Shattered Kingdoms

So, with CRS completely removed from the game, why do the Cabals still have impenetrable fortress safety zones?

The idea made sense when there was something important in those areas being protected and vital to any conflicts the various cabals got involved in. Currently, these areas do nothing but provide safe places for people to run to to avoid PvP and AFK for prolonged periods while knowing no other PC can get to them without a group of roughly 4 fully-equipped characters spending 5 minutes fighting through insanely strong NPCs.

The outer guardians of these areas should be removed, and the areas should be opened to the public again, without the relics being present.

As an example of how toxic the lack of CRS and allowance of hiding in these areas has made the game, let's discuss something that happened this past weekend.

The MC in game, ran around and killed junk-looted somebody 4v1 in an inn while none of their enemies were logged in.

Every single player involved on the MC side, of course immediately went to auto-surrender, to avoid any repercussions for their actions, and so they could try for more "free ganks" in the future. Another problem, and another example of how toxic these players are to the game.

Later that day, after the 4v1 inn gank, the MC players had a chance at a 5 (PCs) vs 7 (PCs) fight. Obviously, the advantage is in the 7's favor, but the 7 went and attacked Losache. Once upon a time, defending your Cabal HQ would entice players to take a fight of that nature, because they want their relic, and they'd have help in the form of the cabal guardians + warparty to make up the difference in group size.

Rather than take a 5v7 fight and make any attempt at defending their HQ with the benefits of defending and having those NPCs on their side, the MC all left their HQ and ran to hide in ocean rooms, because there is absolutely nothing that can be done by other players to them, for this behavior of avoiding conflict except when they can attack some hapless newb 4v1 in the inn who doesn't know better.

Cabal HQs now serve no purpose except giving people impenetrable fortresses to hide in and run away from when they get attacked. It's honestly pretty disgusting.

Why do you act like you and your group can’t just break in easily ? I don’t understand why a secret powerful cabal can’t have a fortress.

We did break in. But everyone's gone by the time you chewed through an outer guardian and the spawns npcs. You might as well make the outer guardian only cost a platinum and make him as strong as a fytryks and remove the spawned npc cabal war party. With no relic there isn't a point to make it that hard and long to raid a keep.

Make some other advantage to killing the inner guardian. Weekly bonuses. Perhaps a certain spell that will last until a weekly reset. Something like the chancel bless that lasts longer. Or achievement-based LT farming.

Kill the warparty and the inner guardian, that’s 25%. Do it for four weeks and you’ve earned a LT.
Whatever the incentive. Just something to make killing the inner worth-while each week.

Custom components to build our own gear, or drop a voucher we can collect to turn in for an item to be either changed or made into the game, greater the item the greater the voucher cost.

Incentives sound nice. And give people who dig that dopamine reward from the grind something, too.

Just throwing this out there, but if we're talking pre-CRS weren't some of the cabal HQ's near impenetrable unless you were part of that cabal?

That's not a reason to refrain from re-examining the current set-up, but there were some hokey cabal set-ups even before the guardians existed so it probably makes more sense to focus on the possible benefits and negatives of a change in direction to a more accessible HQ, or any other ideas associated with attacking one.

PK was abundant, thriving and the player numbers were high back when there was no CRS. AND the cabal hqs that I remember were all close to inaccessible to everyone who were not members (or followed them as they entered).

Back then imms were more involved as well. If you got wrecked over and over they might press on to let the other side gain something, like a watchtower or annihalate areas and build new ones (remember Teron? Though that may have been after CRS?).

Back then some HQs were super atmospheric. Like remember the old druid hq? Or the fist masterpiece of a hq that was made just before CRS was implemented? Man, that was a place you wanted to RP.

And really, no good game i ever played was balanced. Let cabal hqs have some flavor again

So, how about if people want to pk they become a bit more patient. Either setup planned fights (yea that actually happenef before), wreck havoc on an enemy city or whatever and send logs to imms and let them decide if areas should be changed to reflect victory, or play the patient game of waiting for the enemy and ambush them (bash failure against reflex saves ratio needs to be tweaked a bit tho :p) .