I've been looking at the current state of things and it's kinda lame that there are really only two alliances, not leading to much domestic warfare in the North and South. I was thinking that maybe there should be a limit to having only two towns being in an alliance to try and spice things up. What do you guys think?
Loka Forums
Type /register while in-game to register for a forums account.
Alliance Change Idea
- Thread starter planzorg1
- Start date
ChuckToast64
Member
What he said. Before Vanaheimr, there was domestic infighting amongst the towns of Karlos. Are any towns in the West in an alliance?
Whether we limited Alliance to two towns or not, there are still relationships between Lokans that have existed for years; so whether or not they're defined as an Alliance, there's no stopping that they might still act like one.
In terms of Conquest, though, the reason we limited Alliance attacks to 10-per-day is to give an Alliance the "attack power" of a 2-town alliance, but they are still able to have more towns in it if they choose.
Last edited:
Look at it from a different point of view. You are new, just joined a server, just starting your town. Notice these enormous super powers, then they attack you for "building on sacred ground". Guess how quickly that could have pushed us away had I not seen the chat notification?
Not to be a debby downer but the population isn't that large and reducing super powers is a great way of making it feel like new players have a chance to compete in conquest.
Half the server at any given time will be part of one of those alliances. Not only that, but they don't attack each other. They just sit and build, and attack small settlements. Thus pushing out players who wanted to try the server, but due to gear gap and the knowledge gap the small settlements will never have a chance against a superpower alliance.
Either limit alliance to total # of players, or to two-three towns.
Vanaheimr - 4 Towns- 46 members
Elysium - 3 Towns - 45 members
There is NO chance in hell that a new town would be able to hold their own against these odds.
The Wiki and guide are outdated and I have been using information from them only to be slapped in the face later because of it. Example: Trying to build a generator in the ocean but you have to build between 60 and 230 elevation. No Glass dome underwater generator for fun. Good thing we wasted two hours getting enough glass, gravel, and doing the manual labor for it
Not to be a debby downer but the population isn't that large and reducing super powers is a great way of making it feel like new players have a chance to compete in conquest.
Half the server at any given time will be part of one of those alliances. Not only that, but they don't attack each other. They just sit and build, and attack small settlements. Thus pushing out players who wanted to try the server, but due to gear gap and the knowledge gap the small settlements will never have a chance against a superpower alliance.
Either limit alliance to total # of players, or to two-three towns.
Vanaheimr - 4 Towns- 46 members
Elysium - 3 Towns - 45 members
There is NO chance in hell that a new town would be able to hold their own against these odds.
The Wiki and guide are outdated and I have been using information from them only to be slapped in the face later because of it. Example: Trying to build a generator in the ocean but you have to build between 60 and 230 elevation. No Glass dome underwater generator for fun. Good thing we wasted two hours getting enough glass, gravel, and doing the manual labor for it
Last edited:
Don't tell anyone, but half of my town population consists of my alt accounts
It's good to know you guys checked out the Wiki in order to learn more about the server. Frankly, we didn't figure just about anybody would do that, so it's certainly motivation to update it.
In fairness to Eastbowmen's point, a very large percentage of those 7 towns and 91 players are either alts, or inactive. A pretty small percentage of those players are real, active participants in Conquest.
That said, you're absolutely correct that there is an extremely large learning and skill curve to getting into Conquest, so figuring out a way to make it more accessible would certainly be helpful. Probably the biggest thing we can do, though, is just continue to get more new people into Loka. New blood is the thing we need above all else. No matter how we change the Conquest system, the current veterans will be the quickest to adopt it and have the resources to do so. Perhaps you're right though about limits. Given our current population, allowing basically an entire continent to be an Alliance is no fun. It's certainly feasible to think we could come up with a limit to Alliances that we could lessen as the server grew more. Then it would make sense to have a big Alliance, but it wouldn't mean guaranteed victory to do so. We'll have a chat about that!
The reason we have 3 separate continents, in fact, is because in our past world (only one world/continent), there was a defacto power that was virtually unimpeachable.
What doesn't seem to helpful is that because North/South have major alliances, they turn to smaller towns or newer 'aggressors' in order to get points. Come January's Conquest month, it may be time to nerf attacking foreign continents. Right now it's worth full points and so there's no real reason to fight on your own continent.
I think the recurrent theme that's being brought up as a problem for Loka is these power buildups. Nerfing attacking foreign continents is only addressing the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. Breaking up alliances of power and forcing players to come to conflict more often will massively help the PvP environment on this server in my opinion.
In other words, you'd like to break up my alliance that's been standing strong and officially been the capital and now world capital for a full year? Whatever Crypt decides do, whether it is to break down alliances and limit the number of towns to an alliance, I promise that nothing can separate my brothers and I of Elysium. Sure we're strong, but there's been very few attempts of other towns coming together to pose a big threat. Quite frankly, we're not that strong. We have a couple of good pvpers and numbers. For the other somewhat big alliances, they have the same type of thing; a few solid pvpers and the rest are extra guys on the playing field. There's quite a lot of differences in comparison to Elysium and the other alliances, but the main difference is activity. Quite honestly, the strength of an alliance comes down to how active it is. X_Cavator's town is full of very very good PvPers, but unfortunately they very rarely play. As a result, they are not very strong.
Tl;dr
It isn't all about big numbers and good pvpers that create strength in an alliance, it's activity.
I see your point, but like East and I've said before, the issue isn't (entirely) the structure of the server; it's the fact that most of the people you see on Loka have been friends on Loka (in certain cases) up to 3 years. You can't un-ally these people if you wanted to; and if you force it, some of them won't even play.
We can address symptoms, sure, but the current alliances of power could be undone if enough new groups of players joined that had no previous allegiance to anyone else. Ascalon is a prime example of 'new powers on Loka' and is why we're trying to get new players on the server.
We have a meeting close to the end of the month, every month, where we take a look at how Conquest went that month and see what worked well and what didn't. We'll have one at the end of December as well and evaluate how things are going.
Here's what I noticed when looking at the map for the first time... No one will ever try to settle in the north because one group controls over half the possible landmass. That is not okay, specially last week when you could see the remains of Zion on the map. I have to say that there should be a limit to Territory Generators, then it makes sense to allow larger alliances to encourage cooperation and using their resources wisely. Maybe that is the direction that it needs to go. Or once you reach or go over a certain amount of T-Gens they become weaker. Say at 10+ generators their core health is reduced by 20% (So one less charge to destroy cores) and at 20+ reduced by 60%.
East,
There is a big threat, the other superpower, but since you guys don't want to attack each other its just a cold war. Instead you guys direct your raid attacks at new towns which can really only push them away. Rozzok at Woodswork lost 6 territory generators in 1 night. He has barely played since. He put them back up, and talks to people in chat, but doesn't actively do anything anymore.
Helping new players and towns should be the priority of the server to build population. The number one thing to help them with is information, since all of this is custom to the server there is no way to do research on it except the wiki. Which has little information. The guide helps a lot too but the wiki should be a priority to setup and keep up to date. This way we can direct people to it who have questions and look up those questions for them.
East,
There is a big threat, the other superpower, but since you guys don't want to attack each other its just a cold war. Instead you guys direct your raid attacks at new towns which can really only push them away. Rozzok at Woodswork lost 6 territory generators in 1 night. He has barely played since. He put them back up, and talks to people in chat, but doesn't actively do anything anymore.
Helping new players and towns should be the priority of the server to build population. The number one thing to help them with is information, since all of this is custom to the server there is no way to do research on it except the wiki. Which has little information. The guide helps a lot too but the wiki should be a priority to setup and keep up to date. This way we can direct people to it who have questions and look up those questions for them.
There is, actually. 30 is the total maximum while 20 is the maximum by which they improve your industry output (21-30 don't improve industries anymore and are just being greedy).
This is a great idea. Attacking the biggest targets on the map should be worth the most. I could easily see this being a thing.
This is absolutely critical and it is something I think we do well sometimes. For the most part, most of the veteran Lokans don't attack new towns on the very principle of not wanting to drive them away. On the other hand, we also have PvP players that see new towns pop up and see them as new blood, so they take them out. Unfortunately, this drives people away and we're usually pretty quick to try to stop that down so that new towns have a chance to grow a bit. This is a cultural thing and we're doing well with it in my view. Teaching players new things though is very difficult. We really do teach players along the way quite a lot of things, but an equal number of players don't read anything you tell them and then ask public chat anyway.
We're still in the process of adding context-sensitive information and I'll be doing another pass at that soon. One example would be telling players about /sethome only when they reach the 'wilds beyond the port', for example. And of course updating the Wiki will help, but you guys represent an extremely small % of players who look at it. Most players will not do any work on their part to learn about a server. You have to throw it in their face or hope that they'll ask public chat. It's an eternal struggle.
Attachments
Once again, had no idea that increasing territory generators improved industry output.
Potentially weaken them or give better output for the attack, and have that based off their Territory strength or Tgens?
If you advertise the Wiki like you do other tips but remove the option to hide it then it would work. Make it clickable to send people to. But first it needs an overhaul. Front page of it should link to mostly everything you need. Section for Town Owners to explain /g commands and all that are available. Section for PvP, explaining those. Lore and Conquest stuff as well to explain the Generators, and the buff/weakness/radar/attack towers.
Wiki's can make or break it, and if it makes it I guarantee people will enjoy the server more and more people will be able to see what we offer before stepping foot in the server.
I'm kinda speaking about a game balance issue, and while I appreciate the tip, it is honestly not a solution to the problem. Telling people to grind and train for a year to overcome the inequality promoted by the current system is kind of absurd. No one on the server has that kind of time. If we promote an environment where many towns can band together to overcome these evidently monolithic potion-pvpers, I think it will massively encourage people to get away from joining alliances just to avoid getting stomped.
One thing to note, though, and this is something we're still improving, is that Conquest is end-game Loka content. We don't have any early-game Conquest content for people right now, so any expectation that one town of a few friends will reign supreme on the server is far-fetched. Alliances exist because success in our system comes in greater numbers. We can balance the system, and add some earlier content that can help ease people into it, but you shouldn't expect to join a server with entrenched Alliances and Towns and be able to undo their progress in short order.
The reason Alliances exist is to overcome bigger challenges and while it shouldn't be required to be in one to 'win', it should equally not be expected that they will fall easy either.
And in its current form, this is very possible. Eastbowmen is a talented PvPer, but he is one man and can't be two places at once. If you can't beat somebody in single-combat, then you can win with strategy and numbers; attacking multiple points at a time.
From what I've noticed, Ascalon is a very divided continent, so it would stand to reason that your continent would need to come to a general agreement if you want to imbalance the other continents. That's just simple real-life politics there. Garama and Kalros are independently united and will be strong as a result. Unless you have a very high population town or a handful of great PvPers, you will equally need numbers to handle them.
The only difference between me and you is that I can potion pvp well and you can't. Xcav is right, if you want to beat me and my buddies, you have to learn how to potion pvp and be active. I'm willing to give tips and maybe even hop on teamspeak and teach anyone some things about pvp, even if it is the enemy. All you have to do is ask <3
We need to get number one on badlion or kohi 2v2's bro