Shattered Kingdoms

As one of the cannots, I do not find it to be a good idea either. If I'm in a competent group, relic raids are nearly doable for me, but in a group of incompetents or illy geared players, we can hardly take out the putter guardian let alone take on the guards that come just to die to the inner guardian. I for one would like to see a win/loss system put in. Something that prevents your relic from being attached to the same enemy guardian for a set amount of time or something sounds interesting. Perhaps it also removed your cabal powers during that time.

Chris

OA yet again makes a solid and reasonable conclusion based on rational, substantiated claims in his post. The advocates of this horrible idea would have probably found it easier to get my support if they were to have followed his examples, although I doubt that it would be entirely possible to rationally argue for something so counter-productive as the homeopathic remedy that would be forced timers and more NPCs in the CRS mechanics.

To piggyback on OA's comments, how about something like this to make it more of a mystery on where the relic is. With a command the leader can designate where the guardian goes. So, he would go to room A and enter in fortify, the guardian would walk from where he was to where the leader is, the force field would go up, and the attackers would never necessarily know immediately where the relics are. The only two rooms that should be off limits is just in front of the gate and the room with the noteboard/chest.

The ideas in this thread are awful. Taking a relic is trivial, if there is no one defending. It becomes nigh impossible with even a single competent defender. I wrecked multiple groups of 6+ that attempted to relic raid on my last character and I have taken multiple relics on my current character with only a three man group.

Flawed system is flawed.

That should probably be qualified to "Certain classes make it nigh impossible to take a relic with even a single defender." Warlocks, scouts, prepped sorx, range-spec'd mercs and occasionally a well-played and ready necro can solo defend against multiple waves of full group PCs without a lot of trouble. Any member of a relic'd MC or Crux can do it with relative ease as well (though exceptions to this rule do exist, and I've got the log to prove it, Peso.) Other classes struggle more with solo defense, but don't need a lot of support to make it work.

Since we're not likely to get a full revamp and redesign of CRS, though, I'd rather find solutions that fit within the existing paradigm than just slander the system as a whole and be done with it.

There is nothing that can save the current system, since it is predicated upon PCs either defending or attacking. No one will attack an HQ that is defended, since it is suicide if there is a single competent defender.

Conversely, taking an undefended relic is trivial and takes less than five minutes. There is no adequate way to address that and I would prefer the staff spend their time giving incentives to hang out in cities, so they are not ghost towns.

Well, I suppose in general you are correct in your assertion that "no one will attempt defended relic runs" but there are certainly instances of that not being the case. I can point to well over a half-dozen that I've lead and/or been involved in personally.

What it really comes down to is that a defended relic attack needs strategy, prep, tactics, and intel. Any defender can be beat with enough of all of the above. The one time I got dragged into a defended run on the last character you played, we had none of those things and I knew it was going to go south because of it. But, had we a couple of strong shield staves/potions, a couple of good rangers with True Seeing pots, and a heal stave or two that would have turned out very differently from our end. I do agree that most of the players in the game don't care to/know how to/bother to put that kind of theory crafting and prep into CRS runs. Personally, I enjoy CRS a lot more when that tactical side IS present, and I would always rather run a defended relic raid than an undefended one. It's just more engaging and fun. Undefended relic raids are just simple PvE excursions, lacking even the strategy that some mid-level PvE zones in SK require. Undefended raids can be summed up as: "DPS burn here, Tank stand there, Healer cast at Tank. Repeat until finished. Quaff recall."

I don't know, though, that the two solutions (to modify the CRS system to be more "user friendly" and to re-populate the public zones) need to be mutually exclusive. I'll let that percolate a bit while I'm out and get back to you on what I come up with to solve both problems.

There is also very little to be gained via CRS for your own faction, save for increasing the durability of your own inner guardian. However, it doesn't matter how many relics an inner guardian holds - if there are no PCs to defend, it's going to die.

Which leads us right back to it being suicide to attack an HQ that is defended versus it being trivial to take an undefended relic. The only real reason to steal a relic is to deprive the enemy faction of cabal powers. There are some cabals powers that are so overpowered they make it difficult and in some cases impossible to defeat members of that faction.

The only way to effectively deal with certain OP cabal abilities is to steal relics. Of course, then no one wants to join a faction that has no powers and existing members lose motivation to keep playing. There are certain abilities that simply need to be hit with the nerf bat, but if that were to happen there would NO reason to ever engage in CRS.

A vicious circle.

I don't agree with your assertion of impossibility, but I don't think we're really arguing different points. Anyways, I've got someplace to be. I'll see what I can come up with as far as realistic, effective solutions.

Definitely things I'd like to comment on here, but I'm pretty busy until later tonight.