It is a "game of life"; creating rules and then lean back and see how they evolve. The measure of success is, by necessity, the death rate, if the objective is to stimulate growth, but within any set of rules there is a population that is optimal and others that are less optimal. The Shrines of Bori match this very well.. the rules are nice, the idea is nice, but the success isn't a clever idea, it is lasting "Fun in a PvP area" (to not bring up the topic of whether actual fighting is necessary for PvP). This was introduced with the promise of rewards, but personally I realized I would not get them until the next tier was introduced and the requirements slacked, so I just wanted some fun, and a few tokens as recognition.
The population mechanic got in the way, though. Sure, any guild will go with six people to get optimal rewards - at the start. The moment they get real resistance, they will number up until that is no longer the case. The Zerg, in fact, always wins. That'd be fine if those who try got a little back, but realistically you can never take on a zerg with a smaller group and make a sacrifice. Many smaller groups could, but we never get there, because people dying to a zerg get nothing - no win, no fun fight, no reward.
Thus we get the facts of Bori; while people could stand up and make it work, they won't. Not because they have a crazy idea of fun, but because the mechanics of Bori encourage this behaviour among them. The theoretical design model may not, and has the best intentions, but it turns out it was not based on reality. I won't take "hey, it is your choice" for an answer why this is true, it is design applied to reality, and that's it.
I'd believe that what we need is ways to get A: fun (fights, probably) and B: rewards, EVEN while trying to beat the zerg. Sure, smaller, Bori is about domination, but nevertheless people will need a motivation to take up a fight against a zerg. Back in the days, you could sneak a kill and get some PvP-Xp, but this has no real bearing anymore. But we need something similar.
Personally, one change I'd consider is the option to make smaller sacrifices, i.e. when the altar is not full. That'd liven up the gameplay in two ways, first from giving the option to sneak some resources and make a sacrifice under the nose of a zerg, whose challenge is then to spread out and try to stop them, and second in that you can "pick a fight" with the zerg by these smaller sacrifices impeding the progress of the zerg (though not as much as a full sacrifice, obviously). The first offers the potential for reward for standing up to the zerg, the second makes it harder to uphold "gentleman's rules" or win by farming power alone.
I'd suggest a quadratic curve on the rewards, or something similar, but the fact is we'll get nowhere if we don't accept that system design affect player behaviour, and that a lot of us want to change the player behaviour.. since we get discouraged from doing that ourselves, we'd like the system to help us.
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Age of Conan Europe Forums
So... What's next?
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Aquilonia PvP-RP
i am sad to say.
