Runes of Magic US / AU

Yeah, I fail to understand what they get out of doing this. Seige is designed somewhat to match you against equivalent teams. If you play correctly at your level you should win about 50% of your matches. And, they should be hard fought, fun seiges. IMHO, the best seiges are the ones that go back and forth and end in a tie. To come in and ROFLSTOMP your opponent because they cannot even scratch you...I do not see the fun in that. Kinda like stomping a puppy for the fun of it. If they want the badges, well there are easier ways to get those than this.

Quoted from "Auros"

Yeah, I fail to understand what they get out of doing this. Seige is designed somewhat to match you against equivalent teams. If you play correctly at your level you should win about 50% of your matches. And, they should be hard fought, fun seiges. IMHO, the best seiges are the ones that go back and forth and end in a tie. To come in and ROFLSTOMP your opponent because they cannot even scratch you...I do not see the fun in that. Kinda like stomping a puppy for the fun of it. If they want the badges, well there are easier ways to get those than this.

Not that they're point-droppers, but explain PPK. On the very rare occasions that PPK loses a siege, it's probably because only 2-3 members showed up.

There's a well-known and long-established guild on Reni with approximately 9-10 active members, 5-6 of them OP-geared and statted, that also has 2 or 3 alt guilds affiliated. Semi-active members in each of these associated guilds include alt guild leaders. These 5-6 players move from their original guild to their alt guilds a couple times each day or so, and will do a regular siege and one or two organized siege wars (declared wars). They do this because they 1.) like to beat up on other guilds in the below-1000 point bracket and 2.) like to collect 13 BoTs and 5 winning guild item packages (for the regular siege) if they win. With the declared wars, it's a matter of enjoying the destruction and humiliation of other guilds. The main guild is currently above the 1000-point bracket, the two alt guilds are below it. And yes, they will purposely lose declared wars on the alt guilds to drop their points far enough below the 1000-point level, probably by being no-shows.

If you've gone against any of these three Reni guilds, you will have recognized the characters involved.

I'm sure there are other guilds like this one, on Reni and on other servers. They're not necessarily mercs--after all, these are their own guilds. I know of several groupings like this on Osha, but they're not as blatant with their setups.

Don't ask, "Is it legal?", because under the EUALA and ToS, it is. Ask, rather, "Is it ethical?".

It's not. But then, aren't there other activities in virtually EVERY online game that are legal but unethical?

It might make one feel better to complain about the practice, but that's about it. Nothing can or will be done about it.

Just trying to understand what fun they get out of stomping on guilds that cannot compete. It can't be the badges and packages, because there are easier ways to get those..unless of course they have not figured that out. w/e, when we go against these guilds we just sit on top of the castle and wait it out..yeah, loads of fun there.

There fun in doing that is to feel great about themselves cause they remind me of that little kid kicking over your trash cans going to the end of the street yelling you suck. But 1 day they will realize someone will get them & beat them with a belt like the movie Friday. Best word that describes these players doing this, cowards.

I have noticed a trend that might help explain what you are seeing. You now get multiple siege war rewards a day, alot of players do siege in ABC guild at say 4pm then with DEF guild at 8 pm and finally siege war in there own guild at 12 pm. This way you build more rewards. Usually those other guilds are lower lvl. My guild has many of these "jumpy" players who go siege with other lower score guilds during the day. This is not to be unfair to anyone else, it is to get the titles. Most of them really only pot for the "real" sw in our own guild.

Back when there was only one siege war per day, I noticed this problem a LOT less.

Now, our guild has dropped below the 1,000 point level and has stayed under that point until just recently when we had a couple of no shows from Palenque boosted our score into the 1,000+ point range. If we have all our heavy hitters show up, this is where we should be (and we typically do have all our heavy hitters show up). Every once in a while (like a few nights ago) we go up against a VERY even match and the siege war came right down to the wire, and the SW point spread was around 100 points, But, in that 1,000 point range we get stomped and mutilated by other guilds which have more killers show up then Heretic and PPK put together (around 27), and all of them were actively fighting, not just merit farmers.

These types of people that are point droppers are in it for the numbers. "How many times can I kill that fail tank Jguy? Oh, there's my 16th kill of the night!". Case in point: The same guild we were up against mentioned above had about half their guild camped out between our B tower and the bridge. The other half were camped out between our A side bridge and the front of the castle (on that hill). They were impassible. 12-14 members all smashed in there would not let anyone pass through, even to take an island. They could have EASILY run up, tornadoed our gates and been into the castle and smashing our crystal in probably 20-25 minutes. Did they tornado or meteor shower a gate once? Nope. Instead they just sat there, racking up as much kills as possible. We stopped going down there and giving them the satisfaction. Soon it was just them standing there and us in our castle. Still, did they tornado a gate? Nope. Just sat there, waiting for us to come to our untimely demise.

So, we're forced to go into the lower point ranges which means we get the legitimate guilds that we stomp over because they're legit and we're lower points then we should be (because most of the guilds in the 800-1,200 point range shouldn't be there so we can't get up into that point range).

It doesn't just ruin the fun for the guild that you're up against, it ruins the fun for everyone else, too. I would love to have a rule against this sort of behavior or alternatively a way to PREVENT people from siege waring multiple times per day. Merc'ing, sure, I can see where that might be fun, but once you've gotten rewards that day, I don't believe you should be entitled to them again until the next day.

Quoted from "Jguy"

Merc'ing, sure, I can see where that might be fun, but once you've gotten rewards that day, I don't believe you should be entitled to them again until the next day.

This is the key to stopping it, They can still keep multiple siege times for convenience especially our european players but limiting badges to once per day will eliminate most of the mercing and the siege scores that vary all over the place. My players that want badges are going to merc until this is changed, why? because its smart. If you want titles this is a way to get them faster. The solution if gameforge even deems this a problem is to tie the once per day badges to players and not guilds.

Whatever the solution will be - it has to be a systematic change done by RW/GF.

You cannot just conceive an agreement not to do this, because the first one who breaks it will be in an advantaged position and the craving will be too strong for many. From this point of view - no point really in posting specific screenshots etc. (imho).

I'll tell you how it works for our guild (in .eu zone). When we play straight and struggle to win, over time we quite inevitably end up with quite large number of points. But at this point - we get spanked _every_ time. No fun, because of exactly the reason you describe. So - we do drop points. A bit. We noticed very clearly that once you get to a too low bracket your opponents will cheat _much_ more. Maybe they do get desperate by loosing a lot, maybe they are not experienced enough, maybe they did not win cleanly often enough to see that this is also possible and is actually fun. In any case - in a too low bracket there is no fun for us.

It seems that in .eu there are three or four quite stable "ranges/brackets" of guilds. As long as we stay in "ours" it's fun - sometimes we win, sometimes we loose, but the fight is more or less even. Over time we got to know our opponents from "our" bracket. We get frustrated by our mistakes or appreciate great strategy of the opponents. We still keep getting new ideas (or stealing some from the other guild, lol). It is fun. But to stay in "our" bracket at the current situation we do need to drop points from time to time... My feeling is that it's probably not optimal but it does work, and we don't drop so low as to "run over" the opponents (and anyway - the lowest bracket is pure rubbish @.eu).

Oh, and by the way we do play just one SW a day. The change in reward system would not change anything for us probably.