Anti-raid... (idea in progress)

A basic background from me, to perhaps understand the idea. I am a loner, a crafter and a raider. I love doing all three. This is not a post to push raiding here. Raiding is a different animal. But that being said, there is very little group/raid specific content. There may be group content like Epic encounters for higher levels, but what about your up and coming guildmates? Some are completely new to mmorpg's in general. Some have never really experienced party content here or in other games. How do they fair in an Epic fight later on? Are they on the class path they really want? So many classes to choose, so many combos to work with. Enter Declaration of War.

Skulks getting out of hand? Golems blowing chunks your way?

With this concept lets say by normal playing, the playerbase agitates the Platinum golems to the point that they decide to riot and declare war upon Istaria (in their location specific areas). Threat level increases serverside and the server determines when this next step happens. A random player kills a golem and loots a "Declaration of War", with a timer on it. This player is able to hand this into an npc in that same area and a mini event is initiated.

Now this is not an event that can be done by one player, unless you you are able to play 15 toons at once, but it is intended for a party/raid.

After the declaration is handed into the npc, all players in group/party must "tag" themselves as part of the event with the npc. Any outside help is disregarded. Group/party avg level is figured out as last person speaks with npc.

A minimum adventure lvl of like 20/30 should be required so that abuse can be minimized. Once the last person joins the party, the party damage/healing/skill levels are averaged out, no matter their level. No skills are unavailable, just downgraded automatically to the party average.

The event is then shown as an emoticon or such. Describing what the event entails. It Might be a kill count, a specific looted item or a named mob. Once the event is completed, all return to the npc that initiated the event. Similar to epic tokens, a token/currency is given. And Similar to loyalty tokens, Specific npc's are able to trade rewards.

To make the rewards more worthwhile, the formulas that are gotten from the npc's are one time use. And the items made are automatically attuned to the user.
Consider these rewards to be like mini epics, but not game changing, just a little above avg.

The point of these encounters are to let players earn a reward, learn to play roles in a party and start to understand endgame mechanics. As well as include lower level players on a level playing field with their fellow guildies/Istarians. Retroactively, players will start to learn which direction they will want to level their toons on when multiclassing..


Suggestions, criticism, followups, etc welcome.

The problem is, that the devs then would need to exclude high level characters from such.

Istaria does not have a level adjustment for different regions. Thus when you have one level 100 dragon with you in that mob, he probably kill all mobs at once with a Breath of Flame Burst.

Thus... it only could be done in new maps/instances where one would not be allowed when not having a certain level.

A very detailed and well thought out idea. First, I commend you on that. I don't think the level adjustment idea or group/party average figured would work in this game. That would have to be an instance which Istaria does not have. One of the great things about this game is the complete sandbox style that it is. If a level 10 player wants to go check out Eastern Deadlands level 90+ then they can...absolutely no restrictions.

There is also nothing in this game that takes 15 players to kill...NOTHING!


I do wish there were more class suggestions that would explain what each one did to help newer players figure it out. There could be a NPC in each major town that could run you through Lore and abilities of the different classes that you could select and read about to help understand.


-Kor

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Originally Posted by Korchak Strongbone

There is also nothing in this game that takes 15 players to kill...NOTHING!

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Have they changed General Reklar? or the Myloc queen? Ok, maybe you won't need 15, but still...

On the risk of derailing the thread, you don't need 15 - I've seen Reklar done with 4-6 and the Queen with about the same. Depends on the skill level of your group. 10-15 is definitely average.

That being said, it's a really interesting idea but I just don't think Istaria has the tech for it. I know level scaling has been a suggestion for a while but it's just been denied due to tech - it's really hard to bring something down dynamically when you take armor into consideration.

To be honest, I don't like level adjustment. As an example: Guild Wars 2

You're high level? Then you're just level 5 in beginners area.
What, you're level 1? Enemies will aggro on you on thrice the aggro range and will only attack you!

So where's the fairness there? I even could die in low level area when there are still too many enemies on me.

Then I would prefer gates, whose gatekeeper checks your level and just don't attune you to it, when you're too high. I think that might be something which is even possible in Istaria right now.