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.
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.