8 Hours is too long.

Lavinya

I'm quite sure I understand why the reset time on empowered/killed godmobs changed to 8 hours, but it seems to have had the painful side effect of making life difficult for the order. For example, there are 4 quests currently in Morgfyre's realm for His DisOrder to complete, each of which requires empowering gentlemen at some point. It's now become exceedingly difficult for anyone to complete the quests, because it only takes one person to empower them all, and everyone else is locked out for 8 hours. We've always encouraged people to empower them and put them beyond harm whilst also gaining god essence, yet now I'm almost at the point where I'm considering asking the DisOrder at large to leave them be unless they are doing a quest, so more people can complete the quests. This is not something I want to do.

Honestly, I think it would just be best if the reset went back to 4 hours or some other time length that isn't excessive and frustrating. If you don't know when they were empowered, you could theoretically check all day to do the quests and they will not appear. I believe Estarra mentioned that godrealms are supposed to be rewards for the divine and their followers, but I believe this change is not punishing the raiders so much as it is punishing the orders. I am sure there is more than one order affected by this and more than one person frustrated. Please consider revising the 8 hour reset time.

Karlach

Change Empower to 4 hours and keep mob kill respawns at 8?

8 hours sucks for Orders with small realms and not many mobs to influence for their Divine buff. Shikari also has a quest for the outer circle that requires empowering most of the Panthers to complete for example.

Vivet

As I understand it, if someone attempts to start the quest, they still can even if there are no mobs to influence.

Therefore, if someone does attempt to start it, and the game can tell they don't have the honours yet... simply make the quest force the appropriate number of mobs to load for them automatically. This way someone who hasn't completed it yet doesn't need to be forced to wait for the exact window, but it can't be spammed by people who have already done it.

Vivet

Also, if there were some way to tell when mobs get empowered and by who aside from listofferings, that would be fabulous. Especially if everyone in the order could view it to see.

Raezon

Vivet said:

As I understand it, if someone attempts to start the quest, they still can even if there are no mobs to influence.

Therefore, if someone does attempt to start it, and the game can tell they don't have the honours yet... simply make the quest force the appropriate number of mobs to load for them automatically. This way someone who hasn't completed it yet doesn't need to be forced to wait for the exact window, but it can't be spammed by people who have already done it.

We understood the possible impact on an order's ability to complete order quests, which is one reason we initially avoided increasing the reset timers. Something like what I've quoted above is something which could be worked out with your divine patrons if they want to avoid this sort of limitation on completing the quest.

Karlach

What about a shorter duration on influencing than killing? Or is it not mechanically possible to split the timers?

Lavinya

I will beg and plead prettily with Morgfyre; but quests aside, it's a long time to wait for denizens that are decent xp and also have the benefit of good esteem and god essence. Also, I bought a mark of the gods not long before this change, yet now the frequency with which I could possibly influence the mobs has halved - I now have a 400cr artifact that I can rarely use, and I have to say I'm very unimpressed about that. What was a great benefit for the orders might have been taken out of the hands of raiders for longer, but I still say the change hurts the orders more than the raiders. Reconsider removing the gold drops from the mobs, lower the xp for killing them, remove the corpses much like Lirangsha mobs - right there, you've taken away a large part of why people raid (gold/xp/offerings) without taking away the opportunity for order conflict, and without punishing the orders who have quests to complete (ours even give ikons!) and a god to please.

Karlach

Gold needs to go regardless of any other changes. Even if everyone really did raid for conflict with no ulterior motive, it's far too profitable.

Malayn

You want to lower the gold, XP, and remove the corpses from Order raid?  Sure, fix the wandering code and greatly weaken the mobs. While any groups of mobs can take defenders, they are too strong to have no value.   I would support removing gold if they also cant be begged, and the essence drop if influencing them was also worth less.  If you can benefit from influencing, we should benefit from killing, as that is the ONLY conflict in Lusternia you generally see. Since planes are the worst possible places to go, prime is a better choice now.

Xenthos

Removing gold would in fact remove the ability for it to be begged from them; you get the same gold from begging as you do from killing (they come from the same pool).  I can only imagine that that's why the gold hasn't been removed yet, because otherwise it doesn't make much sense.  It's a pretty simple change, and the Realms really should not be gold factories for anyone.

Leolamins

Lusternia (and its admin and I am forever reminded by my lovely RL wife) talk about realistic roleplay.  Although harsh, they roleplayed a God entering the rift, never to be seen again leaving her followers lost.  All of the hard work of the followers lost because their God is gone.  Harsh but any discussion of changing mechanisms was dismissed on the basis that it doesn't make RP sense and it has been done that way before.

On a completely different scale, there was a few raids on a god realm.  For me that makes sense from a RP conflict point of view if that god is an enemy of your god or org.  It is also something that has been going on for as long time and as I have been playing the game.  Draylor and Veyrzhul constantly raided Morgfyre's and Raezon's realm when I was warlord of Mag but let's be honest they were enemies.  This is why I am completely dismayed as to the recent response to the raids being to completely change a mechanism of the game.  It honestly is just inconsistent with other arguments that are always put forward.

There was no need to change something that wasn't broken.  Yes some realms were being raided but that is a part of the game and a realistic RP objective.  Priestesses and Gentleman who devote themselves to a God and never leave his realm holding 1000gold pieces may not be realistic and is definitely out of alignment with the denizen gold from other Denizen's.  Maybe this is what should be looked at. If you want there to be realistic role play it can only occur when there is consistency.

Karlach

Hell no to removing corpses. Absolute no.

Gold yes, and only reduce their xp/essence value if they're weakened to compensate. But there is no way they shouldn't leave a corpse.

Zvoltz

Leolamins said:

There was no need to change something that wasn't broken.  Yes some realms were being raided but that is a part of the game and a realistic RP objective.  Priestesses and Gentleman who devote themselves to a God and never leave his realm holding 1000gold pieces may not be realistic and is definitely out of alignment with the denizen gold from other Denizen's.  Maybe this is what should be looked at. If you want there to be realistic role play it can only occur when there is consistency.

I'm not sure where you got the impression that we're against removing gold from realm denizens because we have some double standard about RP. It is definitely something we've talked about but solutions generally don't happen over night. We're keeping our ears open to player feedback and looking at what, if any, more changes could be made.

Kaimanahi

My opinion is that whether there is or is not gold is not going to impact raiding frequency at all (and certainly does not affect an order's ability to counteract the raid). The substantial gold drops only occur when realms have not been raided after some time and the mobs have recouped the gold, and so a realm that is being raided with any regularity is not going to produce overwhelmingly appreciable returns.

However I would bring up a related gripe that some realms are made more attractive for raiding because the mobs do drop gold, while other Gods' realm mobs do not. Shikari's leopards and Fain's maggots come to mind as examples of gold-less mobs. Given that the mobs can also be begged from (or done so by an ecologist), I think it would be reasonable to give ALL realm mobs gold across the Orders. But in either case, I feel like either all godrealm mobs should have gold, or no godrealm mobs should have gold.

Kio

This is what I don't get.

When we raid Eventru, people group up, hide in the corner, and let us kill everything. Sure, we'll engage them when we've had our share of their mobs, but it only takes one good win before they stop caring and let us have our way.

Kelly, Xena, and Aeden raided *both* Nocht and Shikari at the same time. Glomdoring had not a single main combatant online. Not one. You know what happened? We got help from daedalion and rastamutti, charged in after Kelly and Aeden in Shikari and Xena in Nocht, and didn't give a damn. We fought tooth and nail to get them to leave. No one cared if we were going to fail miserably or pubstomp them. Tau, Iorwen, Aerdiya, Aurik, and I only had one thing in mind: These are OUR patrons, and we won't roll over just because you're big, bad, and can probably whoop us real good.

I, personally, had great fun with it, especially when we chased them out of the realm, moved to the entrance, blocked off the exits, and decided we wouldn't move until they were either gone or brought reinforcements for us to kill, because damnit we weren't going to lose.

Oh, but Kio! It was 5v3! Great. According to Barrin, they attacked because Morkarion was raiding Celest realms. Too bad you guys couldn't form up and kick him out.

I can't sit here and have a pity party IC for these folks. Kio sees them as playthings. Unfortunately, he never gets to play with them because they're too scared to come out and his friends would rather play with the Priestesses.

OOCly, maybe I'd have a little more sympathy if the bigger Celestians didn't have a tendency for being incredibly griefy. You guys want to roam around Astral in packs, over link and run away with true heal, and pinleg/judge someone after everyone's dc'd and just reconnected? Expect for us to want to take some sort of action in game.

Unfortunately, this change takes that away from us. So now all we can do is come to the forums and whine about how Celest doesn't want to play fair in any sense. I appreciate the work the admin out into this stuff, I really so. But no one can blame us for being upset that our best outlet for IC -and- OOC frustration has been all but nipped off.

We all need to figure out better means of conflict. There need to be ways to initiate conflict other than jumping folks on Astral or poking at order or org mobs and hoping someone comes out to fight. We hate each other and there should be things we can do to actually harm each other. Orders included.

Turnus

If some godrealm mobs drop gold and others don't, that would to imply to me that some admin don't mind raiders getting gold (or just didn't think of it when setting up the realm).

Either way, seems like if one admin doesn't mind the incentive for raiders hitting their realm it could be their choice to allow/disallow gold drops.  No need to universally make a ruling if some admin don't mind the fact that it encourages their realm to get raided or not.  So sure let admin disallow gold drops in their realm or not, but one might want actively want it in their realm, so why disallow it on all realms?

Honestly, I'm not sure removing gold drops would do much to change realm-raiding. People raid because they want to fight (or at least annoy/are bored), not because they need essence/gold.

Rivius

Kio said:

Big rant post.

I don't care overly much for any of the changes here but I do think that the claims of killing and removing conflict are hilariously exaggerated. Every eight hours means you can raid about 2-3 times per day per God realm which is honestly probably the maximum most people are willing to stomach. You cite how you had fun defending Shikari's realm , but I don't think you really know what it's like to defend against people who don't know when to give it a rest.

It might be an earth-shattering realization for you, but despite the fact that this game is a conflict game, people do play for other reasons and having the majority of your limited game time stolen from you because of some overzealous raiders on a constant basis is a good way to fall into burnout and frustration.

This isn't a difficult concept, I think, but apparently it is, because I find myself having to explain it year after year to people who don't get it.

No one is against conflict. Some of these people love conflict and are frankly better at it and more invested in it than you are. They just have limits like everyone else. While you find it fun to maul people over and over when they're unable to mount a defense, the other side is probably not having that much fun after a while.

If people had the faintest concept of restraint and weren't prone to periods of frequent raiding like the ones that prompted these changes, none of this would have happened. You can raid, but for god's sake, give people a chance to enjoy other aspects of the game too.

Xena

Kio said:

This is what I don't get. When we raid Eventru, people group up, hide in the corner, and let us kill everything. Sure, we'll engage them when we've had our share of their mobs, but it only takes one good win before they stop caring and let us have our way. Kelly, Xena, and Aeden raided *both* Nocht and Shikari at the same time. Glomdoring had not a single main combatant online. Not one. You know what happened? We got help from daedalion and rastamutti, charged in after Kelly and Aeden in Shikari and Xena in Nocht, and didn't give a damn. We fought tooth and nail to get them to leave. No one cared if we were going to fail miserably or pubstomp them. Tau, Iorwen, Aerdiya, Aurik, and I only had one thing in mind: These are OUR patrons, and we won't roll over just because you're big, bad, and can probably whoop us real good. I, personally, had great fun with it, especially when we chased them out of the realm, moved to the entrance, blocked off the exits, and decided we wouldn't move until they were either gone or brought reinforcements for us to kill, because damnit we weren't going to lose. Oh, but Kio! It was 5v3! Great. According to Barrin, they attacked because Morkarion was raiding Celest realms. Too bad you guys couldn't form up and kick him out. I can't sit here and have a pity party IC for these folks. Kio sees them as playthings. Unfortunately, he never gets to play with them because they're too scared to come out and his friends would rather play with the Priestesses. OOCly, maybe I'd have a little more sympathy if the bigger Celestians didn't have a tendency for being incredibly griefy. You guys want to roam around Astral in packs, over link and run away with true heal, and pinleg/judge someone after everyone's dc'd and just reconnected? Expect for us to want to take some sort of action in game. Unfortunately, this change takes that away from us. So now all we can do is come to the forums and whine about how Celest doesn't want to play fair in any sense. I appreciate the work the admin out into this stuff, I really so. But no one can blame us for being upset that our best outlet for IC -and- OOC frustration has been all but nipped off. We all need to figure out better means of conflict. There need to be ways to initiate conflict other than jumping folks on Astral or poking at order or org mobs and hoping someone comes out to fight. We hate each other and there should be things we can do to actually harm each other. Orders included.

I wouldn't consider what's happened recently incredibly griefy and think you're probably being overly sensitive. Considering what most of Celest puts up with people like Morkarion, it was more like a playful tap.

Kaimanahi

Kio said:

blah life isn't fair

Where you got the impression that Celest does not want to "play fair" and cry on the forums from my one post (as the only Celestian in this thread to that point) is beyond me. You can refer to the other thread on this topic for the real reasons behind the change, which, surprise, is not Celest bias. You'll also notice that I'm not calling for any curbing of godrealm raiding, just that gold drops, if any, should be standardized across all of the Orders. Because hey, Celestians have children to feed too!

Also not to throw this entirely off-topic, and just to name names as me being the "incredibly griefy bigger Celestian", if I really wanted to cause grief I would be actively looking for people to jump. I don't ever scry with intent of finding someone to grief, nor purposefully roam bashing areas in search of victims (Morkarion). If you're bashing in enemy territory or are off-Plane, you should well expect to be at some kind of risk, and if I happen to run into you, then from an RP perspective it doesn't even make sense to just ignore and walk away.

OOCly, I think you need to realize that this is a conflict game and not take things so personally. It is a bit messed up for you to be in such a good mood and raving about raiding Eventru's realm or when otherwise "winning", but then claim that you are getting griefed when you face a little adversity on other fronts. As Rivius pointed out, I think a lot of people appreciate the conflict; personally I generally like playing the underdog. 

Don't feel so victimized when clearly the other side is not greener. God forbid if we don't want to get rolled over and do actually fight back,

Silvanus

I just find it funny that people think our raiding has been a problem.

Veyrzhul and Draylor used to spend ---hours--- in Morgfyre's realm. 2-3 times a day as often is raids would occur? HA! They were there for at least 2-3 hours A DAY. And thats not even counting Nil.

Raiding Magnagora got so bad at one point, we had to remove all of our constructs and only have the one that gives free ripple/distort up on Nil. Just so people weren't getting so defeated.

You can claim all you want about there not being Celestian-bias, but if this change didn't happen last year when we were getting raided for hours upon hours everyday, it most certainly was not needed now for those occasional times when Thoros or I are the only ones that'll lead a raid.

Kaimanahi

Generally I agree that Mag got the short end, and personally I did not raid much then (and OOCly tried to discourage it) because yeah, it was overkill. But really I don't think I have seen anyone from Celest crying over forums about some injustice of being raided, and certainly none asked for this change. (If you would point me to evidence of this happening, I'll be happy to inform the infringing party to get a grip. )

Ultimately the change was OKed by Estarra, and so it was thought to be for the betterment of the game and not catered to a particular org. I can only imagine that the issue was not raised to the Admin in the case of Morgfyre, but I'm just one of the peasants living in this crazy world.

Alary

 

Now, onto the real topic here. As a Beloved, Ollie used to raid our realm nightly. We dealt with it. Some days we stopped him, some days we didn't. It happens. We retaliated. All good to go, conflict, yay! This change, while I haven't really spoken about it, does irk the crap out of me. It is punishing the Order members. For quests, experience, and cheating us out of an excellent game mechanic. @Rivius, not all of us can play 24/7 and sit and wait out 8 hour spawns. Especially if you get to play 4 hours on day, and the spawns don't show up at all when you're online. I like the gold idea, but I like the idea of timing influence 4 hours and death 8 hours even more. I don't know how hard that would be to implement, but give us an idea? Then maybe, if it isn't feasible, we can come up with another idea.

Edit: Aye, then, Zvoltz!

Zvoltz

Let's be civil and stay on topic, please.

Shuyin

Willing to defend godrealms for any type of angry/griefy/revenge-filled/just-cause raid, just let me be online first, please.

Then again, it is a bit weird that Mysrai's godrealm was recently raided when it seems the rationale was because of Morkarion, who, last I checked, was from Glomdoring.

But I digress, please raid!

P.S. I am fine with 4 hours from quests, 8 hours if murdered. And I would agree that you should probably give them all gold, or none of them. But that might infringe on the god's personal View of the godrealm.

Kio

Apologies. I admit the tone of my post was drenched in being me just being frustrated because I'm new to all this raiding stuff and get excited about it. I do often forget, exactly like rivius said, that this is all new and exciting for me. I also forget that I'm not logged in 24/7 and don't know about any of the raids that go down when I'm not on.

However, I did not say that Celest is whining on the forums. What I was getting it is, with the fact that plane raids (celestia/etherseren/etc) are completely pointless, realm raids are the only things worth doing, from what I understand. If we raid the realms, woopdie do. We're probably just going to kill the aspects, kill a few angels, and then sit is plane powers and shrine powers for 30 minutes because there's need to run is off. At least with realm raids, we have incentive to kill the mobs for gold/exp/and whatnot. I don't know - maybe I just remember back to when I was a true newbie and felt like defending mattered. The while reason I stopped playing back in 2010 was because when Malarious would raid Air by himself, it was always me and two true-newbies who would try our best to defend while everyone in Hallifax sat at the Matrix and explained to me that it didn't matter because the Air Lords literally meant nothing, both mechanically and RPly.

Personally, I get pretty upset when three people - all distinguished fighters - jump me as I'm linking on Astral and trying to get Demi. I scent on every attack against a mob. When a whole group of people are suddenly hitting me in between the three seconds it takes to scent again and then chase me across two spheres while I'm just trying to get away, yea, I have a little angst built up about it. Maybe I shouldn't. I do know, however, that when there's enemy who isn't a real combatant in open-PK area, I chase them off. I don't hunt them down unless they fight back.

I just don't know what I, in-game, can do to work against other orgs. I want ways to undermine Celest and Serenwilde that aren't constantly sitting in their realms, getting bored, and then leaving and calling it a "win." Maybe it's my newbieness showing. Maybe there are ways and I just don't know about them.

Anyway, what I meant about forum whining is that it feels like that's all anyone can do anymore. Not just the ones being raided, but the ones raiding, too. The ones being raided are upset about the people not knowing when to stop. The ones raiding are upset about not having a reason to raid. Raiding, as it is, feels completely and totally pointless from both sides. It's become an entirely antifun mechanic for both parties involved.

I'm positive that we can come up with conflict mechanics that don't involve hideously unproductive PK.

As a personal apology to Kelly, the only things I've ever heard are negative and refer to you being really griefy. I'm probably incredibly heavily biased by that, and I'm sorry for jumping the gun and being so frustrated. I really do forget that most of the stuff I hear about folks on the other side should be taken with a grain of salt.

Anyways, if the goal of this change is truly to move away from unfun conflict, great! I'm perfectly happy with that, as both a raider and a defender. However, how can we have fun conflict? What can we do to create a sense of struggle between the orgs on a day-to-day basis that doesn't involve all the raiding? Sitting around and waiting for revolts, flares, and wildnodes is one thing. And mostly, the fun parts of those aren't the mindless PK. Domoth fights give plenty of raiding-style PK to those who want it. But what about the people who want org conflict without the fighting? When does anyone ever debate someone outside of a revolt?

Super long, but I'm half-trying to not go back into the warehouse, heh. I'd start a suggestion post on PK-free/light conflict, but as a new guy to the game, it wouldn't spur much actual thought. The forums seem like a whole different social caste sometimes.

Kaimanahi

Mysrai wasn't raided because of Morkarion, that would be silly. It seems pretty reasonable to retaliate against Mysrai over the Terentia incident. Also just giving credence to the fact that raiding does not have to be about wanting to grief. In this case I think it does stand for roleplay within the context of current events. I, too, am willing to defend in retaliation of what is sewn!

My suggestion would probably be to make the mobs respawn at 4 hours independent of influence or death, but if having been slain, make them impervious to death for maybe an hour or two so that quests are doable within that timeframe.

Leolamins

Zvoltz said:

I'm not sure where you got the impression that we're against removing gold from realm denizens because we have some double standard about RP. It is definitely something we've talked about but solutions generally don't happen over night. We're keeping our ears open to player feedback and looking at what, if any, more changes could be made.

For clarity I had no such impression.  I was merely tabling my thoughts; player feedback.  TBH I would be surprised if you have not discussed a lot more suggestions that have been put here to date as they are quite narrow so far. 

Ssaliss

Kelly said:

My suggestion would probably be to make the mobs respawn at 4 hours independent of influence or death, but if having been slain, make them impervious to death for maybe an hour or two so that quests are doable within that timeframe.

Wouldn't that just be going back to the previous system though, albeit with a shorter time of invulnerability?

Personally, my suggestion would be that realm mobs killed are turned into spectres, which can only be seen by the members of the Order. They can be influenced like they're alive, and they'd respond to order members the same way. They wouldn't attack order enemies though, nor would they be targetable by anyone other than order members. This way, orders can still quest even after a raid, and they also get control of the repop of the realm mobs by empowering the spectres.

Kio

Ssaliss said:

Kelly said:

My suggestion would probably be to make the mobs respawn at 4 hours independent of influence or death, but if having been slain, make them impervious to death for maybe an hour or two so that quests are doable within that timeframe.

Wouldn't that just be going back to the previous system though, albeit with a shorter time of invulnerability?

Personally, my suggestion would be that realm mobs killed are turned into spectres, which can only be seen by the members of the Order. They can be influenced like they're alive, and they'd respond to order members the same way. They wouldn't attack order enemies though, nor would they be targetable by anyone other than order members. This way, orders can still quest even after a raid, and they also get control of the repop of the realm mobs by empowering the spectres.


That sounds really freakin' neat.

Kaimanahi

Ssaliss said:

Kelly said:

My suggestion would probably be to make the mobs respawn at 4 hours independent of influence or death, but if having been slain, make them impervious to death for maybe an hour or two so that quests are doable within that timeframe.

Wouldn't that just be going back to the previous system though, albeit with a shorter time of invulnerability?

Yes, but toning down the extremity of the invulnerability.

Maellio

I'm mostly indifferent to the change all things told, sure I don't get to influence them as often but they also aren't dead ( non-com bias and all that jazz). Gold I'm more biased towards keeping, but primarily because I'm a derp when it comes to gold generation and like to beg inactive Realms >.=.> but removing gold from the system is good I'm told (PS I am poor and a convenient way to remove gold).

@kio the whole Hallifax not caring about the Wind Lords is a bit complicated, but I'm reasonably sure it's an opinion unique to our historical RP. Raiding other planes (including Continuum) holds a lot more significance I figure to other groups. Course the feasibility of raids is another can of worms entirely.

@Ssaliss that's a pretty nifty solution, though I'd figure it'd need some tweaking around in terms of how essence/esteem would come/not come from them.

And while the Mysrai raid made perfect RP sense I figure, I got no clue why they went off to Nocht and Shikari's realms. Unless because Nocht's been a creeper lately or something?