Campground Raiding 2.0

[Mad Merlin]

So, today's news brings a slew of changes to the way raids work. Haven't read it yet? Maybe you should go do that now, go ahead, I'll still be here waiting for you...

Now that that's taken care of, what do you think of the new raiding changes? The main purpose of them was to make raiding less one sided. In the old system, there was no reason not to spend all of your attacks every day, there were no negative effects possible for the attacker. Now being the attacker is significantly more dangerous (due to Rage induced retribution, and the possible loss of equipped items), but it's also more interesting for both sides.

I've given these changes quite a bit of thought, and I'm still tweaking it, but I'd appreciate your feedback. To be honest, I think I might have thrown it a little bit too much in favour of the defenders now, but I'm looking into ways of pulling that back a little.

[Terrific Noise]

Can I raid my maid? In the shade once she's paid?

[Nina]

I don't know if I like this new system. I've tried to attack people who've attacked my campground only to be told that they're exhausted for the day.

[thousandinone]

Now we can DDoS raiders!

[Terrific Noise]

Now that I've taken everyone's money and put it in the bank, it doesn't seem like there's any point in raiding me since you can't get any of my money.

[Mad Merlin]

Now that I've taken everyone's money and put it in the bank, it doesn't seem like there's any point in raiding me since you can't get any of my money.

I've been thinking about this. I mean, before the bank, people were finding other ways to bank money, like the Swap Shop... but I digress. I'm leaning towards having campground investments which improve your campground, but can be stolen (and can't be uninvested otherwise). Also, it's likely that I'll add temporary ways of getting more raids in a given day, like an item that gives you an extra raid for that day when used, so you can still have the chance to raid others, even if you're an active target.

[Wally]

I don't know if I like this new system. I've tried to attack people who've attacked my campground only to be told that they're exhausted for the day.

I agree. There is someone (afraid of being discovered though ) that raids my camp a few seconds after midnight. He/She was even successful the last time! By the time I would take my revenge, he/she is already savaged for the day. Why can't I be that cruel? How will he/she ever learn not to raid me? Do I need to wake up at midnight EDT (pretty inconvenient for me in CEST) to be able to raid?

So, in my opinion, there should be the possibility of revenge. I should get (in classical eye for an eye fashion ) at least as many raids against someone as they made against me, no matter if they are exhausted or savaged or anything. And it should be even more if I am enraged.

Incidentally, something similar was my big problem with the previous version of raids: I raided someone once, and was not raided once, or five times in revenge (which is perfectly fun), but 5*n times by their n clones, which is no fun at all. (For the sake of full disclosure, I have two characters, a mage and a fighter, and only one of them raiding.)

This is my 2 cents on raiding, which only comes to around 0.00001 cents/word.

[Mad Merlin]

I don't know if I like this new system. I've tried to attack people who've attacked my campground only to be told that they're exhausted for the day.

I agree. There is someone (afraid of being discovered though ) that raids my camp a few seconds after midnight. He/She was even successful the last time! By the time I would take my revenge, he/she is already savaged for the day. Why can't I be that cruel? How will he/she ever learn not to raid me? Do I need to wake up at midnight EDT (pretty inconvenient for me in CEST) to be able to raid?

So, in my opinion, there should be the possibility of revenge. I should get (in classical eye for an eye fashion ) at least as many raids against someone as they made against me, no matter if they are exhausted or savaged or anything. And it should be even more if I am enraged.

Incidentally, something similar was my big problem with the previous version of raids: I raided someone once, and was not raided once, or five times in revenge (which is perfectly fun), but 5*n times by their n clones, which is no fun at all. (For the sake of full disclosure, I have two characters, a mage and a fighter, and only one of them raiding.)

This is my 2 cents on raiding, which only comes to around 0.00001 cents/word.

Good idea.

[Terrific Noise]

Someone raided me twice today and I have 48% rage, but can't re-attack them because i'm not "opulent or vengeful enough".

[Mad Merlin]

Someone raided me twice today and I have 48% rage, but can't re-attack them because i'm not "opulent or vengeful enough".

Had you already attacked them today?

[Terrific Noise]

Now I have everyone's money that I can attack because they're mostly zombie players. What to do with my character now?

[Wally]

Good idea.

It's a lot (a lot lot) better now, but I still have no initiative in raids. Campground raiding is still not only an attacker's game, but an attacker-for-whom-midnight-EDT-is-convenient's game. I can attack back as many times as I was attacked, but that's all. Perhaps being able to continue attacking someone as long as my rage lasts might be an improvement.

I'm not whining here (at least I don't intend to), just trying to make raiding more fun for myself.

[Mad Merlin]

Now I have everyone's money that I can attack because they're mostly zombie players. What to do with my character now?

You could get your friends to play and then raid them...

[Terrific Noise]

More needs to be at stake. Maybe winning doesn't cost a raid, losing costs two raids, and there are actually prizes for being in the top ten. Not that I ever will be. The player who got me into raiding will not ever sufficiently be forced to atone for his crime.

But no matter what don't make it a bunch of minigames.

[Rick]

Having had a couple of weeks to experiment with the new Raid features I thought I would offer my 2 cents.

Retaliation raids appear to work well, at least it does solve the problem of losing all your raid points defensively and then not being able to counterattack. However, and as others have pointed out, there is a modest advantage to getting your raids in as close to just after midnight as possible. You are still subject to retaliation, but other raiders logging in later will now have a substantially reduced number of targets and/or raid points remaining. I don't know that this "Midnight Raid Blitz" is a real problem, but it can be a mild annoyance, and favors players in time zones where midnight server time is much earlier in local time.

It is a good thing that players with no improvements, or whose campgrounds have been destroyed, and thus have no raid points, cannot be raided. This prevents raiders from picking on the very weak just to score some easy raid points. And it is probably a good thing that there is a limit to the number of times a player can be raided (this is true even for strong characters). However the really strong and aggressive raiders also benefit when they expend all their raid points as this protects them from further attacks (apart from retaliation raids). It would be nice if there was some mechanism that permitted strong raiders to pummel each other more than the current system allows. This might also address the timing issue. One possible solution is to create separate pools of defensive raid points and offensive raids points. Once your offensive pool is empty you cannot conduct any more raids and once your defensive pool is empty you cannot be raided any more. This means that an aggressive character that logs in early can use all his offensive points, but his defensive pool remains full and he can still be raided later by anyone as long as there are defensive raid points still in his pool. Retaliatory raids should probably still exist so that characters can still retaliate against a player whose defensive pool is empty, but a retaliation raid should also deduct one point from the defensive pool if it is not empty. Just a thought.

Another thing I would like to see is for defenders to gain raid points when they successfully defend their campground and for attackers to lose raid points for a failed attack. Points gained and lost need not be at the same rate as normal, though that would be OK to. This might serve to reduce the level of aggression and frequency of raiding. Though characters with low raid points probably won't care, even if other characters are working hard to preserve their point totals.

Money! The other big reason for raiding! A lot of characters keep their hard won coin in the bank and thus successful raids, while yielding much pillage, yield no plunder. The bank is, all in all, a good thing and I would not change it. However, some kind of mechanism to require characters to keep plunderable coin around would be nice. What I propose is treasure chests. Put a treasure chest in each campsite. Characters would then be required to deposit coin in their treasure chests, perhaps equal to 1000 gold per opulence point (this is peanuts to a level 50 character). If the money is not deposited (or not the full amount) then the character cannot conduct raids, and/or the number of raids available should scale to the amount of money in the chest. The character can still be attacked but may not conduct raids unless they are willing to risk some of their coin. The catch is that once you put money in the chest it can never be taken out! (this prevents characters from making a deposit, conducting their raids, and then emptying their chests and running with the cash). And when you are successfully raided some nice healthy portion of your chest is looted, but the rest of your coin (even coin not in the bank) should be safe. This way everybody wins!! It would also sync nicely with the concept of separate offensive and defensive raid points. Again, just a thought.

Wow, I rambled on longer than I thought I would!

All in all, Raid 2.0 is better than Raid 1.0, and I am having fun raiding!