Ramping up conflict

Achimrst

Aedin said:

Achimrst said:

(╯° _°）╯︵ ┻━┻ You are now free to complain about what I write!

┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) no

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Xith

Tvistor said:

Well, Xith, the thing is that even when you're right, I have an uncontrollable urge to hurl things around my room while casting ancient Wiccan curses upon your family name. I don't know why, but in a deterministic, utterly meaningless universe, I am forced to play along to my baser emotions in an effort to stave off onrushing oblivion.

So it is with great fatalism I now click 'Disagree'.

At least he's... honest?

Geraint

Anyways.. That's great, if its already been suggested. I dont know, I aint been here in 5 years. Im just saying.. if its already suggested by that many folks then it must be popular. Lets have your God meet my God and we'll mess up some red fog. Game plan? Break!

Lilley

I agree with Geraint in the sense that the forestal/evil standoff is not equal when it comes to offensive attacks.

Necromancers can Exterminate, and forestals can remedy that. But why don't the forestals have an equally-as-powerful ability that affects those that will harm the forests, and to counteract the forestal attack the necromancers have their own "Rejuvenate"? What I mean is, the necromancy ability to Exterminate is set out to specifically destroy the life in a natural room. That is THEIR attack directly on the forests. So, the forestals should have something that is equal to that, something that only affects a specific thing having to do with their enemies, much like how Exterminate only affects natural rooms.

There definitely should be a balance their, not just one party having the ability to affect something, and the other being able to fix it but not have a counterattack against the source of the aggression.

Edit: And normal attacks do NOT count as a counterattack.

Mishgul

attackign the red fog does not sound so amazing though because we are under no obligation to care about it that much.

Alrena

Well, we could go the very horrible route, and give forestals an ability to turn a room with fog... into a forest room. Flowganks galore!

And thornspray. Can't forget about that.

Lilley

there*

Eurulis

This conversation's been talked to death by now. The entire thing is unbalanced, and it's easy to see why. It was really bad at Shala-Khulia, where the forestal skills were changed mid conflict, but that's a long and dumb story for another time.

Oakstone's part of the problem. It's not really there for anything aside from existing as an entity where the mechanics for forest enemyment works through. There's little roleplay involved with it. That entire mechanic needs a reworking.

The other part of the problem is that the entire conflict demands that the forestals defend an area much, -much- larger than any city in the game right now. Playing defense is fine, but when your enemy plays by scorched earth tactics and has literally nothing to lose from it, then it's just... not fun. If Mhaldor were stopping harvesting from those rooms for X amount of time by doing that, then there would at least be this bittersweet defeat for the forestal side. It would be like literal scorched earth tactics, where they deprive themselves of cures! But with the advent of alchemists, that wouldn't work anymore. Of corse, I do enjoy the small bit of politics that goes along with it and so on. As it stands, Mhaldor just seems really petty with this now, like drunken hooligans as someone else put it.

When your enemy can enter in from multiple entrances, burn everything in their path, and just decide when they finish, that's not fun. There's no clear goal for the exterminators aside from "Provoke fight, laugh". And playing defense all the time causes you to just... get burnt out. You could fight back in conventional manners, sure, but when your enemy can go out to the forests and screw with you mid raid, that's not fun. Even if we had something like extermination on the forestal side that could possible lead to a MAD scenario, that's just not fun for the Mhaldorians either.

Forestals have no special way of counterattacking. Even if we had something like extermination on the forestal side that could possibly lead to a MAD scenario, that's just not fun for the Mhaldorians either. The concept of attacking the Red Fog has been thrown around for quite some time, but that's not the best way to go about it. That's just putting extermination into the hands of forestals. That is not a solution, that just spreads the problem to our friends on the other side. This should not happen. No faction should have to suffer this. It's dumb, boring, and has almost never lead to anything good.

Extermination itself is a funny little thing. In general, you have the chance to deprive a forestal of their entire sunlight reserves and gain a little essence, though that's less important now due to the staff, and completely blockable through preservation. Mechanics wise, it'd be dumb to do without backup due to it's thirty second (?) timer. Oakstone only gets the message when it's maybe five seconds to completion. This makes it a bit more balanced, but aside from the essence earned, it's really not there for much. Either the forestals are constantly on alert and the lone exterminator is ganked, or there's nobody watching and suddenly three rooms in the Ithmias are gone and everyone is scrambling to get there, giving the necromancer enough time to escape. Or the exterminator brings his buddies, as would be the smart thing to do, and it's essentially a normal conflict at that point. What -usually- happens, from what I've seen, is that Mhaldor brings ten or so guys who will camp in one room, exterminate it, move to another, camp it, exterminate it, and so on. Of corse, this tactic's probably changed lately.

I also feel that this is a deficiency in Groves. It's MPD, with half of it's abilities being only useable from the grove, and the other half being useable from the staff. Feels like one tenth of the abilities are absolutely useless as well (Eject, for instance, golem's only kinda useless, as you're not going to be fighting a competent exterminator in your grove half the time, and so on). I feel as if a complete divorce from the grove is required to help, though I'm not a combat expert here. Just what it feels like. Another discussion for another time, though I personally feel as if this contributes very slightly to the problem.

But as was previously stated, the administration's working on it. I just hope that the entire mechanic is stripped and replaced with something else. This was actually a big reason why I started playing an alt that wasn't forestal. This entire mechanic is just toxic to the entire forestal faction, and it's existance is pretty pointless from most perspectives aside from "Lulz, evuls".

Aktillum

Wait, someone please explain why forestals turning red fog into gardens is a bad idea? Someone who isn't typically a pacifist / non-combatant in-game, please.

Eurulis

Easy. Extermination sucks. Let's not curse the other side with something similar, even if it is on a smaller scale.

Aktillum

Extermination only sucks because you're on the receiving end. You'd change your tune if you had a retaliatory attack. Then you can just go back and forth until nobody actually cares anymore, like Icons.

The alternative would be emoting out the conflict, where every one gets XP for successful emotes and nobody has to feel bad about "losing" because it's all pre-determined.

Eurulis

Just because I can suddenly do the same to Mhaldor, does not mean it sucks less. It means that the misery is now spread around, and the conflict is escalated to the point where both sides are tired of it. See Shala-Khulia as an example. Nobody liked Shala-Khulia.

Aktillum

Eurulis said:

Just because I can suddenly do the same to Mhaldor, does not mean it sucks less. It means that the misery is now spread around

Dude. Spreading the misery around is exactly making it suck less. If someone illegally kills me, I get to hire on them twice, 2x the misery they caused me. Now I feel less miserable. Life is cyclical in Nature (get it? Nature?).

Shala-Khulia sucked because defending off-plane places with one or two methods of traversing there when only one side has any type of offense is clearly imbalanced, and for some reason Achaea has embraced imbalance for 16 years. I think "not every thing needs to be balanced" is usually the general populace's rallying cry, unless you're on the imbalanced side of things.

Eurulis said:

the conflict is escalated to the point where both sides are tired of it.

Yeah but then you can just blow up one of the cities and spend a few rl weeks as refugees.

Blujixapug

Aktillum said:

Wait, someone please explain why forestals turning red fog into gardens is a bad idea? Someone who isn't typically a pacifist / non-combatant in-game, please.

Against my better judgment I will wade into a forest conflict thread, and inevitably revive it and invite further regrettable discussion here. Woe unto us all.

- It's been suggested before (years ago, and probably a lot since then) and vetoed by Tecton for whatever reason. Not the mechanics specifically IIRC, but the notion of attacking the red fog, because 1. the red fog is Sartan's divine essence, so it's kind of weird for a bunch of scrappy mortals to be able to directly attack it, and 2. apparently the red fog has hella buggy code. (I may be incorrectly paraphrasing Tecton here, and these opinions may be years out of date, so don't quote me quoting him.)
- Because the red fog is confined to Mhaldor Island, it still amounts to a de facto city raid (without guards), as you're attacking/raiding the same general location, entering through the same choke point, etc. The red fog is not a widespread vulnerability equivalent to forestal defendable territory which extends to every jungle and forest room.
- Assuming you mirror all the mechanics of extermination, it's still a crap conflict system that 1. has no win condition, only "am I bored of this yet" 2. encourages timezone abuse waiting until the other side has few members online so you can attack and execute your channelled ability uninterrupted 3. basically amounts to vandalism, where you make a mess in a few rooms for the other side to clean up, rather than encouraging fighting over goals or whatever.

The problem it would solve is that under the present system, one side is only ever able to defend, while the other side is only able to attack. But if you're going to try and "fix" forest conflict at all, why stop there, why settle for that?

Aktillum

Blujixapug said:

hella buggy code

But if you're going to try and "fix" forest conflict at all, why stop there, why settle for that?

You guys are expecting miracles from 16yo legacy code made by an often drunken, college-aged Matt Mihaly (<3 you Sarapis). I just want that to settle in for a minute. I mean, they can't implement the most obvious solution because of buggy fog. What exactly are you hoping for?

Blujixapug

Aktillum said:

Blujixapug said:

hella buggy code

But if you're going to try and "fix" forest conflict at all, why stop there, why settle for that?

You guys are expecting miracles from 16yo legacy code made by an often drunken, college-aged Matt Mihaly (<3 you Sarapis). I just want that to settle in for a minute.

You seem to be misinterpreting what I wrote to try and make some strange point of your own, which confirms that it was a mistake for me to post in the first place.

Aktillum

No I understand your point perfectly clear, raiding red fog sucks because it's not in-tune with some strange concept that determined mortals can't strike at a God's essence, and it'd be a boring mechanic, and yada. My point is that we've obviously been waiting years for some alternative, which hasn't happened, and hasn't happened most likely because of technical limitations, so I'm trying to get to the root of exactly what you guys would like to see. Like, in your ideal Achaea, what is the realistic solution to this problem?

Eurulis

Ah, I see what your thinking is. You think that the misery is finite. That if we put it into two cups, that it'll be less. But the problem with that thinking is, it's a constantly growing thing. X does not equal 1, It's more like F(x)=x*2, where x is the number of times it happens (If my math is right). The cups will eventually overflow.

If you give the Red Fog the ability to be exterminated, then the conflict will be escalated to the point where it's no longer any fun, and just feels griefy. While yes, it would be nice to fight back, in the long run, it would be both sides dealing with extermination. It will not mean that both sides have less misery, it will mean that both sides are dealing with that misery now.

But you know what? Maybe Mhaldor would enjoy that. After all, I haven't seen any Mhaldorian speak up about the concept.

Aktillum

Blujixapug said:

- Because the red fog is confined to Mhaldor Island

So would the idea suck less if Mhaldor was able to spread the fog all over Sapience through (oh god, help me for saying this) rituals?

Every other conflict mechanic in Achaea operates under the idea both sides have an equal way to attack each other.

*City raids

*Shrines

*Icons

It's horribly outdated and begins to feel stale, but we're also playing a 16yo MUD running legacy code. I'm not trying to insult Achaea here because we all still find enjoyment in it, I just really want to drive the point home that Achaea is under very serious technical limitations, has less than a handful of overworked, paid coders, and things here tend to take an extremely long time to be implemented.

So please, please bear with me, and give me some original ideas that the staff might find worth implementing, so we can exit this vicious circle of "retaliatory mechanics suck balls".

Guy

I think it would be cool if cities could overlook some differences and form alliances (Targossas - Cyrene - Eleusis vs Mhaldor - Ashtan - Hashan) and start a gigantic world war to vanquish Evil/Chaos/Good/Forests/Hobbits/Mudbloods/Whatever.

Eurulis

The entire point he was making is that the mechanic as a whole sucks, and that something else needs to be put in place. Sadly, I cannot tell you what. At this point, I'm beginning to think that we need to do away with the entire concept and just work more on the War system, and settle the differences that way.

Eurulis

Guy said:

I think it would be cool if cities could overlook some differences and form alliances (Targossas - Cyrene - Eleusis vs Mhaldor - Ashtan - Hashan) and start a gigantic world war to vanquish Evil/Chaos/Good/Forests/Hobbits/Mudbloods/Whatever.

That happened before, and everyone worked very hard to split that up. It sounds good in concept, but in the end, just more of the same.

Edit:Spelling

Kyrra

Mmmm Mhashtan. Yes please.

Aktillum

Aktillum said:

So please, please bear with me, and give me some original ideas that the staff might find worth implementing, so we can exit this vicious circle of "retaliatory mechanics suck balls".

Eurulis said:

something else needs to be put in place. Sadly, I cannot tell you what.

:-w

And the circle-jerk continues.

No, I'll be fair. Focusing on the War system is an alright start, except it's like the same 14 faces in every city at this point.

Eurulis

Money where your mouth is, Aktillum. You're calling for original ideas, but it isn't easy to make something for this kind of conflict. Furthermore, people don't need to come up with ideas in order to criticize something. It sucks, but it's true. I'll expand on what I said previously, though.

I'm seriously beginning to think that it needs to be moved to the war system, where -everyone- can give input, not just forestals/Mhaldorians. Does it make it more generic? Yes, but it means it'll be easier to regulate. Is it the best idea? No, but it's better than what we have, in my opinion.

Edit: Did not see your edit there. Oh well.

Achimrst

My original idea I posted in here said Red Fog, but it really could be anything. I was talking about getting a reagent from the fog or from the lycopods that can be used to defend the forest, because that is what forestals do, that way it would do the same as extermination in a way. It would just be some annoying thing that stops the plants from dying and your extermination from happening. Sort of like the rite of preservation we use on our groves. It would be a temporary effect that is offensive and gives Mhaldor a reason to not want us to do it, also we would be on their island and they pissed about that all the time.

Aktillum

Eurulis said:

Money where your mouth is, Aktillum. You're calling for original ideas, but it isn't easy to make something for this kind of conflict. Furthermore, people don't need to come up with ideas in order to criticize something. It sucks, but it's true. I'll expand on what I said previously, though.

I'm seriously beginning to think that it needs to be moved to the war system, where -everyone- can give input, not just forestals/Mhaldorians. Does it make it more generic? Yes, but it means it'll be easier to regulate. Is it the best idea? No, but it's better than what we have, in my opinion.

I will happily spout off some random, not-really-thought-out ideas to get the Disagree train rolling.

-Allow Mhaldor to spread the fog all over Sapience, making them Public Enemy #1, as Evil rightfully should be. (inb4 Oblivion threatens us all blabla). Mhaldor citizens get bonuses for every percentage of Sapience taken over, kinda like how you see more gang members in territories you've gained in GTA: San Andreas. Give each city a way to throw crap into their fonts that counters the spreading of the fog.

-Make forest rooms regenerate on their own so nobody has to actually care about extermination. Alternatively, give Oakstone members the ability to rejuvenate ALL forest rooms in Sapience at once, at a cost to Gaia's essence (or whoever is forest god this month).

-Give forestals a way to attack Mhaldor itself with the forest, instead of the island. Instead of raids destroying rooms, raids create forest rooms inside Mhaldor, so the fortress gets wrapped in vines until they hack them apart.

-Whine and cry until the admins give Oakstone the ability to sever forestal ties with Mhaldorian druids, thus forcing them to rely on alchemy.

Nakari

-Whine and cry until the admins give Oakstone the ability to sever forestal ties with Mhaldorian druids, thus forcing them to rely on alchemy.

You do know that there are a grand total of two of us, right? And that the city is already wholly dependent on alchemy?

Aktillum

Nakari said:

-Whine and cry until the admins give Oakstone the ability to sever forestal ties with Mhaldorian druids, thus forcing them to rely on alchemy.

You do know that there are a grand total of two of us, right? And that the city is already wholly dependent on alchemy?

That's two too many. You could supply Mhaldor with herbs in the event everyone decided Alchemist is not worth playing, thereby negating any role-played trade embargo. So, keep your class, but be unable to harvest from the forests, similar to excom'd Priests who don't gain any devo points.

Eurulis said:

After all, I haven't seen any Mhaldorian speak up about the concept.

I think that's because they realize the futility of bashing their heads against a brick wall. Personally, I'm a masochist hell-bent on being inflammatory until we find a solution. The main problem I see here is very similar to the problems of Ashtan / Shallam. You've got one faction who loves to instigate PK conflict, and another faction who's shielding themselves with their hands crying, "Comeon guys, can't we emote this out?". Not a 100% accurate description, but the shoe fits.

Aepas

Would totally do fine with metamorphosis and weaponry as a druid, as long as I can swing staff which is a grove skill.

With the whole two forestals in Mhaldor though, I really doubt this would be a high priority. Gaia has already expressed her power over me by removing some of my abilities for a time. While potent to RP it really made no difference. Giving another faction the ability to sever ties would just add more annoying political nonsense especially if a druid from the merchants or some nonsense got enemied to oakstone. Since oakstone is mostly combined with Eleusis now, the politics get a little hazy at times. Aepas was (when he was a little newbie) enemied to Oakstone for raiding Eleusis for instance.

TLDR bad idea.

Mhaldor has no reliance on the forests. Only Nakari and Aepas do, and it's not like Mhaldor is hanging off their shoulders.

As much as I do enjoy seeing discussions about things, This is an argument from years and years ago. The admin know what you all think about it, so just hold on. I'm sure it will be fixed, but only after weapons (hope)