DDDsDD999 wrote:I mean, there's been tons of fighting around cairns, but the system as a whole is insanely broken so it's only done with alts and delay spamming, because jorb has no idea how to balance things.
Yes that's true I do expanding and scouting with alts myself and the challenge delay is not very ideal either I agree. It is easy for a big realm to delay a challenge several hours if they want to even when you challenge multiple cairns because of how much they have already expanded and the amount of players they have covered they are getting so much authority that any cost to it seems and probably is negligible.
The blood trees and stones actually make the cairns important, since there's an incentive to expanding the realm out, and not just having mini-realms covering your villages exclusively while avoiding new players. No one's gonna care about pvping just to put their realm over some nabs instead of some other realm, but they might if they want to protect their buffs.
I don't know about that though, I disagree that buff objects are necessary to create incentive to expand your realm. There is plenty of incentive before you even consider them, the fact that you need to cover players to supply authority to the realm, to prevent another realm from expanding to that territory first, or to expand not only to cover your allies but also your enemies. Buff objects are of course another aspect of this incentive but I don't believe they are the only form of it, and my biggest issue with them is that there is no variety amongst these objects around the map. They all do the same things, what you use them for might vary but the buffs that require an Irminsul or a Monolith are the same for each Realm and without those objects a realm is never able to improve some buffs past a certain point.
But is anyone actually fighting for them though was my point, doesn't really matter if that's the intention what matters is anyone actually doing it? Your realm is already doing good on buffs so you don't really have any need to do that? And AD? Leviathan's Wake? Therion? Motherland?
ErdTod wrote:You ask for a greater cause, but you don't suggest any. What would be one?
Well, how about forming an actual kingdom that is intended to draw players to your area of the map because they are interested in a certain benefit that is not offered by another? I don't mean the simple act of extending a claim but everything else that goes along with the creation of an empire. You need people and allies, you need farms and food, mines and miners, great builders and strong warriors. Realms don't feel like I'm struggling to create something great, they make you feel like you're just some worthless grunt expanding nice buffs at the behest of the subjects that should be helping you in order to get the benefit of that stuff. Instead they have no reason to help or do anything to aid a realm because there is always a better realm with better buffs they can go to right nearby.
I realize it isn't as simple as coming up with a great idea on the spot and I certainly can't do that but for god's sake did these devs even try to do something cool?
Also, I have an idea:
What if realms would count tiles they cover, and depending on the terrain type they would get blessings or curses? I.e. you cover 10000 tiles of woodland? You get +4% wood quality. But if you cover 5000 tiles of swamp, you get a desease and get -2% STR and CON for realm members. And each terrain and some combinations would give small bonuses, that would grow with realm expansion. This will not be a major thing to compete for, but will give a reason to destroy random cairns, expand etc. What do you think?
Sounds interesting, there should certainly be a downside to expanding so much territory and especially if you do so in haphazard fashion. I think it could benefit continents a lot more if it worked this way because of the differing biomes attached to each one, it doesn't have to be the only form of improvement of course but I do think it's an interesting suggestion.
In any case I have made some similar suggestions before, like these:
Kaios wrote:This opens the gateway to a number of possibilities that could give the realms a little more variety between each other. Instead of being limited to direct skill and attribute bonuses this could instead allow for bonuses that are more related to some other suggestions that have been given such as production/work speed, stamina drain reduction, etc.
Some obviously silly but possibly fun examples:
- Swim Like A Fish - Hearthlings possess the innate ability to swim, with this boon those living under your realm can stride through the water at a decreased cost of stamina.
- Law and Order - Bring civility to these lawless lands, for a limited time performing a criminal action within the realm does double the damage and scents left while the buff is active last longer.
- Mother Nature's Blessing - Pay tribute to the Dryads and in return your crop production becomes more favourable. Increases the possible quality gain when planting within your realm.
- Traveling Merchant - The Hearthlands are dangerous and the risk of transporting valuable goods is high, lessen that risk for those under your realm by increasing the speed at which rowboats, knarrs and wagons travel.
- Glory to the Kingdom - Show your subjects that you value their support and one day they may return the favour. Increase production speed of crafted goods.
- Art of War - You weren't online because timezones and your villagers have angered the subjects by raiding everyone. Deny your realm buffs to anyone living or on the realm that is not oathed.
Ok the last one is a bit of a joke but in any case they could all be time limited in some manner and there could be other restrictions in place like only one at a time, cool down between uses, high auth cost. There are many more possibilities than just what I could come up with though.
Kaios wrote:
Nobility Buffs
Indeed the King should radiate some buffs as well as being able to have the ability to designate a Queen who does the same (though perhaps different buffs) and wearing the crown and other royal clothing could increase this amount. Eventually a realm could expand to the point where you may even want to designate Kings for certain lands while the old King becomes the "King of Kings" or "High King" creating some further political intrigue and another opportunity for interesting buffs.
Of course there would be a need for lower rank designations as well such as prince, princess, duke/baron/count, nobles, peasants and maybe some religious designations too like a Pope. Each of these should have their own benefit (and downside) and it's likely there would need to be some restrictions set in place for example the ability to only designate one queen, one prince and princess, a few dukes, etc.
Terrain Designation
What's the point in putting in the effort towards creating something like an Inn if there's no actual benefit to it other than the convenience of a bed you can reduce weariness in somewhere in the world should you need it. My suggestion in this regard would be to allow for terrain designation similar to how the realm influence already works but on a smaller scale.
The way this might work would be to allow for kingdom members to build field cairns exactly like you can with a village but rather than these being used to set permissions you would use them to designate the tiles that will have you receive the buff while you're on them. Depending on the type of buff this could be relatively cheap or very expensive in terms of authority cost.
So back to the Inn example, say you designate a 25x25 area as an "Inn" players on these tiles would receive the buff/bonus associated with the Inn which would be something like increased hp regen, passive weariness reduction, faster weariness reduction when sleeping, maybe some FEP and hunger reduction bonuses, stuff like that.
King of My Castle
We don't have many structures in this game built specifically for the purpose of player interaction, I'd like to see that change. The castle should be huge, it should be costly and it should take many people coming together to complete its construction. Inside the castle would be rooms ready to be used for whatever tools you'd like to build in them. In essence, the castle should be a place where all members of the Kingdom can come to for safety and security, a place to work and maybe even a place to live.
I couldn't really think of many ways to relate this to authority but it is something I'd like to see, simply having the castle though could be an auth drain itself, maybe it could radiate some sort of buff too.
Offerings
A Kingdom should only be as strong as its subjects. Buffs should start off significantly useless and through offerings from yourself and your subjects you buffs would increase in strength over time. If people stop giving offerings, they reduce again. This should be something that would be difficult to maintain for any players wishing to deny their buffs to their subjects so that people under the realm influence actually have some power to make an impact.
Political Warfare
Admittedly this idea came from the A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying game and in particular the Intrigue aspect of it. Essentially I’d like to see a similar system implemented in to this game allowing for a form of warfare that is not strictly limited to physical confrontations. Example: Your subjects give you enough offerings strengthening the reputation and influence of the Kingdom, allowing for certain political actions such as reducing the buff effect of rival Kingdoms and increasing your own.
Power Struggles
Current methods of cairn removal/claim contesting are not only boring but rather useless. It's not all that difficult to destroy cairns in a larger kingdom even with the two hour wait period. In fact, I would argue this two hour wait time works in favour of the attacker. Two hours is too short to be of any use should they be challenged while majority of members are offline and it's too long allowing people to challenge multiple cairns in one session. In theory, I could challenge several cairns a great distance from each other and while someone is going around trying to check them all you could easily take out one or more without much or any interference.
So, why don't you just give different realm claims some allowance to overlap with each other and contest them in this manner? At least this way a Kingdom actually has to be nearby your own kingdom in order to effect it in some way rather than maintaining some small thing way across the map and attacking other people far off from you.
As far as how the actual process of contesting a claim in that manner would work, I don't know. You could combine both the cairn destruction aspect with the overlapping claim aspect. Example, I overlap rival kingdom claim and this causes some drain of authority on their part until they destroy my cairn or I destroy theirs in order to continue expanding or the passive drain just remains if they do nothing about it.
Crime and Punishment
It might be interesting to allow for some alternative ways in which one could seek vengeance, retribution or what have you rather than the only two methods being leave the murder scent yourself or nidbanes and we all know how useful nidbanes actually are.
For something like this to work however I believe certain parameters would have to be met before one could say, jail a player or send them to the gallows. Those parameters would be something like, perpetrator left scents somewhere on the realm claim, the King or other duly appointed official must retrieve the scents or have them brought by someone to perform a new realm management option which would use a scent to designate the perpetrator as a "Wanted" individual for some amount of authority cost and in order to jail a player or send them to the gallows you must have access to their hearth fire meaning you'd likely have to siege a place for that option OR you can do so by finding the player and knocking them out.
Theft, vandal and battery would only be punishable by jail time and murder punishable by jail time or death sentence. The point is to hopefully add a little more variety in terms of death, maybe even decrease the chances of actually being killed since alternative form of punishment exists and to also give players that opportunity to be the "friendly ranger" and to not always be required to leave a murder scent of their own when you're just trying to help yourself or others.
Jorb's response to them was as useless as it usually is.
jorb wrote:Will try to look at some of this, perhaps.
by Kaios » Wed May 29, 2019 2:34 am 
