It's time to Nuke 'Dev Island'.

[Claeyt]

I want to see more risk like 'The Battle at Lake Nod' rather than people losing whole towns and all their characters within the town because they had to get some sleep or go to work that day.

According to you, Arcadia had a waste claim on it for weeks before it was attacked. I can't change how people react to danger, nothing we do to the mechanics can make them stop hiding behind their walls and get out there and fight. You yourself keep arguing this same point so why are you now taking the opposite stance and pretending you've been saying this all along?

Why should a defender have to place their own TbF and have to attack a town just to defend their own town? If TbF's or TbC's are not donuted then that would encourage open combat. I'm not saying anything different than before. Donuted TbF's and TbC's hurt the chance for open field combat. Darwoth never has to defend them if he can just collect scents and rebuild. The entire point of this thread is that Darwoth has an island where he can force open field combat if a TbF is placed there while he continues to build donuted TbF's that don't allow the rest of us to face open field options when he hits us with a TbF.

When people lose everything they quit the game. That's the whole problem.

Then they should take advantage of the tools we've given them to not lose everything. We can't help it if they don't.

This is silly. They did take advantage of the tools you gave them. They tried to defend and trust in their walls and it didn't work. The whole point of this argument and this thread is that the tools are broken, in some of our opinions, and need to be fixed.

Darwoth slowly strangles Arcadia hoping for waste scents if they try and defend until he finally puts up a permanent TbF for weeks and then breaks in, destroys the bell, steals their keys and traps all their top guys and takes everything they've built and worked for? How is that a good game if stuff like that can happen to a big relatively active town? The game can't grow like that.

I've bolded the important things here. They had time to create or choose a character or two to fight Darwoth with. Hell, they even had time to practice combat to make ready. They even had time to run away if they just wanted to keep their characters. You say they lost all their big characters? So, why didn't they man up and sacrifice one or two to the defense of the town? Keep the town and all the other characters and just lose a couple? Assuming they did lose them. I've outlined just a couple ways they could have defended with much less chance of losing anything at all while bloodying Darwoth in the process, but they chose to not do anything. It was their choice. No mechanics changes can help that.

It had nothing to do with "Fighting" Darwoth. There was no reason for combat involved at all by Darwoth. They would have had to go into the same loop as L33 did, where they attack the donut town, Darwoth gets waste scents and builds a donuted TbC and summons the waste alt then he rebuilds the TbF and they have to do it over and over. Their choice was to trust their defenses and they probably thought that it would take Darwoth days to get through 3 brick walls and 2 plank walls under fire. it took him less than 14 hrs and because of that he was able to destroy the townbell, steal their keys and trap many of them behind their own walls. Because they view these as broken mechanics, they've said that they've quit the game.

There shouldn't be a requirement in a game that you be available 24/7 and have to maintain a call list in case you're attacked.

There isn't. That's part of what the TbF does, it makes it so you know ahead of time. Being able to contact your town mates out of game is useful though and is often a part of a serious MMO. I don't see why Salem should be different.

There is that requirement if the raider can just leave up a donuted TbF for weeks on end because he has thousands of silver to blow.

There has to be a basic time that people can feel safe. I don't mind if it's 24 hours but we're talking about people having to be on every 4 hours to check currently if they only have brick walls and don't want to lose absolutely everything when the raider takes out their bell and steals all their keys.

Salem went for years with no TbF and really no one seemed that worked up by it. You've all gotten used to the 'safety margin' now though so that's why John decided we'd leave it in. I see you agree, so why are you arguing first one way and then the opposite? As things are, there is a warning so I'm glad you've finally realized the TbF is serving its purpose as intended. Instead of just being able to waste a town any time, raiders must give a warning.

I don't remember it being years, was it really that long? I remember it being the winter after they put in Roanoke and JT which would be 6 months after Beta.

Getting rid of Donuted towns has to be a goal of yours otherwise why make townbells destructible in the fist place.

It's not a goal, really. Maybe another rework of the siege/raid mechanic later, after we finally get done all the other things we want to do and add. I'm not happy with raiding myself, but whether or not a waste claim can be surrounded by a town is not game-breaking. I've told you why town bells are destroyable. Don't make me type it for a fourth time.

I must have missed why you guys made them destroyable. I thought it was because you wanted to make it easier to take out siege donut towns. Do you mean when you said where you want players to have to risk everything?

If donuted towns aren't a thing anymore you can go back to having nice big towns with permanent townbells and maybe even make walls easier to take down and nerf defenses. I think we all agree that we want more raiding and combat but with less permanent destruction of towns. The permanent destruction of towns is what's making the long term players leave the game right now.

None of those things have anything to do with any of the others. Stop making **** up.

Ummm... a lot of people (Icon, Judaism, L33LEE) have said that they're leaving or are pissed at the game because of the new townbell mechanics. How am I making any of this up?

make it specific to the town it's meant to attack and make it so it's say 51x51 like a townbell shadow and it can't be within a certain range of another town. This way it could be out in the open or behind a Pclaimed area. Maybe you could make it so that anyone from the defending town could attack anything within the 51x51 TbF, TbC townbell sized area without leaving a waste scent. This would defeat the Donuted TbF problem or at least make it so the donuted area would have to be huge and harder to build defenses for.

Currently, you claim that you think the fact that someone can party a raider and give them permission to destroy a town without leaving waste scents is horribly game-breaking and the reason people can't have huge towns (though you did just say above that 'donut' waste claims is the reason, so maybe you changed your mind?). If one could sneak into a town and with the addition of a waste claim against it, be able to destroy the whole town without scents, how is that different? I haven't thought about it much, but I have the feeling there's actually a very dangerous pitfall in your idea I just haven't seen yet...

As for the hugely complicated town targeting system you outlined, I don't think it's really possible to code.

They are both broken mechanics in my opinion and both reasons why large towns are becoming increasingly rare in the game.

It's different if instead you're just harvesting summonable Waste scents like what Darwoth did at L33's village and Arcadia. The whole point of donuted towns is to make the defenders HAVE to attack the raiders so they can collect waste scents and such.

And like I said, you don't have to do that. You really can wait for the raiders to break in and screw them over then from within the relative safety of your own walls which you will quickly rebuild once the raiders are dead. Proactive defense is smart, but not needed. If someone is merely 'scent fishing' then they won't get any scents and there is no danger, just some inconvenience for awhile until they get bored and go away.

This is what Arcadia and L33 have both tried to do and they both lost the towns that they spent almost 2 years building in less than a day. Arcadia tried to wait out Darwoth's TbF for weeks and he just kept paying it because he is given silver by the truckload through the stall tax system.

I mentioned this months ago but why can't TbF's and TbC's get exponentially more expensive? Why can't they be 500s the first day, 1000s the second and so on and on, and if the town runs out of money then the TbF or TbC is destroyed.

Because that isn't fair to raiders. Not much of Darwoth's income actually comes from taxes. He gets most of it from raiding, but not all raiders will be so successful. We can't increase the cost of raiding until only the very most experienced and successful of raiders can afford to raid. No one would ever be able to get started if we did that; it's bad practice to adjust the curve to the most accomplished.

There has to be a difference between "Raiding" and utter town destruction. This is the main point I'm trying to make. "Raiding" is good for the game. Complete and utter loss of towns from the destruction of townbells and the loss of all characters in the town from the raiders stealing their keys, and all this without any combat or real options for the defenders besides having to place their own TbF against a donuted town is bad for the game.

You can say that Arcadia had options to attack the donuted TbF but they really didn't because he could have just collected their scentsand TbC'd over and over or just rebuilt the TbF. It's not an option and it's not a good system for growing the game.

[Judaism]

Ummm... a lot of people (Icon, Judaism, L33LEE) have said that they're leaving or are pissed at the game because of the new townbell mechanics. How am I making any of this up?

Just so you know, I like the fact that boundaries/towns are destroyable now. I just didn't liked the fact that it was not announced properly.

I have never been a fan of donuting anything really, I have however discovered the pclaim **** and other lame tactics to make it easier to do so without a town. Donuting has always been in the game, Chief liked/used it so much that he will never give-in that mechanic. But those things are not new, people have been doing it for years now.

[TotalyMeow]

All you've done is repeat a bunch of stuff I've already answered, so I'll pick out the one thing that's actually new.

Why should a defender have to place their own TbF and have to attack a town just to defend their own town.

First off, learn to use question marks, it's starting to annoy me. Secondly, I never said that, no one else ever said that, and I have no idea why you think this is necessary. I suppose someone could be clever and attack the attacker's town and I applaud anyone who tries it, but no one HAS to do it.

[Claeyt]

Ummm... a lot of people (Icon, Judaism, L33LEE) have said that they're leaving or are pissed at the game because of the new townbell mechanics. How am I making any of this up?

Just so you know, I like the fact that boundaries/towns are destroyable now. I just didn't liked the fact that it was not announced properly.

I have never been a fan of donuting anything really, I have however discovered the pclaim **** and other lame tactics to make it easier to do so without a town. Donuting has always been in the game, Chief liked/used it so much that he will never give-in that mechanic. But those things are not new, people have been doing it for years now.

Would you be a fan of more raiding/looting/summoning of criminals but without the townbell destruction or key thieving? In my opinion this would lead to a better game and people rebuilding and sticking around longer.

Personally I think that if they could get rid of donuted towns it would lead to more epic battles like the "Battle at Lake Nod" and that if they made it easier to get into towns (by say making gates easier to destroy) but harder to destroy the infrastructure of the town, utterly destroy the townbell or steal all the keys from lean-to's (thus trapping and killing them) that it would make the game more enjoyable and fun. There has to be a way for players to rebuild after getting raided. If there's no way to rebuild without spending another 2 years doing it all over again, people just give up and Providence slowly dies just like Plymouth did.

All you've done is repeat a bunch of stuff I've already answered, so I'll pick out the one thing that's actually new.

Why should a defender have to place their own TbF and have to attack a town just to defend their own town.

First off, learn to use question marks, it's starting to annoy me. Secondly, I never said that, no one else ever said that, and I have no idea why you think this is necessary. I suppose someone could be clever and attack the attacker's town and I applaud anyone who tries it, but no one HAS to do it.

You're right about the question mark. I'll go back and fix it.

Well, this is exactly what Arcadia did. They didn't attack his town. They left it there for 5 months because they didn't want to leave scents. When he finally placed a donuted TbF within his siege town they left that also, trusting in their walls and okay defense to hold him off. They couldn't port out of town but they probably figured he was just scent fishing. They checked daily to see if he was trying to break in but weren't able to be on that often. Weeks into the siege (at 900s a day for him), during a 14 hour break where they all had to go to work or sleep he was able to get past all those walls and defenses and destroy their townbell. They then instantly didn't have any permissions under their own authority objects so they had expand huge Pclaims just to get stuff out of their storage. Darwoth was able to steal some of their keys so they couldn't even get out of their own gates after he rebuilt some of the walls.

So their options were either that they HAD to attack his town and leave scents or they could do what they did. Both options favored Darwoth and are losing options for the defenders. The only other option was to be on 24/7 to try and catch him breaking walls.

[TotalyMeow]

Claeyt, town bells don't need a waste claim for a week, they didn't need a TbF to destroy that town. They also could have taken advantage of Darwoth's TbF later. Saying they didn't want to leave scents is no answer since they will have to at some point to defend themselves and that is how it is supposed to be. And we've already established that the options you listed are far from the only options they had for their defense. They were just lazy and/or afraid and so they lost.

[LOMS]

Claeyt, town bells don't need a waste claim for a week, they didn't need a TbF to destroy that town.

False, unless you have changed mechanics again. The only weak point of unmatured towns was instant vulnerability to Trial by Fire claim, it always was necessary for committing waste.

[Dallane]

Personally I think that if they could get rid of donuted towns it would lead to more epic battles like the "Battle at Lake Nod"

There was ZERO towns involved there. wtf are you talking about. The only reason there was a open battle was because you had 2 groups willing to actually fight and didn't give that much of a ***** about their characters. If GT had ever been donuted then you would see the same thing. We were seiged at the 1st part of popham by the KKK i think and had zero issues dealing with it. You keep saying arcadia left a WC up for weeks. Well that town was full of noobs who didn't belong in this game if they were not willing to sacrifice a character or use tactics to conceal their scents. You keep saying Darwoth is baiting people to leave scents but ignore the fact that they could turn the tables on him after they deal with his cleaver tactics.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW A NEW TOWN WORKS SHUT THE ***** UP WOW. After your last few drool post I have concluded you are either in denial of what this game is or you are drunk posting like frakked. You really need to wake up or leave.

[Taipion]

Personally I think that if they could get rid of donuted towns it would lead to more epic battles like the "Battle at Lake Nod"

There was ZERO towns involved there. wtf are you talking about. The only reason there was a open battle was because you had 2 groups willing to actually fight and didn't give that much of a ***** about their characters. If GT had ever been donuted then you would see the same thing. We were seiged at the 1st part of popham by the KKK i think and had zero issues dealing with it. You keep saying arcadia left a WC up for weeks. Well that town was full of noobs who didn't belong in this game if they were not willing to sacrifice a character or use tactics to conceal their scents. You keep saying Darwoth is baiting people to leave scents but ignore the fact that they could turn the tables on him after they deal with his cleaver tactics.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW A NEW TOWN WORKS SHUT THE ***** UP WOW. After your last few drool post I have concluded you are either in denial of what this game is or you are drunk posting like frakked. You really need to wake up or leave.

I really don't want to interrupt you ..."dealing" with that person, but is it "ok" to ..."conceal" scents?! I thought of that more like being an exploit instead of an actual "feature"...

[Claeyt]

Claeyt, town bells don't need a waste claim for a week, they didn't need a TbF to destroy that town. They also could have taken advantage of Darwoth's TbF later. Saying they didn't want to leave scents is no answer since they will have to at some point to defend themselves and that is how it is supposed to be. And we've already established that the options you listed are far from the only options they had for their defense. They were just lazy and/or afraid and so they lost.

You still had to have the TbF but it would have gone active right away.

The point isn't the TbF. The point is that the town's defenders now have to commit a summonable scent (Waste) against the siege donut town simply to stop the raiders. PvP combat and other defensive scents they could have left if they had caught Darwoth breaking in wouldn't have been summonable scents and they wouldn't have minded that probably.

Personally I think that if they could get rid of donuted towns it would lead to more epic battles like the "Battle at Lake Nod"

There was ZERO towns involved there. wtf are you talking about. The only reason there was a open battle was because you had 2 groups willing to actually fight and didn't give that much of a ***** about their characters. If GT had ever been donuted then you would see the same thing. We were seiged at the 1st part of popham by the KKK i think and had zero issues dealing with it. You keep saying arcadia left a WC up for weeks. Well that town was full of noobs who didn't belong in this game if they were not willing to sacrifice a character or use tactics to conceal their scents. You keep saying Darwoth is baiting people to leave scents but ignore the fact that they could turn the tables on him after they deal with his cleaver tactics.

I'm not talking about it being a siege, I'm using it as an example of open PvP combat that I enjoyed seeing in the game. From the examples we've seen of Donut TbF's they discourage open battles.

Arcadia wasn't full of noobs. 3 of the top 10 players in total play time lived there and the developer of the client you play on lived there. They weren't noobs, they were generally non-PvP players interested in building, farming and developing the other mechanics of the game that didn't involve attacking other towns. They left the TbF (or WC ) up for weeks because it was donuted and they didn't want to leave summonable scents. They were prepared to defend the town in PvP combat but weren't able to be on when he got in and destroyed the bell and stole their keys, leaving them stuck online, inside their own walls, under town border-stones they no longer belonged to.

The only way to turn the table on Darwoth would be to donut TbC or TbF his Criminal Waste-alt town just like he did to Arcadia. Unfortunately it's impossible to do that since it's on Dev Island.

[Dallane]

I really don't want to interrupt you ..."dealing" with that person, but is it "ok" to ..."conceal" scents?! I thought of that more like being an exploit instead of an actual "feature"...

I wasn't aware that extending the town claim over the scents, wall and brazier them. Then watch that area was exploiting. There are also other ways to deal with this.

The point isn't the TbF. The point is that the town's defenders now have to commit a summonable scent (Waste) against the siege donut town simply to stop the raiders. PvP combat and other defensive scents they could have left if they had caught Darwoth breaking in wouldn't have been summonable scents and they wouldn't have minded that probably.

So you are saying if they caught darwoth breaking in they wouldn't kill him and just let him go? Why are you ignoring everything meow has said to you?