thingwals vs pvp vs expansions

[xzo]

before I start, the intention of this suggestion is to bring more pvp, in balanced and fair way.

as many people have noticed by now, thingwalls and pvp does not go too well right now, there was one major fight over thingwall and then most of the realm expansions were done without much action.
it might appear this is due to picking up safer way of expanding realm, and soon enough when realms will run out of free expansions, there will be more fights.. I doubt that, but I hope I am wrong and there will be more action.

there is also known issue of limitation to the expansion, a Realm can only expand by 3 territories at given time window, which is kinda fair, but also opened for some form of abuse, in theory multiple baby realms can be created to challenge the big one and make it weaker, so it would seem fair to allow big realm attack multiple realms at once, but on the other hand it would be even more opened for abuse are big realms could create small one to go trough

with that being said I would like to suggest yet another solution, lets break that task ( realm expansion ) into smaller ones that we can logically separate, what I suggest is to separate thingwall conquering, from realm expanding
the way I see it it could be described as following:
- thingwalls controlled by a realm can be challenged by another realm at any given time, challenge can be delayed as w12, up to 24h, once.
- winning a challenge would only free the thingwall up, making it possible to challenge it during the expansion window.
- realms can be expanded only during currently established thingwall timers ( expansion windows )

this idea would possibly intensify pvp, add bit of a strategy, and make expanding bit more interesting at any stage of the world, not only now but also if not even more so in the future, realms would have to plan ahead their expansions by first challenging the thingwalls within 24h before the expansion window, defenders would have some strategic moves from there too, they could delay challenges as they wish to make them closer or further from the expansion window, generally I see great potential in it and I do hope you will too

tldr: separate "fights for thinwalls" from "realm expansion"

please keep conversation civil.

[MightySheep]

The problem with realms is theres very little incentive to even care about them

What do you get? exp? woww big deal...

You lose nothing and save a lot of steel and silver etc by simply not bothering with realms and the thing that really boggles my mind is what incentive do I have to 'conquer' my enemies territory? Our realm has all the buffs so why would I want to go out of my way to give my enemies a bunch of buffs? It literally makes no sense.

I think the current system is fine but right now nobody even wants to spend their steel lol. Nobody want to manually go around keeping track of enemy thingwall timers and scouting for war banners etc. Nobody want to get out of bed at awkward time to place banners or stop enemy placing banners. I agree that expansion is a little slow, there hasnt been a single instance of someone trying to war banner another kingdoms territory so far so it maybe it could be sped up slightly but honestly I think the overall system basically works however the incentive to engage with it is just not there.

[Sevenless]

These issues are also multiplied by how bad crashes in mass PvP currently are.

They are *extremely* bad.

[Pyonezze]

Expensive stuff to build the banner
3 hours to defend
10 seconds to bash

[Zampfeo]

The problem with realms is theres very little incentive to even care about them

What do you get? exp? woww big deal...

The incentive of autistic dick waving.

But seriously, I agree. Realms are pretty lame beyond being an XP engine for well digging. And the win-win xp-realm buffs deal between the realm and its denizens doesn't really make sense when the people being conquered are your enemies.

Being able to challenge a thingwall for the sole purpose of freeing it up and turning off realm buffs for a realm's home province would be a step in the right direction, but it only really works for the home province. What's there to lose/gain by challenging a remote province? A bit of XP? Meh.

If there were more incentive to holding remote provinces, there would also be more incentive for people to take them away from you. That might be enough to make it worth it. I don't think I'm qualified to make any great suggestion here, but perhaps better XP sinks (hearth magic), ability to place an XP tax on a province that actually takes away XP from its residents, ability to turn realm buffs off for a province, etc. Imagine if you could take another faction's province, block them from realm buffs, and steal their XP.

Edit: Maybe even a hearth magic that reduces the power level of a claim in your realm.

[DDDsDD999]

I think giving more incentive to own realms is unnecessary and probably dumb. Kingdoms have always been a larp mechanic and should probably stay that way otherwise you have to deal with the bullshit that comes with them like dummy blocker realms.

Imo streamlining the challenge mechanics would make everything way better and could see people fighting over them instead of just standing outside people's village hoping to get fights.

1. Make challenge flags invulnerable for the first two hours, leaving 1 hour to fight over. This gives defenders 2 hours to gather and attackers only need to be on call for 1 hour instead of 3.

2. Set a cap to the speed of destroying war flags. They're just too easy to bum rush, and this is the beginning of realms. When strength gets higher these things are going to be paper.

3. Make repairing a flag extend the challenge timer so if there's some back and forth it doesn't make the fights just out lasting the clock. Maybe you can only damage a flag 25% every few minutes and it can only be repaired 25% every few minutes

4. Give us a map of realm territory. The realm borders are basically unknown and invisible with in-game tools, helping realms feel very pointless. And keeping track of thingwalls timers is impossibly annoying. Also bragging rights.

There should also be something done about how there's just a lot of waiting when realms start as there's so much unclaimed territory, it's just spamming challenges and hoping no one finds them. I'm just not sure how to fix it.

[Sevenless]

I think giving more incentive to own realms is unnecessary and probably dumb. Kingdoms have always been a larp mechanic and should probably stay that way otherwise you have to deal with the bullshit that comes with them like dummy blocker realms.

The point isn't just for endgame dickwaving though. The entire reason realms need XP from players is to give realms a reason not to kill all their inhabitants and own a wasteland.

How do you achieve this if realms have no mechanics besides a name?

[SnuggleSnail]

Time shouldn't be wasted trying to make a system more fun or balanced when the base concept of that system is so incompatible with the rest of the game. I think the best example of this was mentioned in OP, dummy realms. Realms only work if people don't make dummy realms, the only thing preventing dummy realms is a rule against dummy realms. "No dummy realms" is a completely unenforceable rule, except in cases where absolute retards are just making 5 realms on the same IP/account.

The issue isn't that there are abuse cases, the issue is that the abuse cases that can have a major impact on other players that there is absolutely no way to prevent them without basically scrapping the entire concept. It's really frustrating to see dev time being wasted on this, especially when the entire reason behind the mechanics is to encourage PVP, and it is very predictably not doing that in a significant way.

Also, I would just like to be clear for posterity: the only significant reward from owning a realm is that other realms can't fuck you without you having any ability to influence the outcome. I've just bashed the cairns around the bases of people I don't like to entirely prevent them from getting realm buffs SO MANY times. That shit is literal cancer and shouldn't be in the game, but it effectively still is.

BTW, when retards were suggesting basically this system last world I was adamant about it not resulting in many fights. I would just like to throw out a big I told you so

The entire reason realms need XP from players is to give realms a reason not to kill all their inhabitants and own a wasteland.

this has never rly mattered

[Zampfeo]

I think giving more incentive to own realms is unnecessary and probably dumb. Kingdoms have always been a larp mechanic and should probably stay that way otherwise you have to deal with the bullshit that comes with them like dummy blocker realms.

The point isn't just for endgame dickwaving though. The entire reason realms need XP from players is to give realms a reason not to kill all their inhabitants and own a wasteland.

How do you achieve this if realms have no mechanics besides a name?

I think it's pointless to discuss entire system overhauls instead of minor tweaks (because they'll never get implemented), but it would be beneficial to take a step back and think about why people wanted realms in the first place: the logical next tier above a village claim which would grant regional powers over local, weaker villages and hermitages. I don't think the way realms were implemented in any way accomplishes that and the whole XP and realm buffs system is both unnecessary and ineffective at giving realm holders a reason to not farm their inhabitants beyond larp especially nowadays where weaker villages have very little to offer bigger ones in terms of cooperation and trade.

[Sevenless]

I think it's pointless to discuss entire system overhauls instead of minor tweaks (because they'll never get implemented), but it would be beneficial to take a step back and think about why people wanted realms in the first place: the logical next tier above a village claim which would grant regional powers over local, weaker villages and hermitages. I don't think the way realms were implemented in any way accomplishes that and the whole XP and realm buffs system is both unnecessary and ineffective at giving realm holders a reason to not farm their inhabitants beyond larp especially nowadays where weaker villages have very little to offer bigger ones in terms of cooperation and trade.

I'd argue "power over locals" is the exact opposite of the intention. Realms completely ignore their inhabitants other than buffs they may possibly provide (positives only although anything positive can be negative as snail mentioned). Without real life incentives, something mechanics wise is needed to nudge people into possibly working together if we want more than 10 person efforts to do things.

But saying "this system doesn't work, can we start over?" is fair to me. I'm just going to keep reminding people that simply removing buffs (and their reliance on population) cuts out half of the point for the system in the first place and isn't fixing it.