Hypothetically, X Commune receives damage from Y org, we were "raided". A Lady/Daughter is kicked. Desperately crying for mercy over CT. This happens eight times (or however many) over the course of a day. Moon/Night retaliates, defenders of the X org are empowered (edit: on controlled territory only), but not allies.
The "raiding" Y org receives a penalty (to encourage self-policing).
Thoughts? Healthy criticism welcome.
Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
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Anyway, mancer NPC relates it over GTELLS and CTELLS, and then you have a fight to pick. Not sure what the incentive to get the crystal would be, and if it would stay and have a cooldown or go to the Elemental plane of the person who captured it, but this idea was half-formed at best, so it fits.
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
Like some pvp activities would be generative, providing org level commodities. Others would be stealing, raids for example where you achieve an objective and take those comms from the target.
You would then spend those comms to access the current benefits. Building things that provide the power generation from wildnodes as an example, which would require comms gained from wildnodes.
The benefits would be the potential for trade, so an org who needs power but hasn't been doing great at wildnodes could get those resources from an ally.
But the more on topic thing was that, it could also offering an actual reason for raiding, you want to raid to steal stuff, but there would also be a point where it's no longer worth it because you wouldn't be able to extract more (i.e you have a time limit on how long your org can have people in an enemy territory per week, if someone is harassing an enemy too much then it starts cutting into your actual raid time) and you could potentially make it easier to steal stuff from people who have larger stashes so bullying the little person won't get you that much, but they have less effort required for retribution.
The other possibilities would also be non-pvpers potentially being able to contribute as well by doing other activities that generate these org-comms.
An old man, very wealthy of course, leaves his inheritance between one of two inheritors. In his will, everything goes to "the owner of the horse that loses the race." As the executor of this inheritance, how do you ensure it is executed fairly?
The answer is that the two inheritors ride their opponent's horse. They are still trying to win; they have something to lose as well.
On both sides.
This seems like a pretty good point, faethorn is mechanically the best battleground place right now because it is a convenient neutral ground off plane with easy access for all at any time and a decent place to pull back and retreat too when one side gets overwhelmed.
Which is forcing both sides to somewhat stretch the rp to come up with a reason why someone whos an enemy to both communes but has an amnesty is comming along to defend faethorn for no reason other than "well we just like combat!" Which is understandable as it is a game and combat is fun and theres folks on both side doing it so don't get all partisan and think I'm pointing any fingers.
How about an area joining all four of the elemental planes and linked to ethereal that is essentially neutral but holding certain points in it gives minor tiny benefits to the commune/city of use but with no cool down or timers like wildnodes or domoths.
You then have what is essentially a ready made arena 24/7 for group combat and bragging rights but its not so important mechanically or rp wise that you must defend it all the time as soon as anyone shows up like etherglom. You still then can raid each others places and be annoying about kicking and running but that is no longer the only way to lure people out into a conflict zone.
Also it avoids the issue of when the annoying raids happpen everyone is sort of forced to come and respond due to rp reasons, as your not a good defender of your cities/communes virtues. So even if people want fair and balance combat numbers at the moment we are sort of encouraged to respond on mass with all our defenders for rp reasons. I mean I go to etherseren or fight one person in faethorn and three or four more people show up which is completely understandable as they are defending their home but in terms of game play it often means that its a case of one side has overwhelming numbers and the other dosn't end of game, everyone goes home back to their nexus to wait until they have enough numbers to challenge.
It seems like a much better idea to channel the desire for conflict into something new and fun that it is to simply just punish it. Also something new could shake up the alliances a bit, I wouldn't mind seeing Serens murdering Hallifaxians and gloms dancing on the corpses of the tainted
I (still) think that the best solution is to give raiders an effect they can pop that weakens guards and discretionary on the target territory for a limited period of time, with limits on how often they can activate the effect. That way, you can lessen the penalties and difficulty of raiding while still preventing constant camping.
Yay! We have god-realm raids (without discretionaries!) back again, and a gold sink!
Maybe I'm missing something, but what is the argument for why a new system implemented would be better/encourage more? Like, I'm obviously not saying something like that is a stupid idea because I've been complaining about lack of meaningful combat, but I'm not sure how this will improve things.
First, revolts, domoths, and wildnodes either happen too infrequently (every few days up to every other week) or are too tedious (what is your point, Domoth Stage 3?).
Second, Lusternia's combat system is designed to emphasize preparation. Have to set up meld, have to set up pits, otherwise you'd be severely disadvantaged.
With Imperian, shardfalls happen every few hours. And when it does happen, enemy teams simply group up and rush each other more often than not - Imperian combat doesn't put an emphasis on lengthly preparation. It's simply set and go. Yes, there are prep mechanics (propped totems, hovering tarot cards), but they're far simpler to set up and usually only fire on the first engagement; they don't have a persistent effect like melds do throughout the fight.
Then, with villages, you have the issue of 1) Length of time between them, and 2) A really terrible streak of RNG over the course of the last few months where they are pretty much all happening at terrible times for a good chunk of the playerbase.
More systems = more chance of things happening when people are around (especially if there is not such a huge time-gap and player control over when to initiate).
The shardfall example was because it's more frequent and less impactful, which tends to encourage lower numbers of participation, but more often, which is more forgiving to new fighters and more engaging for those who want to fight hours each day.
In Imerian, every x hours, there's a global message about shards falling from the sky in a specific area. For shardfalls, some people run around the area uprooting shards (channeled, interruptible), while others gank other collectors/protect their own collectors. It's mobile combat, confined to a local area. This goes on until shards are collected (I forget how many there are, but typically it was 10-30 minutes).
In Aetolia every x hours a focus will spawn somewhere in the open world (people are already hunt smaller versions, similar to power quests). There is a global message when it's tapped. For foci, there is a several minute delay to take control, then passive power intake as long as the person controlling it stays in the room (alive), for about 10 minutes until it's depleted. Mobs will periodically spawn. Other orgs can enter the room and kill/move people to take control of the foci. It's room-based combat, focused on controlling a point. Uncontested, it's about 10-15 minutes. With combat, I've seen it range between 20 minutes and over an hour (I think foci despawn after a point).
Could be easily reskinned or adopted to Lusternia with power in place of shards/ylem.
The number of shards are typically at 50-80, so a shardfall lasts around an hour. The shardfall continues until all shards in the area have been harvested. Once it ends, then any PK that happened in the area cannot be carried over. For example, if Shedrin is attacked and killed by Breandryn during a shardfall, Shedrin cannot later on PK Breandryn (unless there's another shardfall!).
Harvesting a shard is a channeled action, sort of like wild nodes. Factions group up and PK each other to harvest the most shards. Shards can be used for many things, like a REFRESH ME action, flight, waterwalk, deathsight, bombs (!!!), or they could be given to the org so the org can research shard technology (which opens up aforementioned personal-use abilities). So there's a personal and organizational need for shards, which is a nice incentive to actually go and fight for them.
Basically, wildnodes every few hours.
Also worth considering is how fun would the adapted version be if only 2-3 people showed up? Does the mechanic encourage small-scale combat, or does it only really work properly if there are big teams?
Wildnodes is more fun with less people, imo.