Please make an appointment to raid our base...
By
9783_Dollar_Man,
Posted on: 2005-05-30 24:54 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Look. The fundamental problem this solves is this, in the game world, villians can be expected to be at their bases when the heroes are coming after them.
In the real world, the players of villians have jobs, wives, kids and houses to clean.
It is unfair to expect defenders to give up RL committments to defend a virtual object.
While it does eliminate the "took them by complete suprise" factor to some extent, the appontment method is better all around for maintaining world consistency, and preventing base based PvP from becoming a 24/7 obsessive behaviour.
Every other MMO has base raids and such without the need for this appointment booking system. Even SWG had the solution of bases only being vulnerable during a 3 hour window each day at the same time which is kept secret and could be altered by placing the base again.
All I'm saying is that there are far better and less silly solutions than notifying the enemy that your going to attack at a certain time.
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Look. The fundamental problem this solves is this, in the game world, villians can be expected to be at their bases when the heroes are coming after them.
In the real world, the players of villians have jobs, wives, kids and houses to clean.
It is unfair to expect defenders to give up RL committments to defend a virtual object.
While it does eliminate the "took them by complete suprise" factor to some extent, the appontment method is better all around for maintaining world consistency, and preventing base based PvP from becoming a 24/7 obsessive behaviour.
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Agreed. In at least IG if someone is attacking the base, they could leave the job asap...as opposed to RL where if you say this...you will be fired and possibly commited.
Also mention the fun of fighting 4 vs 1 because the rest of the super group is out, sleeping/working/family.
Yeah I really want my gaming experience to turn into base camping "just in case" someone shows up.
I am sure that the in-game announcement will not read:
The Super Justice Squad would has made an appointment to raid your base on Tuesday at 4 pm.
It will be more like this:
Your base supercomputer has just intercepted a secret transmission. It would appear that the Super Justice Squad is planning to attack our base! Preliminary reports indicate that the raid will most likely occur on Tuesday, probably around 4 o'clock. All members of the Vile Injustice League should try to be there to defend our item of power!
The game is filled with things that don't really make sense within the context of the world, but are that way simply because it's a game, and not a reflection of reality. Missions and Task Forces are described by the in-game text as your contact's (and your) reaction to events that have occured. "Rescue the kidnapped So-and-So." Of course, those events have not really occured. The mission starts when your click ACCEPT MISSION and no sooner.
The development team wants the base raids to be big SG on SG battles with as many members present as possible. The only way to do that is to schedule the event ahead of time. These are real people with real lives and jobs. I know I can't drop everything to defend my SG base if it gets raided (even though my in-game hero can and would).
The in-game fudges for real life concerns will be, and always have been, given flavor text to help you suspend disbelief. I know that I'm not racing against the clock to save some lawyers (in a non-timed mission) but I pretend that I am, because it's a game, and games are supposed to be fun.
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Every other MMO has base raids and such without the need for this appointment booking system. Even SWG had the solution of bases only being vulnerable during a 3 hour window each day at the same time which is kept secret and could be altered by placing the base again.
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How well did those other systems work out? Do people do raids a lot? I know that there are several things in SWG that exist (proving that it can be done), but they're crap, so nobody uses them. Is this like that, or do SWG bases get raided regularly?
Are those raids small (4 people on each side) or are they as big as two Supergroups duking it out?
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Every other MMO has base raids and such without the need for this appointment booking system. Even SWG had the solution of bases only being vulnerable during a 3 hour window each day at the same time which is kept secret and could be altered by placing the base again.
All I'm saying is that there are far better and less silly solutions than notifying the enemy that your going to attack at a certain time.
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If done right, I don't think that an appointment booking system is any more silly than an arbitrary 3-hour window. Like I said in my previous post, the in-game description is what makes something believable or not.
What's the difference between:
"Your base will be vulnerable to attack between 3 and 6 o'clock every Thursday."
and:
"The lei line energy of this particular base spot leaves us vulnerable to attack when the stars and weather patterns are right. In human terms, this translates to the 3rd to 6th hour every Thursday"
Mechanically, not much. But the second at least gives you a mental image of why it should be.
The SWG system is goofy. Once you find a base of the opposing faction, you gotta go check once per hour to see if it's vulnerable then you gotta get that info to the rest our your guild, then you gotta make sure you have all the required professions......and then theres no guarantee that the base owners will even be there.
My guild took down many a rebel base unopposed by players.
the "appointment" system is far better, imo
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Without an appointment system, this is what I see happening.
You set a time for your supergroup to show up. You spend 20 minutes waiting for 40 people and then another 10 minutes organizing all the teams.
Then you go to the enemy base and defeat the 3 people there in 2 minutes. The vast majority of your supergroup never actually do anything.
30 minutes of setup for 2 minutes of lame action. That seems like a real possibility without appointments.
Tal, did you ever play shadowbane ?
trust the people who have, dawn/ninja raids are not fun for anybody.
Im sure they will couch the appointment system in storyline (like capes), and the end result will hopefully be good attendence by both sides of the conflict.
It really comes down to what you are after;
Do you want to be able to buildup your base and defend items you have 'earnt', and get new items by partaking in epic battles ?
or
Do you want gain power using as little effort as possible, while occasionaly logging in after work to find all your stuff stolen and yourself bankrupt because someone trashed you base 6 times ?
I have absolutely no problem with setting 'appointments'. I work non-normal hours, I also have a kid to deal with. I can't be around constantly and help out with a base raid. If it's scheduled ahead of time I could possibly make arrangements, time off work, babysitters, etc. to show up. Otherwise it's hit or miss... mostly miss I'd imagine, since I'm gone during most 'prime time' playtimes.
There's already enough things in CoH that 'breaks' immersion, setting raid times isn't going to kill off the whole. I guarantee that you'll have a MUCH more fun time fighting against equal numbers than completely overwhelming the opponents. Plus everyone will be much happier, hopefully one side will accept the loss graciously, saying it ws a fair fight and all that.
I'll have to agree with the OP. Making appointments does take away some of the excitement of base raids. They should just make it so that the base has to have an open window during the day when it can be raided and some emergency teleporting excuse to help bring defenders back when this happens.
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I'll have to agree with the OP. Making appointments does take away some of the excitement of base raids.
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Yeah, griefing would be so much more fun.
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Every other MMO has base raids and such without the need for this appointment booking system. Even SWG had the solution of bases only being vulnerable during a 3 hour window each day at the same time which is kept secret and could be altered by placing the base again.
All I'm saying is that there are far better and less silly solutions than notifying the enemy that your going to attack at a certain time.
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Gah! I couldn't agree more. A three hour window would be sufficant. One of the really fun things for me in DAOC was to be doing something else and then over alliance chat read, "50 Mids (Midgaurd one of the three Kingdoms) in the frontier. Looks like a raid." The shock and suprise of the raid, the trying to get enough people out to defend the realm, the news coming over alliance chat, the chaos and confusion, ah those were the days. Wow now that was fun. It was fun because it was scary and suprising. It was fun because you had to rally and get your forces up quick.
I see one problem with this style of raiding with the superbase system. It isn't server wide. As a server we don't have a common goal of protecting an item or certain War walls or whatever. That's what I'd like to see in PvP a common goal for the server. With the Bases as we have them now, a window should be sufficant but a set time is nessiary because it's only the SG deffending and not the whole server.
I could see it now, "They are after the Ziggarat again! The forces on thier SG bases will double if we don't stop them! Gah Inferno can wait get to the Zig now!"
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I'll have to agree with the OP. Making appointments does take away some of the excitement of base raids.
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Yeah, griefing would be so much more fun.
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I fail to see your point. Must have gotten lost among all the fine arguments supporting your opinion.
and raid appointment almost seems necessary. You dont want to log on just to see the last of the raiders superspeeding away with the items you worked to get for so long and got after hours of playing. And the villains/heroes that raided your base got them near effortlessly, only having to deal with a few low-powered NPCs and a few turrets.
Without an appointment say a villain/hero raider has Superspeed and an invisibility or cloak of some sort, and bypass all of your security who cant see them and takes your most valuble item of power, and gets out. While they will probably prevent this, it could happen.
With an appointment, that raider would be stopped while or before they are obtaining the item, because a hero/villain would see them and attack them.
uhh. folks... Some of you are taking this a little too seriously.
This is a GAME. The reason the option to schedule an SG Base raid is there is so you CAN schedule it.
What happens if the Hero's of Harmony WANT to have a good fight against the Heinous Harmony Squad? What if they WANT a large # of people there to fight. What if they WANT a good challenge.
Most of you are looking at this as an RP thing, becuase it'll ruin your imersion in the game, but news flash, a LOT of people don't RP.
I don't want my SG base being raided when noone is online. What's the fun of that? If you want to fight the computer, then go play PvE, not raid an SG's base.
Another poster made a fine suggestion about "calling in reserves" with the help of coalitioned SG's. Or that's how I interpreted it at least. That could help out with numbers if there is a crisis on a SG/VG's hands.
Its seems there are two reasons that some people seem to dislike this appointment system.
1) RP- Setting an appointment ruins immersion for my evil overlord.
Well, that is certainly somewhat true, depending on how they do it. One of the earlier posters (who I can't remember the handle and don't want to go check) made an excellent point about how the 'message' setting down the appointment could just as easily have an RP feel to it, rather then a dull and OOC notification.
However, given that the bases are primarily (If not entirely) SG vs SG, I think this adds MORE to the RPing. I'm part of the KGB Special Section 8. In terms of roleplaying, there is not time they would dare leave their entire base undefended except in the most dire of emergencies. A significant portion of agency lives on base, and would have no excuse not to be present at the start (Or quickly after as the alarms go off). This appointment system allows us what you would find in a real comic world. At least ONE person ready to make a glorious stand in defense of their slice of the world.
2) This appointment system makes it impossible to 'surprise' a supergroup, which is a huge loss to some of the fun.
Yes, that it more or less true. You won't be able to launch a daring raid in the middle of the night, but I think the fun level more or less equals out. Some people just want to surprise other people, which I have no problem with, but let us be honest here. Without an appointment, there WILL be a lot of people who simply want to take that super mega doom cannon without fighting anybody. I apologize to all the honest people that these griefers are forcing mechanics that will reduce your fun, but at least you can be sure of a good fight when and if you get in.
People have mentioned the 3 hour window, which is not a bad compromise, even if I personally don't like it. You would STILL not have surprise on your side, and I would have to hang around in my base for a while every day, rather then roleplaying the park or some such.
To sum up, I think the appointment system could be made to work seemlessly into an rp enviornment, and mourn the loss of surprise but accept that it is a casualty in ensuring the game remains fun for all.
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Every other MMO has base raids and such without the need for this appointment booking system. Even SWG had the solution of bases only being vulnerable during a 3 hour window each day at the same time which is kept secret and could be altered by placing the base again.
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Don't get me started on SWG's raiding system. Its a POS. First of all you can pick what time they are raidable because its based on when the base is put down.
Secondly it was majorly broken because everytime the servers went up and down the base raid time shifted 15-30 minutes. On virtue 90% of the bases were destroyed in 1 night when they shifted to being attackable at 1am in the morning. Many guilds logged in to find there bases gone and quit SWG promptly after.
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From what I hear, all base entrances will be through some sort of portal. From my interpretation of that, that basically means that a bunch of villains could be sitting right outside of your base, but setting up to raid someone completely different. There'd be no way to tell if someone was setting up to raid you or not, so if you had a 3 hour open window, players would have to sit in their base to ensure their items didn't get stolen. How fun is that?
The one question I have in all of this, though, is what happens if I get an item of power, and I just refuse to schedual raids on my base?
Or it could be a hybrid system.
For major events (bear with me, I have no idea what the devs will implement for the SG raids and all) such as capture the base or take some major important item, schedule it but word it as a previous poster said to keep the RP feel to it.
For events which don't have a permenent effect on the base the raid system can still be used. Maybe wreck it which causes some status effect on all members of the SG: "Your base was attacked last night and destroyed. Since your base was destroyed, all SG members need to pay 1/2 of all inf you WILL earn to the repair of the base" or to something like that.
It somewhat prevents griefing because whatever was lost can be easily regained and you can still have those epic battles
Just my 2 inf
This is why MMORPG PvP is stupid. If they didn't have immersion breaking things like this then only people with no life would have the time to defend their base 24/7. Thus most people would just ignore it like the craptastic Arena.
I really don't care what they do. The Base raids are a silly idea to begin with. They sound really cool on paper but what will happen is that a few hardcore PvP guilds will dominate the competition per server. Low pop servers might only have one dominant guild. Everyone else will PvE and have fun. And the dominant guild will get bored destroying newbie guilds.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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The one question I have in all of this, though, is what happens if I get an item of power, and I just refuse to schedual raids on my base?
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You can't. It's mandatory if you have items of power.
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If you choose to, you can take part in base raids. Other people will need to send you a notification that they intend to raid at a certain time. We want base raids to be an event, and that requires people to be there. If your group doesnt show, then it isnt much of an event; we have to make Supergroups somewhat responsible for themselves.
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This is taken from an interview with Lord Recluse. Frankly this has got to be the single most stupid thing I have ever heard of when it comes to the classic Good Vs Evil battles that are supposed to be the cornerstone of CoV.
The fact you need to give notification of the raid in advance is a total break with the atmosphere of the game. The factyou also give a rough time is also totally insane.
I'm not going to argue what happened in comics, I'm gonna argue this based on the fiction within the world that Cryptic is trying to create. Take a look at the CoV video, its no wonder that Statesman and co got their butts handed to them. They needed to book an appointment with Lord Recluse before they arrived! Thats why everyone was sitting around that table at the start messing with a game of Battleship. (which incidently Mako is the king at)
Now I don't mind the fact that there should be people at the baseraid to make it fun, but booking an appointment is one of the sillest solutions to avoiding a no-show from the people defending the base I have ever heard. A better solution is that once the base is under attack every member of the SG should received an alarm signal that its under attack. The base should also have automated defences to provide a challange.
Take a look at the CoV video, there were guards there to help defend the place so heroes and villains should be able to man their bases with NPCs.
Yes, base raids without players is less fun than taking down a base with only NPCs. But lets not throw fiction to the wind here after the devs have spend so long trying to keep the gameworld realistic to the fiction they have created.