let's make an agreement about AC raids

[Gahn]

The 800 is the figure when I logged on last night. I'll note it again tonight as it might've just been an especially busy Sunday or something. Though it was similar every evening last week at 8.00 GMT - ~500 on Excal ~300 on Pryd.

Dunno last time i checked overall numbers were more on the 600 mark, but ofc i don't check it every other day ^^

 

[Darzil]

And who plays the game?

Players, on many different servers, with different playstyles and expectations on each one.

Darzil

 

[Darzil]

Dunno last time i checked overall numbers were more on the 600 mark, but ofc i don't check it every other day ^^

Was 270 odd on pryd and 500 odd on Excal when I logged on last night about 7:30 uk time.

Darzil

 

[Bracken]

As usual Bracken can't grasp the concept that Alb & Mid 8vs8 players don't give a toss about the 10%, but do greatly care that there is less and less ppl to fight. Ofc it's demoralizing to Hibs to have their relics AC raided over and over. And you can't say Hib 8vs8 players don't turn out for massive pvp raids. WTF is Mastade?

I thought you had left.

Anyway, here's the thing - if Hib 8v8ers are leaving because of AC raids then it's because they are concerned about 10% (not because they have missed out on large scale battles ). If hib 8v8ers turn out for relic raids it's because they want to restore relic "balance" - although Mastade is pretty unique. Which means that actually it's not about the AC, it's about relics changing hands. That's the simple concept - the AC stuff is just a smoke screen.

 

[Darzil]

I thought you had left.

Anyway, here's the thing - if Hib 8v8ers are leaving because of AC raids then it's because they are concerned about 10% (not because they have missed out on large scale battles ). If hib 8v8ers turn out for relic raids it's because they want to restore relic "balance" - although Mastade is pretty unique. Which means that actually it's not about the AC, it's about relics changing hands. That's the simple concept - the AC stuff is just a smoke screen.

To be honest, Hib 8vs8er's are far, far more likely to be involved in siege than those in other realms, from what I've seen. They have tended to be a major part of the way those attacks are carried out.

Darzil

 

[Asha]

Bracken it's because they do things the honorable (and I would say FUN) way - in primetime only to have Albs steal it in the middle of the night. It's nothing to do with bonuses, it's a matter of pride. No one likes it when other people take the easy route to acheive something that took hard work. If it was just about bonuses then they would just AC raid it back.

I didn't say I went anywhere except in my pointless conversation to Requiel. My account is open til Jan 25th, nothing I can do about it unless he wants to give me a refund.

Again I have to ask... are AC raids vs. NPCs that much fun?

 

[Rolv]

We can make educated guesses though - recent polls on which many people had strong feelings get around 250 responses cluster has somewhere between 800-1000 people on it at peak times. Even if half of those are dual logging (and that seems very unlikely) that still makes the FH population 50% of the cluster. If a quarter are dual logging (seems closer to the real figure) then it drops to one-third of cluster being active on FH.

Take into account that quite a lot of the more vocal FH posters have 'retired' or 'inactive' or 'moved' in their sigs andthat further diminshes the proportion of cluster that are likely to be active on FH.

Aye.. and

There's not only 800-1000 that plays on the servers, its alot more. People like me may not count in those numbers, since Im inactive and only plays in weekends. And you dont know if the 800-1000 that played one day, are the same 800-1000 that plays the next day - most likely not.

 

[Mastade]

I have been thinking about this alot recently. I have been trying to put a objective head into all this and when i think about it, we are all whining about the wrong thing.

At the moment we are whining about those people that take relics at hours where alot of the server population is asleep, when we instead should have whined about the whole relic/keep system. Back in the old days it was extremely hard to take a relic, placed in a single keep) because the guards were extremely tough to take down and the gates would normally be able withstand more, and that is in despite that you only had to knock down 2 gates and that the defenders had to take a very long horseride(albs had the longest horseride of the 3 realms) to get to defend (it wasnt unseen that those attackers would be in the numbers of 200+). So back then it was quite tough to take down relics even when ACing. Thats why you had to organise alot of people, to set their alarm clocks for the morning) - As mentioned the gates on relic keeps were tough to beat down, you could put up "infinite" number of rams and you didnt have to worry about oil. But despite of that they would normally be hard to take down, because the upgrade of the gates was quite insane, they were tougher to take down than the current gates and they costed shitloads to upgrade. Thats why you had to, atleast on alb/exc and hib/exc, have a "realm relic door fund" where people put in money to repair/upgrade the relic gates. That put the realm together imo.

Anyways, enough rambling.. Today its just too easy to take an enemy's relic. You dont have to organist anything, you just take a group or two at late night for the relics and gets them. The guards should just be tougher, the onlything semi proper is the keep lords. The only time i have ever encountered tough guards that resembled those in OF, has been on some afternoon raids when we have been trying to take Berkstead and met the Briton Knights, also called "the bugged guards", remember PBing them for 30-40 damage, they were shithard to take down and have caused quite a few wipes iirc.

The guards protecting the relics should just be waay harder to kill than they are atm. Then you could make it easier to do primetime raids in alot of ways to make up for it, one could be to change the whole relic gate system so that you dont necesarrily have to take the enemy prime key keep(beno/crauch/bled) to open a relic gate. You could remove or decrease the proximity of which twrs/keeps makes you visible on the realm war map. Make it so that the "reuse timer" on siege hookpoints is waaay longer than it is now, atm you can have a stealth team take down an oil with siege wrecking mine to find out that its rebuild minutes later. fix the goddamn oil bug(PLEASE) and so on. Well, it could be worked on i guess, but im sure this would benefit the servers imo.

Anyways, less whining and show yourself from a constructive and objective view of things.

Edit: this doesnt change my views on the whole ACing issue, i still think its a dishonorable thing to do and i can only hope people are now starting to realise its damage and are changing their views on this whole issue.

 

[Muylaetrix]

you must spread some reputation before giving it to mastade again

seems slowly on reason is taking over again on FH.

good.

 

[tierk]

If you want something useful from me then continuly read the post that I have written...

Oh brother continue to read everything post in here that you have made? Like crap such as this....

yea right, but i afraid there isnt chimps for u to kill no more if baby hib cries n may be tell there ally <mid> to leave too

or.....

Hahahahahahahaha! Sorry guys I cant stop laughing, omg Hibs Cant afford there lose of a relic and keep whine whine whine... I dont understand that if hib has lost relic and what makes different? < I cant think of any tbh>, bahiee/ enchanter will continue there same job, nuke though walls. Animst will spam pet to hell, bard still has instead mess, HIB still be the underpopulared realm <good bonuses> still. And Lost a relic and people leaving the game...

lol what a loser.

Juses!!!! WE Lost one relic SHIT!!!!! THE END OF THE WORLD ??

But remember a hero never need to ask some enemies to help, only loser do that?!?!?! < understand that HIBBIES?>

BK flamer in the house me thinks so no i dont think we need to read everything you post seeing its mostly trash.

 

[Rolv]

I must agree to you Mastade, great points - and it almost made me produce a little tiny freezing nordic tear thinking of OF and relic raids.

 

[swifteagle]

Again I have to ask... are AC raids vs. NPCs that much fun?

I'm sure I wouldnt find it fun to AC a relic and you of course wouldnt and the majority of others wouldnt but I will defend their right to do it in as much as its not against the rules of the game.

I'll defend your right to play FG vs FG even though I might not like it that much myself,I'll defend the rights of FGs to run over me when I'm solo even though I dont like it,i'll defend someones right to sit in PvE 24/7 if they want to even though it would bore me rigid.

If they found no fun in doing it for whatever reason they wouldnt do it,maybe its because they want to get a certain realm title or they find it fun to annoy others or they just do it because they can.

Again i'll make it clear just because it seems you need to on here
I'm against AC raids but there are no rules being broken when an AC raid takes place so no matter how much we dont enjoy it taking place unless the ACers decide not to do it theres not a whole lot can actually be done against them unless GoA and Mythic change the server ruleset and change the way relic guards and keeps work overnight.

 

[Quantaco]

Oh brother continue to read everything post in here that you have made? Like crap such as this....



or.....



BK flamer in the house me thinks so no i dont think we need to read everything you post seeing its mostly trash.

^^ well if u think this is negative to you then ofc u dont need to continuos to read on, but in those words that I had type is follow by the people who typed on the thread. So, if u think it is lot of crap then I afraid you dont need to whine on my post.

And ofc if I dont flame up the post and how can I make hibbies get the spirit back <well ofc I may not flame for anything of it/ properly aint related at all> but at least helps abit . And no matter how trash of my post are, but at least some people can still know trash can be the truth of themselve.

 

[Reno]

Increasing the difficulty( level) of guards at the relic temples won't help a bit.
You don't have to kill them afterall, all you have to do is stand in there for 5 minutes for the relic to come down. You don't think any decent shield tank would have any trouble to engage an uber guard for 5 minutes, while the OF uber gaurds could be engaged by much lesser equipped ppl for over an hour?
Their AI and abilities would have to be improved significantly ( very long dur mez, nukes, disease, big debuffs, teleport maybe) for them to be able to drive away a determined 2 fg raid.
It would also mean that a primetime raid would be adversely affected even more than an AC raid. The AC raid (at least on cluster atm) has time to deal with them as there is virtually no player there to interfer.
A primetime raid doesn't have the time to deal with truely uber guards, given the proximity of the frontierzone keeps.

Even if you switch those abilities on and off when the hours advance, what makes you think the situation will be any better when player numbers and realm ratios between them stay bad. What is waiting 5 minutes more, when all it changes are maybe 1 extra logged in char on the enemy side and 2 more on yours?

Besides ACing the relics is only part of the cause of the lethargic state of (siege) rvr atm. Keep takes at those hours ( retakes or offensive) aren't encouraging ppl atm to commit more to either defense or offense.
You could give the higher lvl guards in the keep and the lord, similar advancing abilities as you seem to propose for the relic guards but that wont solve much either. What will keep you from turning the keep to swiss cheese afterall? What good does a keep that's very very hard to take at night, but has nothing to defend from when it's time for the humans to take over. Broken doors, busted inner keeps and holes all over the walls aren't easy to defend .

The only solution I see is a progressing system that relies on the number of ppl in game and the ratio between the realms, to determine whether certain keeps can be attacked at all or not.
Say if the total ppl online drops below X% of the average amount of ppl online during primetime, you can't attack a keep with a relic in it nor lower a relic from it's shrine.
Say that during that time the ratio between realm A and B drops below Y, realm A won't be able to take the inland keeps and beno/bled/crau of realm A . If that ratio continues to grow worse to say below Z, realm A can't even attack the other coastal keeps in realm B . Finally if that ratio gets worse than W realm A can't take any of realm's B keeps, including those on foreign homelands.


Danita

 

[Gahn]

To be honest, Hib 8vs8er's are far, far more likely to be involved in siege than those in other realms, from what I've seen. They have tended to be a major part of the way those attacks are carried out.

Darzil

Thx Darzil, much appreciated.

 

[Gahn]

Solution is simple, ppl needed to lower the relic shrine from 16 to 60-100 depending on avg player numbers.

 

[Thorwyn]

It's nothing to do with bonuses, it's a matter of pride. No one likes it when other people take the easy route to acheive something that took hard work. If it was just about bonuses then they would just AC raid it back.

But why would you care, when - as you say - the results of their actions don´t bother you? There are far worse dishonorable things going on in RvR every day, some of which DO have a direct impact on the people who´re playing prime time, and everybody seems to live with it without too many complaints.
Just a question here: if the AC squad wouldn´t touch the relics and take one portal keep every night instead.... would the reaction be the same?
If not, then what´s the difference (except for the damage bonus, which is not the big thing as you say).
And if so, then do you think that virtually nothing should be changed in the frontiers afer a certain hour?

Again I have to ask... are AC raids vs. NPCs that much fun?

I don´t know.. never been on one. But obviously some people think it´s fun, so I have to accept that.
My playtime is far too valuable for me to waste it with analysing other peoples motivations and lecture them about the my - which is of course the "real" - motivation.

 

[Mastade]

Increasing the difficulty( level) of guards at the relic temples won't help a bit.
You don't have to kill them afterall, all you have to do is stand in there for 5 minutes for the relic to come down. You don't think any decent shield tank would have any trouble to engage an uber guard for 5 minutes, while the OF uber gaurds could be engaged by much lesser equipped ppl for over an hour?
Their AI and abilities would have to be improved significantly ( very long dur mez, nukes, disease, big debuffs, teleport maybe) for them to be able to drive away a determined 2 fg raid.
It would also mean that a primetime raid would be adversely affected even more than an AC raid. The AC raid (at least on cluster atm) has time to deal with them as there is virtually no player there to interfer.
A primetime raid doesn't have the time to deal with truely uber guards, given the proximity of the frontierzone keeps.

Even if you switch those abilities on and off when the hours advance, what makes you think the situation will be any better when player numbers and realm ratios between them stay bad. What is waiting 5 minutes more, when all it changes are maybe 1 extra logged in char on the enemy side and 2 more on yours?

Besides ACing the relics is only part of the cause of the lethargic state of (siege) rvr atm. Keep takes at those hours ( retakes or offensive) aren't encouraging ppl atm to commit more to either defense or offense.
You could give the higher lvl guards in the keep and the lord, similar advancing abilities as you seem to propose for the relic guards but that wont solve much either. What will keep you from turning the keep to swiss cheese afterall? What good does a keep that's very very hard to take at night, but has nothing to defend from when it's time for the humans to take over. Broken doors, busted inner keeps and holes all over the walls aren't easy to defend .

The only solution I see is a progressing system that relies on the number of ppl in game and the ratio between the realms, to determine whether certain keeps can be attacked at all or not.
Say if the total ppl online drops below X% of the average amount of ppl online during primetime, you can't attack a keep with a relic in it nor lower a relic from it's shrine.
Say that during that time the ratio between realm A and B drops below Y, realm A won't be able to take the inland keeps and beno/bled/crau of realm A . If that ratio continues to grow worse to say below Z, realm A can't even attack the other coastal keeps in realm B . Finally if that ratio gets worse than W realm A can't take any of realm's B keeps, including those on foreign homelands.


Danita

Well my suggestions was merely just an idea. Perhaps you need more things to make up for the level increase of guards, or just drop the idea entirely. I have been thinking about your solution aswell, just in some way i think it feels a bit over the top to do. Perhaps it is the only solution tho.. dunno.

Nice comment tho.. Any ideas about solutions to what this is all about, how easy it is to take relics at late night, is much welcome.

 

[Sharkith]

I agree that more could be done about the game on this front because this is where the principal problem lies.

Let us be clear one AC raid now and then never made any big difference to anything. We could come on here and whine all day about it and have a bit of a laugh flaming each other over honour and stuff. It is the perception that there is a repeated pattern of behaviour designed to provoke people that is causing the issue to get out of hand. We need help to nail that down first and then we can all decide on the best response.

Once more a single Ac raid - who cares?

Repeated and constant attacks start to undermine the server. Anyone who says that these don't have an effect needs to seriously look back over the last week and wake up.

We all want solutions perhaps here we can start to find them.

A have had some very useful responses from GOA on the issue now and am much more optimistic that we can get an accurate apprasial of what is actually happening. Once we have that and a clear statement from them on it I think we can sit down and work with what we have and know. At least this thread is constructive more constructive than anything has been for the last week.

 

[Bracken]

Bracken it's because they do things the honorable (and I would say FUN) way - in primetime only to have Albs steal it in the middle of the night. It's nothing to do with bonuses, it's a matter of pride. No one likes it when other people take the easy route to acheive something that took hard work. If it was just about bonuses then they would just AC raid it back.

For some this will be true. Those people who go on a relic raid because they enjoy either organising or being on large scale raids (and yes I know there are a small number who genuinely go for both, just not many these days). For them I understand fully the frustration, and it's why I don't agree with AC raids. But for those who's fun in the game comes purely from fg fights, whose motivation is restoring relic balance because of their fg fights, then this just doesn't hold weight. (Indeed, some have AC raided them back). They didn't leave over AC raids, they left because their fg scene was being affected - the straw that broke the camel's back perhaps but still. And let's face it. You didn't take your action for those who like large scale raids - you did it for those who are in the fg scene (it's a very small number who are genuinely into both these days).

I guess that's essentially the credibility gap when it comes to the reasons given for the keep being given up/ put to level 1 - it wasn't for the community as a whole, it was for a specific section of that community whose primary motivation when it comes to relics is about maintaining the status quo. We can argue til the cows come home on the merits or otherwise of that but let's not pretend it was about anything else.

I didn't say I went anywhere except in my pointless conversation to Requiel. My account is open til Jan 25th, nothing I can do about it unless he wants to give me a refund.

Guess I just assumed you'd gone to Avalon.

Again I have to ask... are AC raids vs. NPCs that much fun?

No idea - never done one like that. I'd rather have large scale fights...

 

[Bracken]

I have been thinking about this alot recently...

Great post.

In terms of stopping AC raids the 2 best solutions I've heard are locking the relic gates between certain hours and varying the guards levels according to numbers of players on. I would guess though that would be down to Mythic - not sure GOA can do much about that.

 

[Asha]

Bracken, I don't like the effect AC raids has on the community. IE, Hibs moral going down, less hibs to fight fg vs. fg. It's not the only reason ppl have left/are leaving, but it is one reason.

I liked OF, like Mastade said, where you really couldn't do that. A few times I went out with Herbal very late at night to test things on guards. It was actually very funny, but we were just testing trebs and stuff with like 2fg for primetime raids. It should still be that hard imo.

And I will never play Avalon. I came back to daoc because of Excalibur, but it's no more, really. It can't be recreated on a German server.

 

[Mastade]

Bracken, I don't like the effect AC raids has on the community. IE, Hibs moral going down, less hibs to fight fg vs. fg. It's not the only reason ppl have left/are leaving, but it is one reason.

I liked OF, like Mastade said, where you really couldn't do that. A few times I went out with Herbal very late at night to test things on guards. It was actually very funny, but we were just testing trebs and stuff with like 2fg for primetime raids. It should still be that hard imo.

And I will never play Avalon. I came back to daoc because of Excalibur, but it's no more, really. It can't be recreated on a German server.

Hehe, i remeber that, everyone started whining about palas ;p nice tactic nonetheless, since the onlything that signaled an attack, besides actually being seen(relic raids back then had to be secret and silent) was guardspam.

 

[Asha]

I think it's the only time ppl whined about paladins

 

[Calo]

I think it's the only time ppl whined about paladins

Bit ironic that albs started with
Ac raids
engage raids
ninja raids

man those were fun days, albs running thru doden's with mid relic :worthy:

 

[Dr_Evil]

I have been thinking about this alot recently. I have been trying to put a objective head into all this and when i think about it, we are all whining about the wrong thing.

At the moment we are whining about those people that take relics at hours where alot of the server population is asleep, when we instead should have whined about the whole relic/keep system. Back in the old days it was extremely hard to take a relic, placed in a single keep) because the guards were extremely tough to take down and the gates would normally be able withstand more, and that is in despite that you only had to knock down 2 gates and that the defenders had to take a very long horseride(albs had the longest horseride of the 3 realms) to get to defend (it wasnt unseen that those attackers would be in the numbers of 200+). So back then it was quite tough to take down relics even when ACing. Thats why you had to organise alot of people, to set their alarm clocks for the morning) - As mentioned the gates on relic keeps were tough to beat down, you could put up "infinite" number of rams and you didnt have to worry about oil. But despite of that they would normally be hard to take down, because the upgrade of the gates was quite insane, they were tougher to take down than the current gates and they costed shitloads to upgrade. Thats why you had to, atleast on alb/exc and hib/exc, have a "realm relic door fund" where people put in money to repair/upgrade the relic gates. That put the realm together imo.

Anyways, enough rambling.. Today its just too easy to take an enemy's relic. You dont have to organist anything, you just take a group or two at late night for the relics and gets them. The guards should just be tougher, the onlything semi proper is the keep lords. The only time i have ever encountered tough guards that resembled those in OF, has been on some afternoon raids when we have been trying to take Berkstead and met the Briton Knights, also called "the bugged guards", remember PBing them for 30-40 damage, they were shithard to take down and have caused quite a few wipes iirc.

The guards protecting the relics should just be waay harder to kill than they are atm. Then you could make it easier to do primetime raids in alot of ways to make up for it, one could be to change the whole relic gate system so that you dont necesarrily have to take the enemy prime key keep(beno/crauch/bled) to open a relic gate. You could remove or decrease the proximity of which twrs/keeps makes you visible on the realm war map. Make it so that the "reuse timer" on siege hookpoints is waaay longer than it is now, atm you can have a stealth team take down an oil with siege wrecking mine to find out that its rebuild minutes later. fix the goddamn oil bug(PLEASE) and so on. Well, it could be worked on i guess, but im sure this would benefit the servers imo.

Anyways, less whining and show yourself from a constructive and objective view of things.

Edit: this doesnt change my views on the whole ACing issue, i still think its a dishonorable thing to do and i can only hope people are now starting to realise its damage and are changing their views on this whole issue.

And not to forget: instead of oil, all aoe spells hit through doors/walls.

 

[Dr_Evil]

Maybe the solution for this problem is simply re-make the Frontiers again, and call for the next RvR expansion New Frontiers 2. Remove the things that didn't work so well i NF, and bring back some things that worked very well in OF. Perhaps the main reason why some people are leaving lately is that they grew tired with NF?

OF seems to have been more of a success on the point that people took a very long time to grow tired of it, or on the other hand maybe NF actually has been around almost as long as OF did. Maybe I just have more memories of OF that make it seem longer?

Maybe Mythic shouldn't focus so much about class balance and pve stuff, and focus more on the frontiers? Did we honestly care so much about class balance, it's never really been balanced anyway has it? Did we really need all these PvE expansions lately?

 

[Wazowski]

Did we really need all these PvE expansions lately?

I belive that they dont want us to stick to this game forever... only want us to be their customers until warhammer gets out and then it will die out pretty fast i guess.. or smth... only god know what they are thinking... greedy assholes

 

[Darzil]

OF seems to have been more of a success on the point that people took a very long time to grow tired of it, or on the other hand maybe NF actually has been around almost as long as OF did. Maybe I just have more memories of OF that make it seem longer?

I'm not sure if NF hasn't been around longer now. It's certainly had longer during the period where participants were mostly level 50. And far longer where participants were mostly level 50 with MLs and Artifacts.

One of the disadvantages, perhaps, with the last 2 expansions not affecting RvR much (which is what the players asked for), is that there wasn't then much evolution of RvR tactics / group makeups, and lack of change could promote boredom.

Darzil