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War Keys

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:38 pm
by Cherokee
House wars are pretty much useless, unless RP’d right. That doesn’t happen very often, because time and time again we run into the same problem where neither side wants to admit defeat and they get drawn out so long that people start to lose interest. Players shrug off being collapsed because “It’s just XP, I can hunt that back”.

There needs to be a real consequence and an objective. I know we’ve discussed multiple solutions to remedy this issue, but I think I’ve come up with an idea that would possibly help this.

I think people should be worried to collapse as well as lose their essence. What I propose is this:

Once a war is declared between two houses, either a house Guide or house Caretaker would hold three War Keys for the houses to achieve. These keys can only be used once, and you can’t earn more than three during a single war.

1st Key:
X number of any member essences from the enemy house can be turned in to the GM for a 1 charge teleportation token into one of their vaults.

2nd Key:
X number of Guardian essences from the enemy house can be turned in to the GM for a 1 charge teleportation token into their Guardian quarters.

3rd Key:
X number of Ruler essences from the enemy house can be turned in to the GM caretaker for a 1 charge teleportation token into their Ruler quarters.

Obviously the required essence amount would need to be somewhat high and reasonable to make it challenging, but I think this would be an opportunity for RPs of guarding Strongholds and give people a chance to make battles count. People would need to coordinate and and have a couple meaningful large battles, rather than a bunch of little skirmishes.

Thoughts?

Re: War Keys

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:03 pm
by Arnaya
I like the idea, though I like Rasputin's idea for the Primes and war time as well. Anything to make the "I'm gonna hunt you" thing less of an issue, give people a chance to actually have some meaningful battles when they're prepared.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:37 pm
by fr3y
Let's be honest here, Rasputin's idea isn't feasible even. It would require an insane amount of coding.


Jade's idea wouldn't take any at all. It might even make collapses seem less personal in nature.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 1:44 am
by Uthanatos
It would take an insane amount of coding, but it also gives real static consequences, even if you manage to take their prime, or a few artifacts, they can still refuse to give up.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:04 am
by fr3y
I'd like to see underlight resemble the new LOTR game graphically, as well... and I can give a thousand reasons why, but it's simply not going to happen.

Actually having some sort of competition trumps the mindless collapsing imho. And they can still refuse to give up all that they want, but they'd still much rather have their items.

Would Uthanatos agree that they're not important? I mean, he gave up his beloved house to steal one if memory serves. Rasputin's idea is to just take energy away from it. You can do the same thing if you stole it.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:21 am
by Cherokee
Image

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:26 am
by fr3y
Kanye'd !

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:55 am
by Uthanatos
Rasputin's idea actually has an effect on the house based on the power level of the prime. Losing access to certain areas, things of that nature, all the way down to the house actually closing, so there's that. I'm just saying while it would give some goals, I don't know that they war keys would make a tangible difference in people refusing to give up and just dragging it on forever.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 10:21 am
by Koi-Shadow
I do think house wars should have more consequences and a defined "win" goal. A problem I see with this idea is that it would further encourage the losing side to stay in sanctuaries/member only areas and not participate in combat for fear of losing their essences. It would also likely encourage constant hunting down of weak combatants instead of encouraging large battles. To make wars in Underlight better, both of those problems would need to be addressed as well.

This idea would work if the two houses at war were equally balanced, but that rarely happens.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:36 pm
by fr3y
anyone who's participated in the Elryck rp knows the dream's not always fair.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:44 pm
by Cherokee
That’s true, and I don’t think there’s ever going to be an easy solution to make things 100% fair. UL was created to mirror real world situations, and IRL, not everything is balanced. We can’t all be Chiefs, there has to be Indians too. A true balance would be one focus and everyone at the same level.

Houses and players in general are always going to hunt down others no matter what. As it is now, there’s always one side that hides in sanctuary. Though with this method in place, even the aggressors would worry about losing their essence and might be a little less confident. Though when they do risk it, there would be a possibility of a tangible reward.

EDIT:
Though to steer clear from someone hunting 1 or 2 weak members - as an example, let’s say the 1st Key needs 10 essences. There could be a 5 unique dreamer essence requirement, so only half of the needed amount could be doubles.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:39 pm
by Arnaya
What about the possibility of doing Wars in the Eternal Battlefield. Actual wars cost the declaring house x energy, and once a week... a GM character (The House Senechals, etc) transports the member of both houses into the Eternal Battlefield (Or wherever really) for a full out fight.

At the end of say an hour, the side with the most essences of the other side collected "Wins" that engagement. The Prime strength is edited for both houses. The losing side taking a loss of whatever amount (probably x amount times number of essences collected), and the winning house gaining that strength. The aggressor house has their prime drained x-amount per week, and the Defending house losing half that for the duration of the war.

It's a pretty GM heavy thing unless a "Declare war" type of art was created by the coders. Still very essence dependent, but it would give the option of hiring mercenaries and actually giving them a purpose. Maybe the essences gained during the battles can be turned into premium level talisman, or grant house art plateaus, or whatever?

Or maybe the houses could turn in whatever essences gained over the course of a week to drain X amount of energy from the other houses prime to add to their own.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 5:35 am
by Tary
I once posted this:
Here a lot can be done. I wrote up a whole proposal for how war can be made more systematic and fun in Underlight. It boiled down to the following points:
  • War has a cost: it costs X strength / day to be in a war. (Actually it costs X strength / day to be a house, and that amount is multiplied during a war)
  • The first to run out of strength loses the war.
  • You gain/lose strength as a function of being in the war and also as a function of being collapsed by your enemy faction while at war. That is: if it's DoL vs HC and they start at 30K and 50K strength respectively, they'll both lose, say, 5% strength a day just by being in the war, but then they'll lose, say, 500 strength for each ruler collapsed, 250 for each guardian and 100 for each initiate collapsed by their enemy.
  • Spheres can only be lost by a player in a warring faction.
  • Players in a warring faction gain 2x the amount of XP per nightmare collapsed.
  • Losing a war some number of times enables the victor to self-knight into the loser's house and/or ascend from knight to ruler.
Again: the full proposal was more detailed. Except for the doubling of XP, etc. a lot of this can just be roleplayed with GM involvement. Every day at war they edit primes down a certain amount, until one house surrenders or a house loses. At that point they add -- in a spreadsheet or something -- the loss to the house, and at some point if a house accrues enough lossses (or victories) something cool happens. Or whatever.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:34 am
by Tember
I really like the idea of war keys, doesn’t seem like it would take much since the GM’s can already summon/teleport us anywhere in game.

Re: War Keys

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 9:52 am
by Koi-Wish
My thoughts on war:

Factions vs. Factions is a challenge with our population. AoE won't war really. EA is still stabilizing themselves. KoES is rocky population and borderline in trouble. And the normal antagonists, DoL/OoL are all but merged into HC or MIA and thus closed. A war between factions in the future seems a long way off without two factions that could clash.

That also being said, the beliefs of the houses has dramatically weakened since original Lyra or even SoT. The reasons for factions to fight now is primarily over personal issues with a singular source within another. A sustainable war without true core beliefs to stand for makes warring seem even further off.

So lets do make believe and jump forward to a dream with two true opposing factions. Lets look at what could occur with some of the penalties and collection options as described. Collecting essences... well we all know how that will turn out. No one will want to fight because they wont want to risk giving up their essence to the opposing faction, or worse they simply won't dream at all. Sure you will have your warrior-types who will want to smash one another, but with todays high sphere'd dreamers, no new players could possibly even participate in a war of chakrams and hope to have any impact at all. If anything they simply will be the easier targets, and feel even more useless yet even more targeted because their essence will have value. Moving on, if we wrap the strength of primes into the war, the factions will do everything they can to avoid even being in a war. Without true reward, no one will want to risk the strength of their primes to even participate in one. Now if there was a huge reward for winning that would make things interesting. For example; HC holds the Cup of Eldryck (sorry I like that guy), this cup gives everyone with an HC crest a 50% xp bonus for 3 months. After the 3 months, its simply something they are holding on to. You wouldn't want to make it indefinite or everyone would simply join HC. But if it had a finite time, then it would just be something they wanted to prevent others from having, meanwhile it costs them 5% a week in strength to even store. Eventually EA collides with HC and also wants that cup... they war with HC and thru whatever measures are established for a victory, they win and gain the Cup... rinse repeat. This is just a silly idea off the top of my head, but really I think the reward for winning needs to be the enticing factor as much as anything else in a war.

All this being said, War between factions can't even be realized without players.

So mostly, we just need more of us to dream. That should be our primary focus, getting players back.