When someone takes a land in game every sees:
A messenger hands you a scroll '[CABAL A] has taken THIS AREA from [CABAL B]!'
I see an area of opportunity with this because it 'usually' happens when opposite cabal members arent on, so why not send an email notification to cabal members whom just had their land stolen? Im sure it would entice people to log on knowing some action was happening in real time.
Thoughts?
UC
So you are the only [Knight], and when you take the chasm back, you want all eight Nexians to know immediately?
Or perhaps your one of the eight, and want to make sure you keep the besieged loner locked in his castle.
Not really a fan. I believe a change like this would work if enemy cabals were usually evenly matched, but that's not generally the case.
In the environment we have currently, your suggestion only makes the "work" of the underdogs much harder. But that's just one opinion.
Edit: Its kind of similar to the if you want to know what is going on in Aabahran, log in to Aabahran argument.
If you want to create a lot of useless spam.... then this idea is perfect.
I am sure Foxx did not mean that as a personal jab, more like a clever joke. Please do not be offended by him UC.
13 minutes ago, Fool_Hardy said:
I am sure Foxx did not mean that as a personal jab, more like a clever joke. Please do not be offended by him UC.
In order to be offended by someone you first need to respect them ;) returns jab
I hear ya with the lockdown situation, I'm still in the mindset that every cabal has 5-6-7 actives who would log on simutainiusly and all hell would break out, lol.
My initial spurring of the idea was to keep people updated in order to avoid them from becoming inactive in the first place.
UC :)
IDK, I am on @Fool_Hardy side with this one.
I think it would just cause a feeling of helplessness for those in an underdog cabal and just make them feel more outnumbered.
I like the idea of some kind of email interaction for FL though. I wouldn't call it spam, if you don't like it just don't subscribe right?
It is hard to think of a framework or mud element to broadcast this way that couldn't be abused somehow though.
I also agree with @Kyzarius and @Fool_Hardy.
Just because Nexus has the best cabal imm... why you gotta pick on my sla-imean-mini-imean-members? Not my fault Knight is laaaaame. :P
But in all seriousness, I am not a fan of this for many reasons, not least of which being what FH brought up.
Another being that while we track character IPs, we don't attribute them to email addresses or even forum accounts. If we need to know, we look it up.
Also, some players have friends or family using the same IP to connect, so the metric available to us in game would result in erroneous emails being sent out to one of those players, as they would not be intended to receive it - since, let's be real, emailing ALL players anytime an area is taken would be an absurd amount of spam.
If you want information about the state of the game as it is running now, especially cabal warfare... log on and check.
I honestly kind of miss the old map with real time captured areas by which Cabals. It was unique to the game at that point in time and nothing has been seen like it really since. If anything, Cabal land owning became more mundane. Knight could use an Elder or someone with more sway in getting people into the Cabal, but otherwise I haven't had a Nexus in 12+ years and I haven't had a Knight in about a decade. If Cabal Warfare got a change, I honestly think a mini game element flare to it would be interesting. It's not hard for the opposing Cabal to keep a single Cabal land locked right now, especially if the opposing Cabal has limited characters. I was honestly thinking of this just yesterday about how it would be interesting to almost go off into its own little PK scenario. HP of everything can be beefed up if need be, but maybe armies could be much like PK in the sense of fast paced and heated. That way taking an area that requires 5 bastions wont take 3+ hours sometimes depending on what's going on in order to make it more entertaining and adding value to the end game status. I'd rather come back in and find that the 7 areas I took over in a few hours were all demolished than to come back in and find that the two characters of an opposing Cabal set a total of 10 patrols and the one or two Bastions I managed to secure in 3 hours and they did it in less than an hour. Even a chess like game would be entertaining that makes you think about what you're doing, because numbers can be very arbitrary. Change would be good if someone could figure out how to do it without breaking the system altogether too.
When I was younger, my favorite video games were Archon I and II. It was a quasi-chess game where players used monster pawns to capture power points on the board. Once a player held all of the power points he won the game. In some ways our current army warfare mimics this game. I have often thought we could alter the army warfare to be even more like these old games. Let me elaborate.
What if we could issue challenges to our enemies as a means of conquering the land? We must battle our enemy within the area we intend to conquer, our enemy must control the land, and we must defeat the enemy at the location of one of the bastions. If you kill my general while he stands at one of my bastions, my garrisons are obliterated and the bastion changes immediately to your control. Or you fail and I defeat you, your invading armies at the bastion are obliterated.
In this way through a series of PK battles we could make conquering lands less tedious and far more exciting. For people like myself who are less than astute at PK we could force the long war by declining the challenge. However, fighting in series against an enemy makes me much better at fighting that enemy. So while I may challenge and lose chasm today, tomorrow I might come back better prepared and manage to push to the Eastern Road. We get stronger through failures than we can ever become through unending success. Maybe its a Fool_Hardy Idea, but what would you expect from me? Just a thought.
What would we do about fleeing and moving fights? If you force them to stay put, it nerfs several classes. If the fight ends away from a bastion it defeats the purpose.
45 minutes ago, Lloth said:
What would we do about fleeing and moving fights? If you force them to stay put, it nerfs several classes. If the fight ends away from a bastion it defeats the purpose.
The bastions are numbered. So I figured the bastion number would be part of the challenge command.
For instance: Bastionchallenge Lloth [bastion identification number]
If accepted we meet in the area where the bastion is "the field of battle". Neither challenger or challenged can afterward (so long as the challenge stands) engage the other outside the "field of battle". In this way we can assume the battle is waged in view of the Bastion itself. Fleeing is an integral part of combat, fleeing out of the "field of battle" would be considered forfeiting the battle. But so long as the players remain inside the appropriate area they can flee as much as possible.
That drastically raises the difficulty for classes like clerics and shamans, especially the latter, as keeping a fight dialed into a single area ***severely ***hampers their ability to maintain their attrition capabilities. A shaman that can't lead you on a merry chase around the chasm, marak, banor, etc. (As confined to one area) is a dead shaman.
Furthermore it would create an even further disparity in area value, insofar as tactics, than we already have in cabal warfare.
All too true.
I never said it was a perfect Idea. Just food for thought on how things could be different. This is why I thought it should be a challenge + accept thing, obviously your shaman would simply not accept. Where a healer might accept anyway, considering it would lower the total number of casualties army warfare causes.
Even with a decline feature, it makes them an even less appealing class choice, as they simply wouldn't, in their current state, be able take part in an aspect of the game that other classes could.
I hope you don't read into this as a negative "shut your idea down" kind of thing. I am only meaning to highlight the many considerations that need to be considered when talking about changing the functionality of any aspect of the game. It is never a decision made lightly.
This is what the players love about you @Lloth. You do not mind discussing ideas, even when the concepts may never bare fruit. Never lose yourself, that kind of allegiance to the players here creates an environment people want to be part of.
Thank you for your comments.
Thank you for your kind words, @Fool_Hardy
They don't have to be necessarily class specific battles I suppose. Each cabal could have either a specific class fighter that is unique to that cabal alone along with set bonuses, or an array of classes with varying bonuses and vulnerabilities. Sort of like the bonuses they already receive from cabals like nexus being able to recruit faster armies. This eliminates attrition issues by making it non class specific warfare. It brings it back to more of a mini game so that the characters themselves aren't getting hurt, but bringing out more of an actual army tactic to it.
Nexus can choose a berserker type unit that has amplified damage at the cost of no defense. A shaman type unit that has a lot of defense, but causes an enemy to have long term issues. A shaman unit has the offenses to take out the enemy still, but it's better used in conjunction with other army based units after they die or are chased off. In either case, another unit would be required to be called in as each specialty requires a cool down period of say 48 hours? I actually like @Fool_Hardy and his ideas because they make me think of all the other possibilities that could be done that otherwise I wouldn't think of if those ideas never came about.
Thank you @Tantangel. With exception the administrations most precious gift, this was my favorite birthday present. I am just a foolish dreamer, but if my dreams can create a more exciting world for all of us, then I will keep dreaming my fool_hardy dreams.