cRPG
Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: Beat on October 21, 2011, 10:08:25 pm
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I have taken part in several sieges since the most recent start of Strategus and I feel like something needs to be done about the defenders representing the NPC villagers. There is little to no organization, some people are spawning with no equipment, others are running off in random directions or straight toward the enemy and wasting tickets. Half the defenders are yelling to stay in the village, the other half are yelling at everyone to charge and no one seems to have a good idea of how to successfully defend a fief.
I've seen a few instances of teamwork and cooperation but it usually doesn't last long enough to make much of a difference. Perhaps we could assign someone trustworthy as a commander so we at least know who to listen to. I'd also like to see more policing of the Strategus server during sieges so the people who don't care about the fief losing tickets can be ejected before they can do much harm.
We just can't let the NPC controlled fiefs go down so fast with such little cost to the attackers. Unless of course that is intended...
Any ideas or suggestions are welcome.
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i fully agree, these ticket wasting tactics are ridiculous and make the AI battles just a waste of time and no fun.
there should be an admin at the ready to let the banhammer loose!
btw. where is the old sticky with the strategus battle rules?
and don't give us this "common sense stuff", there is no such thing, specify the rules and follow through, don't want to see this strat to go glitch beserk again...
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Do you remember Defenders of Calradia?
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Do you remember Defenders of Calradia?
i do and that is a fine thing to have, but that dosn't fix ticket wasters or roster fillers from glitchers...
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imo it's the only way to make AI battles better. I don't believe that it's possible to get rid of roster fillers and wasters anyway.
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yes it is (mostly), by clearly making a ruleset (and updating it when needed) and punishing accordently.
rosters are always viewable, you just save the link, i have one from yaragar fx, with some nice fillers.
some people just don't understand if they don't get punished, that's all.
and when u have a proper ruleset to look into, u know what is allowed and what not, don't care about cute excuses.
but well until there is no sticky ruleset, everyone is free to act like they don't know what is fine and what not.
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I'm in full agreement with you Beat. It is very frustrating. I don't know how it can be policed however.
Perhaps:
1. list a "defenders' TS channel in the battle announcement on the c-rpg page.
2. Require or strongly encourage having TS and getting on the channel 15 minutes before the battle.
3. Have a corps of Commanders, who are volunteers, like admins who take charge of the tactics. They could be listed on the Battle page also.
Give them voice over privelges on the TS server.
4. Perhaps the Commanders could have temporary admin priveleges for discipline and to kick the mutinous ticket wasters.
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If you feel like someone is intentionally wasting tickets, go into irc or have someone go into irc and contact admins there. Most of them are more than happy to hop over and watch the person in question. The reason you see very little teamwork and cooperation is, that it doesn't really matter to most people. Look at the sign up lists, it is a random smattering of all types. Some just to do it to have fun, some sign up because they don't like the other clan, some want to see a strat battle for the first time, etc.
There is also very little incentive for defending and defending successfully neutral villages. If you are in a disputed area with another clan then yes, you might have a vest interest but 95% of the defenders do not. The experience you gain from strat battles is incredibly weak compared to just a regular round on the battle servers for instance. Also, the bug where you don't get paid is another incentive gone. That issue has been around since Strat 2.0 and still has not been fixed. So you get weak experience and no gold for defending, which will translate into a lot of people goofing or not caring about the results.
Personally, I think in the case of neutral villages, extra rewards should be given to defenders if they successfully defend from an attacking clan. Whether it's double experience or gold, if gold payout were working, it would do a lot to make more people care for example.
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I agree with you, Bjarky
but
you are talking about admin work.
Our, players', duty is to ressurect Defenders of Calradia movement -)
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of course, this thread is for suggestions, 1 could fx be a proper ruleset.
2. we as players try to organize better.
3. better exp ratings.
4. getting paid.
etc etc.
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There really needs to be some sort of penalty if you sign up for a battle, get accepted, but fail to show up. Perhaps a 72 hour ban on strategus fights (unless you, personally, are being attacked), or something along those lines.
And the reward gained by the mercenaries whom have successfully defended a neutral fief, should be severely greater than the reward gained by those who failed. Such an addition would be a pulverizing incentive to work together and give it your all.
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There really needs to be some sort of penalty if you sign up for a battle, get accepted, but fail to show up. Perhaps a 72 hour ban on strategus fights (unless you, personally, are being attacked), or something along those lines.
Agreed. Except for the unless.
And the reward gained by the mercenaries whom have successfully defended a neutral fief, should be severely greater than the reward gained by those who failed. Such an addition would be a pulverizing incentive to work together and give it your all.
At one point they only paid if you won. The xp gained for defending was the only compensation if you lost. I thought that worked fairly well, since generally people are willing to fight against other groups anyhow.
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Great suggestions.
I agree that you should only be paid if you win at defending, that would create a lot of incentive. However, it would do nothing about organization. People can be motivated to achieve the same goal but have radically different ideas of how to accomplish it. Having a TS available would be nice but we still need some kind of official leadership. A handful of well known and trusted volunteers could be in a pool of commanders and each time an NPC fief is attacked, one or more of them would be called upon to lead the defense.
And as far as reporting people who waste tickets goes; that is often pretty difficult since by the time I see them running toward the enemy alone, they are too far away for me to see their name. And apparently there is a bug where some people spawn without gear unintentionally. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what I have heard some say when confronted about it. Either way, we need better admin support in there, we needs eyes roaming the battlefield looking for people breaking the rules or not following the commander's instructions.
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People spawning w/o gear and totally naked should not run into insta-death, but rather wait for someone to die, harvest their weapons, and fight naked..................or they can simply become weapon harvesters and gather up all of the fallen weapons and bring them back to spawn until they are killed. Even naked people have a use.
As far as pay, I believe the village should pay what it promises regardless. Mercs are hired to fight and try to win. Their pay isn't based on winning or losing, but participating. If you want to add a win component to it then sell all the loot at regular buy price and split the proceeds among all the mercs with a positive K/D. JMHO
I could really use my merc pay the village promised.
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I agree. Why should a Merc fight at 1:3 odds, usually a guaranteed loss, if he won't get paid? The xp stinks compared to just regular battle servers.
I've never spawned naked in a strat battle unless I neglected to select weapons. Is it confirmed that you can spawn naked if you have selected weapons at the selection screen?
Acknowledged leaders are needed. No military unit, even a Medieval one, can be run by a committee.
Every leader of an NPC defense should make a post in the Merc recruiting thread concerning details (TS, who is in command, general defense plan). This is not too time consuming and would be very helpful.
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I just fought in yet another mindless defense of an NPC village. At exactly 2 minutes, the BORG hive mentality took over and the lemming process began. People do not realize that with anything close to a 1:1 player ratio (not ticket ratio) it is impossible or extremely difficult to take all the attackers' flags. Attackers can spawn in too quickly.
All of the defense weapons are left on the ground for the attackers to pick up and are lost to the defense. Not to mention the loss of tickets, usually at a 1:1 ratio. That is a losing exchange.
The only way to have a chance to win as NPC defense is to make the attack run across open ground under the defense archers. Melee should take place inside the village, where defense is under cover from enemy archers and under the protection of their own archers. That way all the offense weapons are left for the defense to pick up and are lost to the attackers.
If there is a healing tent, defense has very little distance to go, while the attackers have to run all the way back to their spawn.
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Ya, and that ndations teamspeak is a clusterfuck to navigate.
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Just fought in the 4th neutral village defence in the last 3 days.
The first, commanded by Mercs Phaz and Gingerpussy, was really immersive (on TS etc), the defenders lost but it lasted almost an hour and involved lots of little sallies, shieldwalls and battles to take and retake rooftops.
The three since then have all been mindless flag rushes lasting around 5 minutes.
People typeing CHARGE in bold letters and then insulting anybody that disagree's with them.
The first battle was an insight into just how brilliant this could be....
The following three.....were not worth turning upto :-(
I would not think this will do Strat and the great idea and potential it has any favours.
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Good example of how closely teamwork is tied to voice coms. If devs were on the ball we could have mumble server run off the same boxes as the servers and autoconfigured to put you into a channel as same ppl on your team (prevents you from listening in if other team wanted to use same mumble as well)
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Maybe a system where players can apply to be available for 'commanding' NPC location defenses, someone from the cRPG team who knows the playerbase pretty well ( maybe one from EU and one from NA ) can decide who they feel are capable commanders, then appoint them the posistion.
Then the first commander to join an NPC side gains command and players MUST follow his orders or face consequences, like fines or even temp bans from Strategus battles - permanent if the offense is repeated. If he doesn't show up for the battle the next person who had signed up to the battle that is able to command, will get the command job that battle. Maybe his text should also be a different colour so it's easy to spot in team chat and everyone knows to read and follow orders.
Well, that is just a rough idea, there are many things to be thought of that would make this system better, but it's a solution nonetheless, the only problem that jumps out at me is if there is a decent guy who gets the commander job, but continues to give stupid orders and doesn't really know when to stand and defend and when to push and attack the enemy.
I guess players from the battle could give a rating on the commander, which would be recorded, players who keep giving low ratings to anyone just for the case of being a dick will have that ability removed and commanders who continually recieve low ratings and complaints from many different people and groups of people, i.e different friend groups and clans, will have their command ability removed for being incapable of doing the job properly.
But yeah, just an idea.
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Am I the only one who thinks that a disorganized mess is the best representation of a nuetral village. If one of the guys in the village is smart and charismatic enough to start leading, then people will follow him. During the first DRZ village attack, both Mercs and Fallen did just that. Then after the server crash, the Mercs came on over to the Fallen TS room and were put in charge. It wasn't even all that complicated to do, either. While everybody was dueling before the battle, we just told them all to come to the Fallen TS chatroom. Then they did. Poof! Organization. And that's about the extent of organization I would expect from a nuetral village. Though I do agree that people that sign up for a battle and then don't show could be charged a penalty for wasting slots.
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Yeah, why defend neutral villages now??? You get almost no experience and you don't get paid any gold win or lose. Kind of lame.
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Is there an active clan that defends free city states (aka NPC fiefs)?
If not one should be knocked together.
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Yes, the end result of this is that the clans will just gobble up all the fiefs.
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Am I the only one who thinks that a disorganized mess is the best representation of a nuetral village. If one of the guys in the village is smart and charismatic enough to start leading, then people will follow him. During the first DRZ village attack, both Mercs and Fallen did just that. Then after the server crash, the Mercs came on over to the Fallen TS room and were put in charge. It wasn't even all that complicated to do, either. While everybody was dueling before the battle, we just told them all to come to the Fallen TS chatroom. Then they did. Poof! Organization. And that's about the extent of organization I would expect from a nuetral village. Though I do agree that people that sign up for a battle and then don't show could be charged a penalty for wasting slots.
You have a point but do you want a new person's first intro to strat to be a disorganized mess? Without new players, this thing will become stale and clan dominated.
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You have a point but do you want a new person's first intro to strat to be a disorganized mess? Without new players, this thing will become stale and clan dominated.
Yeah...it'll be clan dominated. That is a feature.
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Yeah...it'll be clan dominated. That is a feature.
I think you missed the stale bit... is that a feature?
I kid I kid.
The clan bit should make it more interesting, hopefully. As we know, people are dicks so it should keep it lively and filled with back stabbing and betrayal.
My issue is that as it becomes super clan dominated trading is going to become a nightmare and the first clan to rush will win.
What I don't get is why more clans aren't organizing the defense.
It is in every clans interest to screw every other clan over.
It doesn't help LLJK to have FB in control of a fief so it should be arse hard to take control of anything.
We need a better system to assign commanders to the defense of fiefs. I have no idea what the solution would be/is.
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I think you missed the stale bit... is that a feature?
I kid I kid.
The clan bit should make it more interesting, hopefully. As we know, people are dicks so it should keep it lively and filled with back stabbing and betrayal.
My issue is that as it becomes super clan dominated trading is going to become a nightmare and the first clan to rush will win.
What I don't get is why more clans aren't organizing the defense.
It is in every clans interest to screw every other clan over.
It doesn't help LLJK to have FB in control of a fief so it should be arse hard to take control of anything.
We need a better system to assign commanders to the defense of fiefs. I have no idea what the solution would be/is.
A single clan couldn't hope to occupy every fief on the map, if you have your clan show up to defend every neutral fief, you are going to make enemies very fast. More enemies also means less players to merc for you when you have battles at weird hours.
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My issue is that as it becomes super clan dominated trading is going to become a nightmare and the first clan to rush will win.
I don't follow your logic. It's not like it's going to stop trading if clans own fiefs. They'll just be getting money themselves off the trades.
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It's going to make it hard for independents such as myself. I can envision getting robbed by clans through whose territory I'm passing, or being forced to pay exorbitant protection money.
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And? Sorry but know where you are at, plenty of clans don't care about some random dude traveling through their terriotry. Look at DRZ, they even set up an area just for that purpose. A single person should not be on the same playing field as a clan in a territory based game. That's just silly.
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It's going to make it hard for independents such as myself. I can envision getting robbed by clans through whose territory I'm passing, or being forced to pay exorbitant protection money.
Playing a clan based game is going to make it hard for independents such as yourself as well. You're going to have to work with others at some point or there's not really any point in playing. As a single player, you may be able to build up a secret army and take a fief by some miracle, but it will just be taken back from you within a day or two. You could make money off the trading and raiding system, but what are you going to do with it if you're not working with anyone else? You could just merc for Strat battles as that's the funnest part of the game, but then there's no need to even touch the Strat map.
If you don't want to join a clan, but still want to be active in Strategus, you're likely going to end up as some kind of trader or crafter. In which case, you'll still end up having some diplomatic ties to whatever clans use your services. And those clans obviously are going to want you to have safe passage in their lands.
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Playing a clan based game is going to make it hard for independents such as yourself as well. You're going to have to work with others at some point or there's not really any point in playing. As a single player, you may be able to build up a secret army and take a fief by some miracle, but it will just be taken back from you within a day or two. You could make money off the trading and raiding system, but what are you going to do with it if you're not working with anyone else? You could just merc for Strat battles as that's the funnest part of the game, but then there's no need to even touch the Strat map.
If you don't want to join a clan, but still want to be active in Strategus, you're likely going to end up as some kind of trader or crafter. In which case, you'll still end up having some diplomatic ties to whatever clans use your services. And those clans obviously are going to want you to have safe passage in their lands.
As an independent, the best thing you could do in strategus is possibly trade your unneeded strategus gold/goods/troops for cRPG gold and pay for upkeep.
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Good points. Thanks.
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I just helped defend Tazjunat from Wolves and even though we lost, it was a lot of fun. I didn't see half the team rush the enemy spawn and at least one person was kicked for wasting tickets.
It was also good to see the attackers being so aggressive for once. Such valor, Wolves. Not only did it provide for a good fight, but they dropped some gear for the defenders to use after we started running out. :D
Even though it wasn't well organized and we defenders got over zealous when we started to push you back once and let you lure us out of the village a bit, I felt like everyone was doing the best they could to hold that village.
I hope to see more battles like this and the previous one when Wolves hit Tazjunat the first time and the defenders captured all their flags for a win.