either.

So... Aside from from an IC perspective, if there is nothing to fear about death, why should I surrender when someone threatens me with death? The current conflict system has several distinct flaws in that there is no specific win / loss conditions and PK simply isn't enough incentive to convince a determined character.

To name a couple of examples:
Iureana & Black Hand vs the Harlequin - We kept losing, we kept dying, we kept getting looted yet whenever they told us "Surrender" we simply said "Never! No matter how many times you kill us, we won't give up".

Veloras, Alaric & Midnight Council vs Reinald & Talon - This particular conflict lasted IC decades. Yet, even now, if you ask who won, the answer will depend on the side you're asking.

PKing to the dirt(tm) is no longer an option to motivate people to do what you want.