[Community Review] Raids

[Chase 3793]

I've read over the proposed changes, first off, I'm not sure if it sjust me but choosing a white text colour over a white font is hard to read. Second, I disagree with many,  if not all of these rules. I can explain more in all nit, however, I'm on mobile, so I'll do it when I get on my pc.

[SombreroMan 111]

14 minutes ago, zaezae said:

So the attackers can spend any amount of time mustering people to get on for an attack with an unlimited amount of players but the defenders can't? Both sides should be allowed to muster properly. Especially if the attackers can steal absolutely everything regardless if the owner of the items is even online?

 

 

True, but deffenders have the advantage of having a city and lets be honest, rarely will any raids involve a battleram so deffenders have plenty time to rally

[Archbishop 1784]

14 minutes ago, Viltaren said:

This removes the point of having any skilled rp warriors. It also enables PVP goons to pretend to rp for the sake of complying to rules while still only seeking to profit and cause grief. This also disables inbuilt defenses against raiders, in cases such as limited escapable lava traps meant to be used to deter raiders. 

So everybody who wants pvp during a raid is now a pvp goon, as if thats even an insult. If the cap was at ten players and you had 10 defenders, that is 20 players roleplay fighting very close to each other. This would get very very confusing and hard to read, I am utterly at a loss for words how you cannot see how chaotic this would be.

[Narthok 10416]

27 minutes ago, Gladuos said:

Are you trying to make raids worse than they already are? It seems that you are because not only have you written it as so, but you're completely dismissive to any opposing opinions. We're listing everything we have wrong with this, and you're only responding to them saying "That's not relevant" at every opportunity. I'd appreciate it if you didn't reward the issues here.

 

I have played minecraft since the day it was in alpha and let me tell you how much I find it ABSOLUTELY BORING. There is nothing entertaining about clicking a square man to death with your mouse repeatedly. The only reason I'm sticking around LotC after all these years is for the sake of story-telling and roleplay. If you insist on further devolving the server away from the aforementioned, there's no reason for me to stick around anymore. Raids being forced PVP 100% of the time is a direct example of exactly how inconsiderate you are for the RPer side of this argument. In my opinion, a raid where people clickyclick each other to death is treating what used to be a platform for story-telling like an MMO where you get to **** around with your buds on voice chat. CRP might be a """cancer""" in large groups indeed, which is exactly why I want the cap to exist so the large numbers don't occur. Sacking chests is one more reason why the detriment to roleplay known as raids would be even worse than it already is. At the moment it's nothing more than an inconvenience to an otherwise enjoyable day. If you allow raiders to also steal roleplay items, you're BASTARDIZING roleplay for the sake of ENCOURAGING people to click one another to death instead of GENUINE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Mechanical resolutions are an excuse to play a game instead of creative write, mechanical resolutions are an excuse to be lazy and never truly interact with one another on a deeper level, mechanical resolutions are an excuse for driving away truly dedicated roleplayers. What's the point of locking your chests if there is zero protection, not even rolls? What are the point of keeping RP items if people can take it away from you without writing more than 2 sentences of roleplay, clicking their mouse on you repeatedly, and breaking a minecraft block? (Assuming you're even there to defend your chests at the time). It's less demanding the staff provide protections and moreso demanding raiders actually use some EFFORT to steal all of our valuables, and actually have to ROLEPLAY to steal LITERALLY EVERYTHING from someone.

 

I can't believe the extreme ignorance of the GM team for allowing this rewrite to even get as bad as it has, or the flippant disregard for real roleplay in favor of an automated MMO click fest which makes me want to vomit even thinking about. I apologize in retrospect for my very aggressive and insulting behavior here, but I'm feeling very very put off by this. I likely haven't even responded properly to everything you've said. I just started typing what came to mind.

I don't know what to say to you. But mechanics are a valid and efficient way to further very interesting and overaching narratives. Just because you clearly have a vitriolic hatred of a huge portion of the community and a facet of the server that many people enjoy does not mean that we as staff are obligated to cater exclusively to you at the expense of the rest. If interacting with others and not being the main character is an issue then there are certainly other forms of roleplay that might suit your tastes more insofar as you and your character not running into any genuine obstacles they must overcome through genuine rp. Lotc is an experience we all contribute to in order to make the experience enjoyable. Rpers are just as much at fault as pvpers in terms of fostering that mutual hatred. Mechanical resolutions are 'real roleplay'.

 

28 minutes ago, zaezae said:

Woah there son, remember what teacher taught you: Mechanical PVP on MC has the same exact value as all other forms of RP. 

There are certainly groups that devalue the legitimacy of pvp but those groups are being increasingly cracked down on for the unacceptably memey and low quality nature of their rp and conduct on the server. This is not the fault of pvp but rather the fault of us as staff for failing to sufficiently moderate these communities for fear of backlash. 

 

26 minutes ago, Aethling said:

My points are going to be from the perspective of someone who is here for roleplay, not raiding. I agree with several ideas, such as no one-day personas for raiding etc., but I take issue with several of these suggested changes. If I haven't specifically mentioned something here, then assume I generally agree with it.

 

 

Yeah this would be nice, except the current generation of raiders(some of who are actually capable of good quality roleplay) choose to make really low-effort emotes. I shouldn't be obligated to RP through being tortured or mutilated or w/e a bunch of edgy kids would do to my character, just because I had the audacity to log in during raid day, and was met with
"Raider has defeated you.
Raider ties up the woman.
Raider carries her off."

 

In an ideal world, with a mature playerbase who cooperated in good faith, this would be good. Except this is lotc, so it'll just be abused and empower the goons, while making the RPers more jaded.

 

 

 

Absolute no from me.

You stated in the thread about the survey vis a vis raid rules, that you wanted to prevent the midnight raids against cities with low population as a means to "get pixels," but this is going to exacerbate that. For starters, removing the cap is only going to favour the raiders, because a defending city will always be 'capped' by the number of people motivated to get on at that point.

 

Again if this were an ideal setting, people would be only too happy to log in to defend their city and their RP hub, absolutely. Except that if you're losing and you've been hit several times in the last week, then it's demotivating. Sure as you suggested you could "secure allies to assist you," but why should we have to RP out things like alliances etc., to combat what is primarily an Out-of-Character action i.e. pvp raids? This is more 'work' to prevent raids, on a platform that should be fun.
 

Further, there are no benefits to a settlement or city in these changes. An extended cooldown if you repel a raid, "a breather where you can relax," hardly rewarding. I play lotc and RP to enjoy a fantasy world, it shouldn't be a job that I have to 'take a breather' from. Yes RP items are 'only pixels,' but I don't see why I should be expected to pour hours of RP into meaningful magical items etc., as per  some requirements from the LT, for them to be taken by someone who can't use them and will auction them for 10k mina the next day, because they downed the poor fuckers trying to defend.

 

 

My immediate thoughts are that this is good, but needs adjusting. 4 players expected to defend against an uncapped raiding party with battering rams? You might as well just declare the raiders the winning party there. You'd need at least 5 fairly competent defenders to repel a party of 10 raiders at present, fewer perhaps if you're fortunate enough to have your own goons.

 

Please note, I like the idea of battering rams and a number of points you've touched on here.

I'd be less pissy about raids if the RP quality weren't so abysmal and they didn't interrupt actual RP so someone can get their pixels.

4 players expected to spam discord and rally whomever is available. As for the rest, we are making a concerted effort to crack down on power gamers, meme rpers, trolls and other cancers on the community. Hopefully our efforts will come to fruition. As for rewarding settlements what kind of rewards would you propose beyond being able to strike back, secure cbs and be free from raids for a prolongued period of time?

24 minutes ago, Jaeden said:

Also just to add on regarding the PvP vs RP in raids debate.

 

PvP being (often) the intention for raids is a definite problem. But it's also commonly accepted that without PvP, raids would be less than enjoyable. Though I am concerned that with this system it completely ruins the concept of RP in a raid whatsoever. I've seen raiders in the past go into a city and terrorise victims. Obviously the newer and more pvp-centric raiders don't do this because they just don't care - but a lot of the older raiders (despite being PvP-orientated) still care for this.

Something I've tried to account for with rules restricting unaffiliated groups from raiding.

 

22 minutes ago, Imperium said:

Got to say I like most of these rules, besides the breaking into chests and no raid cap for attackers is probably the only one I have a concern with bc then its basically a pillage warclaim. I also feel that raiders should indeed have a rp reason for a raid, not a cb but just an rply reason for wanting to raid them.

 

Otherwise from what I've seen the rest I'm willing to see tested, nice job narthok ❤️

Just tryna start a conversation and move things in a better direction my guy

[zaezae 1098]

Just now, SombreroMan said:

True, but deffenders have the advantage of having a city and lets be honest, rarely will any raids involve a battleram so deffenders have plenty time to rally

What good is having a city when you can bring 30 people to attack a city when there are only 5 players online inside? Which, I mean, is what all raids will always be now, bunch of screamers planning to get on at a certain time and curb stomp and less than peak times.

 

Because raids are organized OOCLY so can we just all stop pretending otherwise?

[Narthok 10416]

12 minutes ago, Jaeden said:

@Narthok A potential idea regarding chest looting;

 

A system where raiders are only allocated x amount of time to select y amount of chests, then must roll accordingly to break into them (i.e: 10 minutes to find 10 chests or something).

 

This can be explained under the pretense of it being a raid not a warclaim - so you might have reinforcements heading over, so you can only grab what you see per-se.

 

Just an idea, since the prospect of allowing infinite looting in a settlement after one raid is ******* stupid.

 

Edit: Sniped by narthok......

 

Narthok replying to 40 people screaming at him in various different channels.

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

@Narthok seems like these are the rules YOU want, the collective community not so much. Why even ask for feedback when most of the time you seem to default to telling the feedback givers why they're wrong when they don't support your ideology?

[Narthok 10416]

6 minutes ago, Jaeden said:

 

2.3: Something like that would work, yeah. It'd require some heavy moderation or a flawless plugin to accomplish - the latter maybe more preferable for a mini king of the hill objective. It's honestly extremely difficult to balance out a system like this. But I think something where a radius of the battering ram requires 3 of the defending status to be present for it to break down a gate. Five minutes should work. Maybe also a little event-like broadcast to announce a gate being destroyed? In order to mimic the generally loud sounds of a battering ram against a gate.

 

3.1 / 3.2: I like the clause that if you initiate a raid you lose your cooldown. I like it a lot, actually. It punishes senseless aggression.

 

4.1: It will likely vary. As the Dominion NL, I foresee a lot of raiding parties racking up some insane numbers due to the reputation we have (and unfortunately a lot of enemies with it). But I'm interested to see how it goes regardless. It's hard to say what outcome it could have.

 

4.2: I think raided in general. It allows a sort of 'redemption'. Though the 14 day cooldown should apply if you win the retaliatory raid regardless of the outcome of the initial raid. That might incentivise performing the retaliatory raid and winning it.

 

5.3: It could be interesting. But over-complicating it might be self-harmful. I think a base minimum cap should work. It's worked relatively fine so far.

 

Otherwise, I like your work. Glad to see that something's being done about raids. I just hope this is in the right direction. It's definitely hard to say how an entirely new system will fare, but only one way to find out.

I have very little trust for gms to not **** up world editing or not be biased so I'd prefer rams to be automated as much as possible. I envison them as deployable like tents and then operated in the same manner as the wc treb signs.

 

4.2 Yeah that seems fair, I'll add that

[neopsychedelia 207]

is the point of this rewrite to make raids as disruptive as possible to actual roleplay or what

[Viltaren 236]

9 minutes ago, HolyTortoise said:

So everybody who wants pvp during a raid is now a pvp goon, as if thats even an insult. If the cap was at ten players and you had 10 defenders, that is 20 players roleplay fighting very close to each other. This would get very very confusing and hard to read, I am utterly at a loss for words how you cannot see how chaotic this would be.

It wasn't meant as an insult but a reference to the some players and groups that only "rp" on lotc for the sake of pvp. There are those factions and people. While that is a lot of rp fighting happening next to each other, currently we have guard default, pvp default, and rp default for a reason. Smaller raids dont have that many people. rp combat is fine. In addition to this, you will see earlier in my post that i referenced that i believe there should be a cap. I would never want 20 people on a raid. 10 is acceptable, but still a lot. 

[Luciloo 2680]

3 minutes ago, Narthok said:

4 players expected to spam discord and rally whomever is available. As for the rest, we are making a concerted effort to crack down on power gamers, meme rpers, trolls and other cancers on the community. Hopefully our efforts will come to fruition. As for rewarding settlements what kind of rewards would you propose beyond being able to strike back, secure cbs and be free from raids for a prolongued period of time?

4 players who spam Discord and maybe get another ten defenders out, against an uncapped raiding party with days to plan ahead. Mm'kay.
 

Speaking as the NL of the Druids, only a prolonged time without PvP is appealing, so we can get on with our RP. Granted, we don't operate like other nations, so I imagine others might find CBs and looting potentially rewarding. The truth is, if I could make my tile exempt from being raided and raiding others, I would. I can't, so here we are.

 

Until there is a complete clean-up of the meme RP, I can't support any of these proposals as they are. I don't trust the playerbase, when they still pugsie because someone didn't stop for "Latz haltz," which they're not required to.

[SombreroMan 111]

8 minutes ago, zaezae said:

What good is having a city when you can bring 30 people to attack a city when there are only 5 players online inside? Which, I mean, is what all raids will always be now, bunch of screamers planning to get on at a certain time and curb stomp and less than peak times.

 

Because raids are organized OOCLY so can we just all stop pretending otherwise?

What I ment by "Having the advantage of having a city" is the fact that the time it takes the raiders to get in, you have all the time in the world to rally in your discord as many guys as you want

[Gladuos 869]

Took a moment to gather my thoughts.

 

39 minutes ago, Narthok said:

To address your response to 1.1, you'd have a low cooldown and they'd be able to sack your chests. You can either fight, pay them off, hire mercs. But taking to ooc to solve rp problems just seems indicative of an unhealthy approach to rp in general.

As much as people try to say otherwise, I will never consider mineman PVP as roleplay. It's simply not, even if you think nothing is considered OOC (for some reason). It might serve as the lazy, quick solution to concluding a conflict, but no actual real RP is happening when you're clicking each other to death. I consider that laughable. Raids in general are so bad these days that I actually prefer to avoid them if I can so I can come back later to partake in the roleplay I actually enjoy instead of indulging people giving piss poor minimal effort emotes in an attempt to meet bar-minimum rule requirements so they can PVP + farm players. Nothing unhealthy about wanting to avoid that. Everything unhealthy about the raiders in that situation.

 

42 minutes ago, Narthok said:

1.4 as it stands the server views mechanical resolutions as a legitimate form of roleplay. If your char were realistic they would act accordingly and attempt to find ways to not die. Paying off bandits, running from raids etc. Solve rp dynamically and realistically.

Yeah, as I said. If you're unable to keep someone alive mechanically then you shouldn't be able to TP them back after executing them. That's a double-standard viewpoint to assume PVP is foremost actually roleplay (which I laugh at personally but that's not the point), but also you can choose to TP someone back after they've already RPly died. That might as well be the same as saying you can have a GM void a character's emote of being killed after you've already shoved a sword through their chest.

 

44 minutes ago, Narthok said:

2.4, defend your pixels or lose them or hide them rply. There are a myraid of solutions you can take instead of demanding the staff provide protections.

I'd be happy to defend my pixels if I didn't roleplay on a laptop that gets 15-30 FPS without PVP, less while doing so. If I was also good at PVP, but I'm not. Yeah though let's just fight these 30 dudes (that are allowed cause no cap) that have super computers and practice PVP constantly. Basically the RP protection is that it's LOCKED in roleplay and the raiders simply can't picklock it during a raid. Honestly raids are cancer enough without the threat of PVP goons stealing everything important from a settlement, there's no reason to add this other than to benefit PVP goons, whom are already pandered to more than RP groups in the current iteration of rules. RP items should be stolen in RP through clever methods, not clicking people to death until you can mineman a block to take someone's IRL years worth of RP-generated items only for them to sell it on auction for 100k minas the next day. This is my biggest problem with the rewrite, this rule specifically. Though that doesn't make the other problems any less significant.

 

47 minutes ago, Narthok said:

4.2 caps are cancer, I've already explained this at length and can provide a further breakdown if you wish.

If I were an advocate for PVP I'd be happy with there being no caps, however I'm not. I log into LotC every day because I want to practice my creative writing in an interactive platform to create interesting characters and stories with other players, not to play an MMO where I practice PVP clicking and farming for pixels. The reason I advocate for a cap is so that PVP can't be guaranteed so there's actually a CHANCE a raid might result in some meaningful RP where my character has an interesting interaction instead of someone 2 emoting at me before saying ((PVP, we have 10 people)) followed by the biggest irritated yawn of my life having to point a mouse at someone angrily.

 

However I've spoken a lot about what I hate of this rewrite, I should at least be fair and mention the things I genuinely like about it.

Spoiler

1.1 To initiate a raid the leader of a raiding party must modreq one hour in advance of the raid

The handling GM must then provide a warning regional broadcast to the target. The raid will arrive one hour from the broadcast not from the posting of the modreq.

Despite my gripe about this earlier (due to how jaded I feel over PVP factions server mentality on LotC and my experiences with raids in the past), I think this is a decent rule. It gives the defenders a chance to rally numbers and match an oncoming attack against their settlement. For people that enjoy PVP this would actually give them something fun to do by having large numbers facing one another.

 

Spoiler

1.3 Characters involved in a raid must have demonstrable allegiances

One day raid characters will not be tolerated. Your character must be rped to some degree to participate in raids.

I actually enjoy this one too! Making rules which actually prevent people from making one-day "characters" for the sole OOC purpose of attacking a settlement is a good step in the right direction. I've actually been victim to a raid with 10 people showing up (to of course force PVP) with personas that were all created recently and with names that were nearly identical to one another (i.e. "bandit bob", "bandit mark"). I feel like the wording in this could be done better though, like saying exactly what the intention is. You cannot raid with personas made very recently for the pure sake of raiding a settlement - it has to be a real character with a history, experience, allegiances, etc.

 

Rules 2.3 and 2.5 (Battering rams + removing anti-raid buttons). Unpopular opinion but I actually am in favor of them. Raid cooldowns are enough as for rules to prevent incursions from occurring for specific points of time. I've found that doors/gates and buttons have been used repeatedly to delay raids when the cooldowns are up, which in their own way are using OOC knowledge to avoid roleplay. Though, I understand it completely because I hate raids in their current form and I consider them to be anything BUT genuine roleplay... However, if raids did have rules I agreed with, and existed for the sake of true roleplay, I'd dislike there being no way to get around defenses for attackers. So these rules are good! (just need to work on making raids about roleplay next, not mechanical PVP + item farming)

 

Spoiler

5.4 You may not instigate a raid if there are fewer than three people in the city at the time of the GM going to broadcast.

To clarify when the GM accepts the modreq and goes to perform the warning broadcast if there are less than three people within the city then the raid may not be performed.

(This is to prevent cheesy middle of the night raids wherein you take all their pixels while they are asleep.)

Self-explanatory! People abusing timezones or what have you for the sake of an easy raid is a big problem that not just myself has had problems with. Preventing that from happening is a good way to ensure raids are doing their jobs instead of being abused!

 

Overall I'm not in support of the current raids rewrite here, but if my qualms with it are answered in some shape or form I may change my mind. There are redeemable parts about it, but I feel they're not enough to make up for the problems I see here. If those problems are dealt with, it may be a good change for raids. Thanks.

[Gallic 1066]

Wait, an hour in advance? For just normal raids? I'm not even a raid guy but that sounds like hot trash for people who like to go screw with settlements. I like the idea of raids needing a base to start from, but I'd think the time to get from that base to the place you're going should be all the advance needed.

 

I also like the idea of raiders needing IC allegiance, I think it's a decent compromise for people who feel as though a lot of pvp-ish factions are OOC groups.

 

The head thing, though, is not cool. Heads or npcs being taken have been used extensively in the past as IC justification to harrass people a group OOC'ly dislikes, and it's something I've seen happen to multiple friends of mine. They were coerced into giving their heads to people, and the idea that you can just skip the whole consent part wholesale would make this problem even worse.

 

This change also proposes that chests can be, without a roll, broken into and looted by goon guys. Settlements can potentially be raided every TWO DAYS with INFINITE GOONS with this change. This will probably culminate in people routinely stuffing their valuables into high-security vaults deep underground. Also, what's the point of heists if raids allow you to loot chests without even rolling?

 

Another change I like is allowing villains to come in groups of at most three without counting as a raid. That's nice.

 

I wrote that all as I was reading through it, so to put the points I care about down more legibly:

 

+ IC allegiance required,

+ Villains allowed to cause trouble,

 

- Non-consensual head taking,

- Free-reign chest looting,

- Raiders need to wait an hour before they can actually raid,

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

1 minute ago, Jaeden said:

 

Leo, he took on most of the suggestions proposed in my feedback. I think it's a genuine effort to improve raids. But when you barrage someone with aggression, usually they'll reply with it. I sure would.

He takes on the ones he personally agrees with, not the ones he doesn't like. That isn't an appropriate attitude for a supposedly objective gm looking to create rules that benefit everyone.

 

You don't get to pick and choose.