Virg, why do you always ask people what they think, then tell them that they are incorrect and state your opinion again as if it is fact???

That is how I might come across.. I think you are misunderstanding me- I am merely discussing what I think. In this case I believe I am right whilst Purg thinks he is right- with two completely opposing opinions it can be hard to find wiggle room between the two. As such I added a few points and summarized the general points I felt are worth mentioning (not just repeating myself).

The whole point of this is to see what others think, see if that changes your own opinion and then respond. It just so happens I was not swayed by Purg's post- there is nothing wrong with that.

What are players thoughts on an algorithm which changed guard hp based on how many homins are attacking? (Such a thing would obviously require testing to get the right formula).

Wouldn't make much sense that it gets harder to attack when you attack with a larger force.

Fair enough.

it's not like i never wnated to change smth.
i was often angry about the "bad" system, coz i was emotional!
But if you look at it from the side ..

1-2 years ago, there were "no hope" that something "big" could ever be added into game, so every one knew that the only and last mass pvp content will ever be outpost war. But for now, i think outpost (as it was announced - as pure Guild vs. Guild that is open for everything esle a guild want to do) is actually really good designed. more building could be added etc, but the basic war-system is very good and fair!
IF THEREWEREN'T 2ND PHASE - pleaso think of different time zones(!) - a american guild could attack some european at 18 pm local time ...and no one see it, when the "former owner" came online, it's already too late. worst case.

Outpost system seem to be "broken" or "bad" only because of the fraction part! it always was... that's doesnt work, coz it never was planed. For "Fyros - Matis territorial conficts" or "Kami and Karavan holy war" is needed an other playground. Outpost fight can still stay open for all, but the main confict should be transferred to another dimension. And since years outpost wars == fraction wars. But it is not true. And that's why i personally have a problem with "hardcore RP" guilds, wo even force this confilct in outpost battles and blame others who is "not that hardcore". Dear Hardcore RP guilds: look into the lore, where is that passage - saying that we left the "peaceful time" and are again in the religious war between the FOLLOWERS?
For that part, there were planned SPIRES. But they weren't released and are canceled forever, it seems.

Virg, you talk about annoyance of counter attacks and attacks at "unfair" times. So basically you and Xtarsia propose to change one annoyance to another one? With only one phase this option gonna be exploited, just like the GvG loophole with amassing guild-hoppers in attacking guild. I'm not sure what's more annoying - an attack on Monday 9 a.m. my time, or counter declaration.

Also, I think there is a technological issue. From my observations, Ryzom developers are - let me pick up the right word here - shy of messing with the game code. From what I understand, removing second phase would involve a lot of messing (I'm not a coder, so sheer speculation on my part here). Probably not gonna happen, as better not to fix what isn't broken.

IMO, the best possible solution to revive OP wars these days is removal of double XP bonus and bringing back XP crystals. I was thinking hard about it, but ruining of the old system is beyond my understanding. Rewarding loyal players with double XP? Give them some freaky title instead and that's it, they'll be happy and thanking you forever.

Today you need one hand to count all the OP's worthy of attack - Loria, Westgrove, Ginti, two Woodburns. OK, maybe I'm being hypercritical here, let's also consider their q200 versions. That's 10 outposts out of what, 28? All the others could be non-existent at this point, nobody cares. With crystals being out of game those are useless. (Before you correct me, jungle q250's are worthless, because cheng and greslin are pieces of monkey poo). There used to be pretty hot massive battles over q100 and q150 outposts - but now those days are gone and players bound to shuffle the same handful of outposts.

The Outposts were the last major content add-on before Nevrax vanished into oblivion. Now this content is half dead, half ruined. In the game were high-end content is scarce, removing or making obsolete (OP mat vendors? lolwut?) a big chunk of it with no replacement whatsoever - that's the move of SOE's NGE level.

One of the reason lower level OP's were fought over was that useful stuff could be made of the "tool mats". I.e., q50 rubbarn would make a useful rubbarn tool. Ditto for armilo. (There are some people who even find greslin picks useful, though I am in agreement with Tumbleweed that it's the least useful of all mats.)

Then came the merge and q50 armilo could only make a q50 tool. Wow... who makes q50 boosted sets (or even q90)? By the time you finished making one you would have leveled enough to make a q100 (and a q100 boosted set will be outgrown in a few days).

Note that this means that someone tweaked the existing code for tools as of 2012. That implies that at least that portion of the code isn't so complex.

So, since the devs seem to be resistant to the idea of returning to the one-level model of tools (based on comments in Oct/Nov 2012), I propose a way to make the lower level mats more interesting:

Option 1: Make it possible to make a tool out of lower level materials than the tool level, but with a chance of failure based on the difference between the two. (e.g. 15% chance for q50 => q250, 85% chance q200=>q250.) Failure would mean loss of the lower level material (this IS Ryzom... have a cookie).

Option 2: Allow stacking of lower level materials to make a higher level tool with a slight penalty. (e.g. 6 q50 rubbarn => q250 rubbarn tool, 3 q100 => q250, 2 q150, etc.)

@Tumble-

Firstly: Actually no need to change the game code. The beauty of this idea means that the OP war system would be converted/written on the new ARK tools. If this idea came to pass and everyone loved it- can keep it. If not, just a simple matter of switching the OP script back to the original and no harm done at all.

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Secondly: Yes I quite understand that people could attack at inconvenient times. The thing about this game is that there are players on at different times. Firstly- lets not forget you need a roundcount of ~14. This means having around about 2 teams I would say for a q250. Now I am just going to logic this out based on this time and my friends list which has about an even number of kara kami and a fair amount of maros. There are actually an even number of all online. So for people to launch a successful attack a decent handful of people are going to have to stay up late. So yes, some people may do this once, twice or even three times at a stretch- but the point is- if its generally inconvenient to defend at that time- it will be inconvenient to attack at that time. People will get fed up of staying up until 5 in the morning just to win an OP.

I understand the timing is an issue but I do not think it is a big one. This however, could be overcome by certain additional options. What if for example, the owners of the OP can choose 8 hours in which they can be attacked? I would be interested to see what you think on that.

I believe the permanent double xp was in response to a large body of unsubbed players- giving a big incentive to sub up. It would be logically what you say to bring them back- personally the thought of having to carry around cats again makes me want to throw up.

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@bittty-

I love the idea of making an occupation kinda thing to raise the quality of OP mats- such a thing would be simple enough to make. 6 q50 is very low though and remember people will have stockpiles and stockpiles of q50 and q100 mats.

little off topic but i didn't know there was a Q50 rubbarn OP. (or armilo).

however, there's always the idea of making ALL OP's produce Q250 mat's since you can make lower level items from the higher level mat's but not the other way around.

there's also the idea virg doesn't want me to speak about: a merchant that sells the OP mat's.
which would then make OP's a more pvp only thing. guilds that wanted to put in the pvp effort to control the OP's could do so, and others that normally don't PVP would have an alternative way to get the mats then being more-less forced to do without or try to get mat's via doing pvp at the wars to in hopes get a mat from the side they helped (if they win, that is). (fear not virg i'm not trying to derail your thread, i'm offering options and making points that are in favor of your basic idea: making OP's more fun for the players that like pvp. i'm simply trying to offer a way to help everyone, the pvp and pve community's alike.

there are some mat's that OP's make that are limited to only the highest blocks (vidice only comes in Q200 and Q250, thus there's nothing like that for lower level players without "wasting" a high level OP mat, which as an OP owner would maybe be ok, but for those that don't own the OP that "expensive" mat would be wasted to make say a Q150 item)

i also like bittty's idea of using more of the lower level mat's to "upgrade" the mat to a higher Q as that would make the lower level op's worth something again. (eg. 6 Q50 = 1 Q250)

this is one of those ideas that will have many possible options, some may not like the basic idea i promote (merchants) but this option works in favor of all play styles and it's hard to argue that it's not a fair option for all, because the OP's become more what they were intended to be: a PVP item. (the items made with the mat's from op's are good for pve players just as much as pvp players, so why is it that everyone's stuck on the idea they're only for pvp players?)

anyway i'll close saying that there is room for improvement in OP's in general but that because there are so many different play styles in ryzom it's hard to have any single change make it "better".

Talk -- I *know* there's a q50 armilo because I owned it before the merge. It comes from the Psykopla Knoll OP to be precise. You're right about the rubbarn; just 200 and 250. Greslin goes 100 to 250 and egiros 200, 250.

So, of the four tool mats only armilo really needs a path to higher quality.

Virg -- I wasn't thinking of a pseudo-occupation, but given what we've seen of uses of ARK, it ought to be simple and could be made to take any number of qxxx to make qyyy. My suggestion of 6:1 was based on an idea of the steady state not the immediate rush, and I think it's not unreasonable.

Tumbleweed, I think the main reason to remove the 2nd phase of OPs is not because counter declares are annoying and occur at unfair times, but rather to make OP wars more dynamic and frequent and to make OPs change hands more often.

At TH12 or so a smaller force could win an OP but it'd still require considerable manpower and strategy. And when planning an OP war you don't need to take 2 nights out of your busy week to make it happen, just 1.

About the unfairness of the attacker being the one to choose the time, there's tweaks for that. I like Virg's suggestion of the owners setting a "timeframe" of 8 hours in which they can be attacked. And the 24 hours declare can be stretched to 48h for example to give more time to prepare a defense.

As for the "useless" OPs, I really dislike the idea of bringing cats back. I think the rewards for OP pvp should be something unique and enticing, but nothing that completely shifts the balance of the gameplay. OP mats are great rewards, but not essential enough that folks can't go without them. The difference between "normal xp" and "double xp", on the other hand, is just too huge and too fundamental to the game experience to link it with OP pvp like this. I don't think it'd be fair to non-pvp players. I never liked the idea of cats and was very happy when they were removed (plus it works as a great incentive for people to sub).

I prefer the idea of converting a quantity of smaller quality OP mats into a higher quality mat. Although I think 6 q50 into 1 q250 would be too easy. I'd probably make it harder than that. Or alternatively, all OPs could have a % chance to yield a q250 mat. The smaller the OP level, the smaller the %.