VGOEmulator.net

I always felt the civic diplo was one of the ways that this game really stood out. I just thoguht it was really neato that you could get a town to support your character and raise it's HP. But if it's causing lag, yeah that's definitely going to be a thing. But I'd really love to see them stay up if at all possible.

If any part of diplo needs to be changed it's forcing every single toon that wants POTA gear to grind all the way up to level 45 diplo (SEriously I never want to do that again).

You didn't need diplo at all to get PotA gear. It was just a fast track for those that was doing it solo. It was way faster to get a group and kill the T3 daily nameds. With the last toon I pushed through PotA I didn't do a single diple parley just to prove a point.

Well it was difficult to get anyone to help with T3 dailies until they put the epic slivers on them. And then that made the epic slivers stupidly easy to get. I got all my alts their epics before they did that. Though I suppose that was better than sitting in a kite group and getting them that way.

[quote="Kilsin"]I really like those idea's Dinjoc, I think that would work well for raiding guilds certainly and as a guild/raid leader, thinking back over all those years of pushing buffs, an extended GH buff would've been very nice!

I am not seeing it working very well for PUG raids/groups though or the rest of the community, which is why I am a little hesitant to take away the buffs for everyone to freely use without having something viable to replace them with.

It was a community driven thing back in the good old days, even non raiders would help push civics up, since everyone who visited the chunk got to benefit, plus seeing as how the emulator will be most likely going back to VGs original roots, the game was a lot more challenging and not very solo friendly back in those days, which I think is a good thing personally because it promotes grouping and socialising in an MMO but these buffs would help to relieve some of that pain, especially since the playerbase will be very small and more close knit, taking away that player interaction/community buff sharing vibe may not be the right answer.

Having that freedom to push a couple of buffs up to help you solo when there wasn't any groups around, was sometimes the difference between continuing to play or logging off for a lot of players, as not everyone could box or had alts. I would hate to see VG emulator die off like the official game because this was not taken into consideration again.[/quote]

You're right. From a PUG raid/group standpoint the GH buffs wouldn't help those outside that guild. Another potential compromise could be an aura that grants the same buffs to the group/raid. Not sure if an aura can be applied to a whole raid, but it could be a traded expendable to make sure that there's a person in each group providing the aura for the group.

And the civics wouldn't be abolished and would still benefit people, it just would have a defined leash since certain civics would only apply in certain areas. Basically regions (groups of chunks) would have their own set of buffs, like I used Khal/Qa River/Ksaravi Gulch in my example and Tanvu civics would only stick in Tanvu/Magi Hold/Tsangs/Blighted Lands, and just mete out what applies where. It'd be similar to how pushing buffs in Leth Nurae caused the buffs to appear in Wardship, there would be a linked city center by the bindstone in a related chunk to pick the buffs up at to save travel and since buffs from other regions wouldn't apply, no need to fly anywhere else after death/evac, can jump right back into a dungeon more or less.

Alternatively, the civic strip on engage mechanic of Tharridon could be spread to other raid/major targets (or designated areas like CoB and PotA) and have them only allow the GH/aura buffs, and just leave the rest of the civic system as is. This would be a simpler solution but would still leave the multitude of civics being pushed for general usage (and alleviate the raiding factor of pushing 20+ buffs and rifting around constantly for them, which is a lag factor in itself I'm sure).

I personally preferred the "regional" civics system since that would allow some diversification in the civics that already exist so that there would be more options from a leveling standpoint as well as make some buffs more accessible in areas that are a distance from rifts (Tawar Galan and Dargun's Tomb for example). Plus it would be good reason to do a few other things i wanted to do in the diplo sphere, like adding new civics (Merchant levers anyone?), making some civics work (like "The Man of the Sand" in TJ), and making some civics less teeth grinding (Afrit, I'm looking at you).

Ultimately, as long as there's relatively no lag and it would eliminate all those issues we used to have where raiders wanted to push buff X, crafters wanted to push buff Y, and newbie diplomats wanted to push anything for max xp, I'll be pretty happy.

[quote="Dinjoc"][quote="Kilsin"]I really like those idea's Dinjoc, I think that would work well for raiding guilds certainly and as a guild/raid leader, thinking back over all those years of pushing buffs, an extended GH buff would've been very nice!

I am not seeing it working very well for PUG raids/groups though or the rest of the community, which is why I am a little hesitant to take away the buffs for everyone to freely use without having something viable to replace them with.

It was a community driven thing back in the good old days, even non raiders would help push civics up, since everyone who visited the chunk got to benefit, plus seeing as how the emulator will be most likely going back to VGs original roots, the game was a lot more challenging and not very solo friendly back in those days, which I think is a good thing personally because it promotes grouping and socialising in an MMO but these buffs would help to relieve some of that pain, especially since the playerbase will be very small and more close knit, taking away that player interaction/community buff sharing vibe may not be the right answer.

Having that freedom to push a couple of buffs up to help you solo when there wasn't any groups around, was sometimes the difference between continuing to play or logging off for a lot of players, as not everyone could box or had alts. I would hate to see VG emulator die off like the official game because this was not taken into consideration again.[/quote]


I personally preferred the "regional" civics system since that would allow some diversification in the civics that already exist so that there would be more options from a leveling standpoint as well as make some buffs more accessible in areas that are a distance from rifts (Tawar Galan and Dargun's Tomb for example). Plus it would be good reason to do a few other things i wanted to do in the diplo sphere, like adding new civics (Merchant levers anyone?), making some civics work (like "The Man of the Sand" in TJ), and making some civics less teeth grinding (Afrit, I'm looking at you).

Ultimately, as long as there's relatively no lag and it would eliminate all those issues we used to have where raiders wanted to push buff X, crafters wanted to push buff Y, and newbie diplomats wanted to push anything for max xp, I'll be pretty happy.[/quote]

I also loved the regional buffs, like Leth/Wardship and Seawatch coast/Afrit and I think if we focussed on a system similar to that, we could resolve the whole Raider/crafter buff pushing issue by just making the levers not conflict with each other and extend to more regions.

Crafters could then be hit in Tawar Galan by Bordinar's Cleft and Khal buffs etc, while raiders can hit the usual cities/towns but maybe with a bit more variety?

Raiders can click off crafting buffs and crafters can click off adventuring buffs and everyone would be happy but as long as the lag wasn't an issue as you said in your last point.

I actually posted a pretty big idea on the forums a long time ago to solve this issue by letting raiders diplo specific targets or the normal diplo npcs for all the buffs we wanted/needed and collecting those on a shard or gem and allowing it to be cast as a raid wide 3-5 hour buff.

So a special shard/gem would need to be in your bag to absorb the civic, it would still raise it in the chunk and connecting areas for the community but it would allow raiders to collect them during the week and on low pop nights so we don;t annoy crafters/diplo's.

This would allow any person at any time to parley and raise the buff levers and store the civic(s) in the guild hall or their bags etc. to then be clicked at raid start when everyone was ready. They could even be limited to single chunks and reset when you try to leave, therefore making multiple shards/gems needed for a full raid, you would basically need a shard/gem for each target you wanted to hit.

Anyone could essentially grind out the parleys and collect them, allowing groups and duo/trio and even solo players enjoy the game during their time zone when there were no groups/raids available or grabbing them in advance and saving them for a group dungeon run with their friends/family on the weekend etc.

Leaving the main civics to be pushed as per normal for anyone interested and still giving the normal buffs, so it still leaves the community aspect in tact and takes the raiders and all the rifting lag away from the equation.

Anyway, I am trying to bounce ideas off you since we seem to almost be on the same track lol

One of the things that seemed weird to me about the diplo system as it was in Live was how you would teleport (let's be honest here, without Rift stones this is a non-issue) all over the world to collect these different buffs and then go hit your raid on the other side of the continent.

Somehow, I don't think that was ever the intent of them (mainly because riftstones were never intended either).

I'm not sure how feasible it would be, but what about making the diplo buffs be area auras? Say you trigger the defense buff in Thestra (I forget the name of the city, damn...) and as long as you're in that city's chunk you get the full benefit of the diplomacy buff (perhaps increased as it'll only work while you're in that area and the diplo lever has time left on it). If you move to the surrounding chunks you get a weaker version of the buff, until you're too far to receive the bonus of the work of that city's diplomats.

That'd allow some overlap of diplo buffs in key spots, spots where we can count on having the availability of certain diplo buffs when designing new content.

And honestly, I'd rather think about how things would run without rift stones (or at the very least how they were put into place originally where they needed to be unlocked) than how they would with them.

good point Koralith, A lot of things were implemented with the idea of no-rift, instant teleport (aside from rifting to your bind spot) if you consider that travelling from one continent to another would often times take the better part of an hour, those 30min or even 60min civi buffs would have ticked off by then, making it a non start. I do agree with what Kilsin said earlier, in that those buffs did help often times in smaller groups needing just that bit more to help them out. You couldn't always get a group going, and in the start days there were some quests flagged as solo that were still more of a small group - group thing. And it did add to community, I remember asking people to lever adventuring buffs or if I was doing ship building , to lever woodworking craft buffs etc. Take a horse for 20min and travel to Khal to pick up a buff, and head back to where you were to utilize it. If we can address instant travel we may be able to keep the old vision intact to a large degree (but that will depend on how many people want a return to launch style transportation)
Regional or even continent based would be a good start in lieu of that

[quote="Koralith"]One of the things that seemed weird to me about the diplo system as it was in Live was how you would teleport (let's be honest here, without Rift stones this is a non-issue) all over the world to collect these different buffs and then go hit your raid on the other side of the continent.

Somehow, I don't think that was ever the intent of them (mainly because riftstones were never intended either).

I'm not sure how feasible it would be, but what about making the diplo buffs be area auras? Say you trigger the defense buff in Thestra (I forget the name of the city, damn...) and as long as you're in that city's chunk you get the full benefit of the diplomacy buff (perhaps increased as it'll only work while you're in that area and the diplo lever has time left on it). If you move to the surrounding chunks you get a weaker version of the buff, until you're too far to receive the bonus of the work of that city's diplomats.

That'd allow some overlap of diplo buffs in key spots, spots where we can count on having the availability of certain diplo buffs when designing new content.

And honestly, I'd rather think about how things would run without rift stones (or at the very least how they were put into place originally where they needed to be unlocked) than how they would with them.[/quote]

I was just brainstorming with the riftway system in mind, I would be one of the first people to put my hand up to remove those riftway alters, if that was a suitable option for a low populated Emulator but I would imagine that it may be a little to hard on such a small player base to stay socially active, especially since a lot of the vets these days are older and have shorter/limited play time.

I think without the riftway system, the civics would be perfectly fine left the way they are but since we have riftways and they seem to be staying for the time being, I thought eliminating the 24+ man raid rift around after every 1-2 raid mobs ( roughly 45 to 60 mins) and the heavy 1-2 hour diplo grind before hand would be a better scenario than what we have now.

I like the aura idea but I just don't think it will help raiding or some of the tough group content, which is the majority of the players who use civics so heavily in the first place.

If an aura is put up in Thestra, let's say Renton Keep for a defense boost of 7% and I am taking a 24 man raid to an island in Kojan, to hit a very hard target, I would in a normal situation push that civic and ask everyone to collect it, but I will not get any benefit from that aura and most likely won't bother to push it up in the first place, along with many others for the same reason, eliminating the community interaction to work together and push something that benefits anyone who visits.

This is why I thought that shards/gems may help this issue since anyone can do it at any time and save it for when they need it, maybe they could be traded/sold to other players, creating a small market for diplomats, allowing a diplomat to make a small profit from selling to raiders/groups etc

It would have to be monitored for abuse and balance but it may be a nice chunk of love that diplo so badly deserves.

The gem could work, but as you mentioned it would need to have some pretty good balance tweaks to implement I think. either a limit on "Unique" gems a person could have at one time, that would have the twofold effect of keeping the market healthy with replacing, and less chance for one person to mule like 100x Raid health buff gems etc.

I can see what you mean regarding the emulator being small to start, and probably needing to address the travel and social issues. Sort of a double edged sword. I find people tend to push back when something they have is "Taken" away after a time, even if it was only ever temporary, but the flip side is its not conductive to have a small player base travelling for 1 hour realtime to make a raid group. Will be interesting to see where this ends up

Another thought: what if all the major cities had a new/special NPC with a PotA god level difficult parley and each successful parley has a 40% chance to reward a shard, then combine like 10 of these shards to form a gem that could be clicked (no refresh) to buff a raid/group with a buff that took the place of a civic(s). Eliminates the aura necessity while still buffing a whole raid/group, doesn't require multiple people to farm it (though more than one person will help minimize strain on just 1 person clicking like 20 gems), make the shards stackable and make the full gem No Rent so that it disappears (allows farming/trading but makes the full gem expendable to continue farming/trading), would also help minimize travel/rift time, and if given something like a 30 minute refresh would be a decent grind outside raid/group times without creating an overabundance. Other things that could be done would be each city only has ONE (or maybe 2 or 3, one for each sphere/buff) of these NPC's so each NPC grants only ONE kind of shard (different shards/gems=different buffs) and like in PotA with the merchant civic, a new civic buff could be raised in the city to open up the special parley on the NPC.