Hi folks,

After observing recent conflicts, we've heard a lot of feedback on the desire for opportunities to participate in skirmishes without additional burdens. Specifically, without the labour of shrines, without the predictability of foci, and most importantly, without the risk of battle lines becoming blurred by involvement from those who do not necessarily have a direct stake in the conflict at hand.

In order to better encourage these conflicts and provide a way to settle grudges or disputes between organisations without risk of interference or battle fatigue from the fallout, we have created the battlefield system!

Battlefields are essentially a system for leaders to propose one-off skirmishes with one or more organisations. A battlefield is an instanced version of the original area that the skirmish is set up to take place in, intended for small PvP engagements without the risk of snowballing or undesired interference.

The full details can be found under HELP BATTLEFIELDS but there are a few key points I want to cover:

* The intention behind this system is to be a roleplay-driven PK mechanic, without mechanical rewards or features except for the battlefield isolation itself.

* Initiating battlefields is an investible privilege for guilds and orders. War ministers, war aides, and city leaders have this power by default in the case of cities.

* Results of battles that take place will be posted to the politics news board with a detailed breakdown of results.

* Anyone can spectate the battlefield from the base area and observe who is in your room from the battlefield equivalent of that room, along with most combat messages. This is one-way only.

* Only members of the involved organisations can join the battle directly, and there is no experience loss OR gain by default.

While there are a handful of terms and conditions that can be set already, we've deliberately kept this simple as a phase one release. We are however VERY willing to iterate on this system based on your feedback and ideas. Please feel free to make suggestions!

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 9th of Midsummer, in the year 498 MA.
Discuss this post on our forums:
https://forums.aetolia.com/discussion/4143/announce-post-3241-battlefields