Very simple Celorn. Here's a break down of how things have proceeded in this event and my views on the above discussion. And this is my third time trying to post this silly post hence its somewhat polished appearance. I had time to cut and paste it, twice, after getting booted off the forums lol. (Maybe I tried to say too much)
In relation to this relic war being simple numbers, it basically concerns numbers in two dimensions. There is the point scoring dimension as in being able to capture relics, and the player dimension broken down into two parts; actual number of players (where players = high level toons with effective gear and game experience) and amount of hours available to devote to the game. Whoever has superior amounts of both will most likely win. I say most likely because there is the means of scoring that must be considered.
No faction can score points for holding relics. You must take them. Once they have been taken, you can’t score anymore points. The only manner for the faction holding the relic to score points again is to allow a raider to take a relic out of there cradle. A raider’s ability to score is made more difficult by the fact that a raider cannot score any points for securing their own relic. You must capture another faction’s relic in order to score points. So a raider who has just removed his own relic from the cradle has just given the defender an opportunity to score a point.
Now lets combine these two dimensions and apply them to this event. The NC technically took the lead at the start scoring 5 quick points. LA took 6 back but was unable to score any more points. As soon as LA was unable to mount an effective defense, the NC could have retaken the lead. Hypothetically, these two factions could have traded back and forth and with the proper timing, the NC could have won. However, I think many saw the score and thought that they must retake the lead and tried to gain points while LA had 10+ defenders.
I remember the outrage non-LA players had when Gonzo was attacking people trying to raid LA on the first day. Especially once LA had lengthened their lead from 6 to 5 at the start to 9 to 5. As far as scoring potential went we would have been able to retake the lead, and as stated above, still had a chance to win. Why we could not impress upon people the importance of letting LA keep the relics and thereby not allow them to score anymore points boils down to an inability to communicate the above. I think we assumed that a lot of people already understood what we knew and even when it was obvious that they didn’t know, we did not do a good job of communicating how things worked. Compound the lack of communication with an uncertainty on our part as it related to scoring, such as not receiving a point for capturing your own relic. I remember voicing a concern to some faction-mates but I wasn’t certain in my language or my mind that we could not score by capturing our own relic.
Additionally, there’s a general tactical rule of thumb that if you want to mount a successful assault/attack you must achieve 3 to 1 odds in combat power. Combat power can be generated by pure numbers, superior firepower, or less tangible elements such as surprise. People kept raiding in parties of 4 or 5 against twice as many defenders. If you think about it, you kill a defender and he respawns and is buffed and back in about the amount of time it takes for the relic cradle to become defeated allowing a raider to take one relic. If you can't kill the defenders fast enough, you can't regain your own combat power, casters run out of spells, buffs run out, and you don't get a chance to rest while defenders are rested and ready to it you even if you do get a chance to get out. Unless you have the numbers/power to secure the cradle in its entirety allowing your raiding force a chance to rest and recoup you don't stand a chance.
Now for the meat of the matter, the superior amount of quality players that LA can bring to bear at all hours of the clock is made evident by the score. I haven’t checked it today purely because I didn’t want to get depressed
(wrong I checked an hour or two ago 41-22 LA to NC). It makes no difference, LA has such a commanding lead now that NC or any faction for that matter would have to get multiple (for NC at least 10 [wrong 20+]) recaps and prevent LA from obtaining any captures at all just to get back in the game. As it is LA can let the rest of the factions take the relics and even capture them, as long as they are the faction to recap. If they let individual factions score individual points, they will be permitting themselves to rocket the score up even more, while permitting the other factions to score less.
The purpose of the event is to establish which faction is the most powerful. I doubt that there was any question beforehand about which faction was the most powerful. However, now there can be no doubt.
As far as exploits go, I haven’t seen any, just lots of raiders with “high” hopes.
As to the question of how RK won the last event? First and foremost, MD’s took themselves out of participation in the event, I think cuz it was their idea. Additionally, RK had 5-6 dedicated high level toons that were a match for anything any of the other factions brought to bear. The NC stayed in the running purely through “thief in the night” tactics and determination. In fact the question of who was going to win was still in doubt until a disastrous raid by a party of 5 or 6 NCers who decided to try and run the gauntlet of RK defenders piecemeal rather than together (Yes Blystos, you gave the order to try and run the guantlet individually, and individually our raiders were cut down in the dwarven tunnels, superporcupine has never forgiven you for that one ;P [jk]). The first three were slaughtered as they left and the remainder was then taken down in the cradle by their lonesomes. As a result RK took a commanding 10+ point lead with less than 18 hours to go (if I remember correctly). I was not in the party, and yes I did advise them to stay together, but what did I know, I’m just a noob. Having said that, there was no guarantee that even if they went together they could have all gotten away, considering that RK had lots of monks and one of the best (if not the best) cleric on the server. NC had numbers in players, but not in high level toons. The only reason why we stayed within reach is that we had more manhours to play than they did, otherwise head to head, RK won every time.
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