Ramping up conflict

Tekk

Mishgul said:

this is different because the problem is time being wasted, not things being overpowered.

Overpowered = time wasted and loss of fun
Mechanic working as designed = time wasted and loss of fun

The end result certainly feels the same.

Geraint

So, we all (mostly) agree that either we need to remove extermination or add in a like-skill for Forestals.

I am personally for a skill for Forestals to react with. Alternatively, I would like it considered to bump it up on the Oakstone level. This would give more range to the amount of people who can do it and add some desire back  into the Org. Also, if there is not a like-Org for Mhaldor they need one to do the same. Fair stations, there.

We know the Admins have read the forum so.. if its not possible, just say so. We're fine with that. If it is, are you considering it or already trying to implement it?

Sarapis

It has been considered in the past, and hasn't been implemented, which is all I'll say. Something like it may or may not be implemented in the future.

Guhem

Sarapis said:

SOON™

Sarapis

That is distinctly not what I said, to be clear @Guhem. I'm not telling you anything like it will ever happen, at all. There are some foresty changes in the works in the very near future, but they aren't that.

Guhem

Sarapis said:

That is distinctly not what I said, to be clear @Guhem. I'm not telling you anything like it will ever happen, at all. There are some foresty changes in the works in the very near future, but they aren't that.

Sorry Just hoping for them to come soon.

Seftin

Sarapis is just trolling eleusis and its epic.

Borran

You could give grove-users the ability to make any room a forest room, but it only lasts 1 Achaean day, unless tended, which will extend it another Achaean day. Extermination counters this ability, returning the room to its previous state. Grove preservation could serve as a defense against Extermination, and would be removed when extermination is used the first time.

Edit: I don't know how this would solve any of the current extermination conflict, but it'd sure be useful for grove users- I'm sleepy and nonsensical. G'night, all.

Bambizlo

Keep in mind that mechanically-speaking, forest rooms add a tremendous amount more power to forestal classes than red fog makes to necromantic classes (adds essentially nothing).

If forestal classes were able to create their own forest rooms, forest-only abilities (IE. thornspray) would probably need to be hit with a nerf hammer pretty hard as its balancing point currently is terrain.

Exelethril

Sarapis said:

That is distinctly not what I said, to be clear @Guhem. I'm not telling you anything like it will ever happen, at all. There are some foresty changes in the works in the very near future, but they aren't that.

@Sarapis : Are there plans to address the one-sidedness related to forestal conflict and exp loss? Other cities besides Eleusis don't suffer exp loss within their defendable territory/city but forestals defend a much larger area with arguably lesser defenses(no guards/totems) yet still suffer exp loss from outside Eleusis.

Also, given that exterminations are unique to Mhaldor vs Eleusis, it's unfair that one side gets to freely damage all the time at it's convenience and the other has to repair at a cost.

Synbios

I forgot if this was suggested, but why not have exterminated rooms 'regenerate' after a given amount of time(a few hours, probably)? You can even have an event like Gaia empowering the forests with her divine essence, permanently imbuing the forests with 'the greater resilience of Nature'. 

Iocun

@Exelethril: this may open a can of worms. Will shrine defenders be spared of xp loss too? Occultists defending the chaos plane from trespassers? Cities defending allied villages? GoM defending Moghedu? House members defending their icon?

Rangor

@Iocun: Everyone has shrines, No one but occultists can get to the chaos plane, most cities have villages they will or won't defend, GoM defends moghedu as much as they want and when they want to, in fact it is the defenders that "initiate" the conflict, nishnatoba is very equal to all sides and has had praying/xp costs/andsoon adjusted for it's own sake.

Iocun

Rangor said:

@Iocun: Everyone has shrines, No one but occultists can get to the chaos plane, most cities have villages they will or won't defend, GoM defends moghedu as much as they want and when they want to, in fact it is the defenders that "initiate" the conflict, nishnatoba is very equal to all sides and has had praying/xp costs/andsoon adjusted for it's own sake.

Not everybody has shrines. If I, as an orderless person, defile your order's shrines, you have no way of responding in kind. This can make shrine conflict just as one-sided as forest conflict.

Not all cities have allied villages either - Cyrene doesn't. If Cyrenians attack Enverren, Mhaldor can't respond in kind.

Then we're getting into the question of who it is that "initiates conflict" and how much freedom to choose whether to defend a particular thing/idea is to our characters.

In essence, it's the same here for all kinds of conflict: Group A has a certain RP stance that causes them to care about a particular thing and calls for them to defend it. Group B chooses to harm that thing. Group A now has to decide whether to "defend" or not. If they "defend", that typically means initiating violence against group B.

This is the same for forestal conflict, defending player cities, defending allied villages, or defending shrines. In principle, all of those are entirely opt-in for the "defenders", yet depending on our RP, we may not feel entirely free to just ignore it and thus feel forced to defend. There's no fundamental difference between someone exterminating a forest room and an Eleusian choosing to attack him for it, someone hunting Mhun and a GoM member choosing to attack him for it, or someone defiling a shrine and an order member choosing to attack him for it. In all cases, it was the first person who acted in a provocative way and the second who chose to let it come to combat.

Apart from all this, making all forests an xp-loss free zone for all Eleusians would be over the top anyways, as it wouldn't only be used for forest defence. It would also give Eleusian PKers a quite huge part of the game world in which they can attack others (who might not be harming nature at all) without risk.

Rangor

I feel like I have discussed this before. I refer you to earlier threads on the same topic, arguing the same things, over and over and over and over.

Iocun

Those threads must have had boring titles. I don't read threads with boring titles.

Sarapis

Synbios said:

I forgot if this was suggested, but why not have exterminated rooms 'regenerate' after a given amount of time(a few hours, probably)? You can even have an event like Gaia empowering the forests with her divine essence, permanently imbuing the forests with 'the greater resilience of Nature'. 

They already do actually (unless something is broken).

Alrena

Sarapis said:

Synbios said:

I forgot if this was suggested, but why not have exterminated rooms 'regenerate' after a given amount of time(a few hours, probably)? You can even have an event like Gaia empowering the forests with her divine essence, permanently imbuing the forests with 'the greater resilience of Nature'. 

They already do actually (unless something is broken).

They do, but it takes a full in game year, soooo we can't exactly just let it slide unless it's on an island or something. I highly doubt, the way forestal RP is as it is now, that anything over an IC day would be acceptable for 90% of Eleusians. 

(The other 10% don't care anyway.)

Sarapis

You can't? Of course you can! Your RP is your choice! A day, a year, makes no difference to nature. A year is a blink of an eye to nature. 

Alrena

Well, yeah. But for us, that's 12 days of walking through a dead EI, with every room screaming "YOU FAILED" at us. So... yeah.

Sarapis

So, it sounds like the issue isn't nature or the forest, but pride? I don't mean that in any sort of passive-aggressive way, incidentally.

Otherwise, why would it matter whether it's in the eastern ithmia or on an island? Is nature on an island less nature-y? 

Fitz

Sarapis said:

So, it sounds like the issue isn't nature or the forest, but pride?

Eleusis lion morph, imo.

Yae

I understand that there needs to be a balance. Nature healing too quick can make us lax in our duties to protect the forests from extermination. It'd also make it semi-hard to check naturalism if we missed it.

For the forestals, Nature is first and foremost. I think it's great that they can heal themselves, whether in a year or in several years. A vague way of saying that Nature is strong enough to grow again, on maybe even over bigger things.

However, aside from exterms on distant islands (though some of us still make those long sails anyway), making the forests heal itself within a year really makes little difference to forestals when it concerns the main forests for the reason Alrena mentioned. All the forestals care deeply for what they protect, otherwise we would not be in this faction, and the RP to say that it can heal by itself in a year so no need to fix it is somewhat neglectful RP.

Well, that's our choice to RP like that. It's the way a forestal character would think right now, and would take quite a bit of meta gaming for them to think otherwise. And, we'd still be given rather disdainful stares.. Because, well. You don't see a building on fire as a fireman, and say that it'll put itself out in a few years.

Tesha

You could always take the Mhaldorian approach and let it stay dead and use it as proof that Nature overcomes all. 

Mhaldor does the same thing - if they win, it is oppression. If they lose, it is suffering. No beating them!

Alrena

Yeah, we -could- take "the Mhaldorian approach", but that means there's also no point in defending the forest in the first place. If we just say "Oh, Nature can protect itself", then we're basically saying that we're not needed, and the forestal faction loses all relevance. In a lesser way, we -can- use that, though. Even if we lose, we can say "Nature endures" and move on.

I wouldn't say this is so much as a pride thing, as it would mostly go against the RP that has been established by Eleusis and Oakstone for ages now. Without a serious change, preferably involving a forestal Divine, that's not going to change. Like Yae said, if one of us says "It'll heal itself", it's frowned upon as "not doing your job". The fireman analogy is pretty good, actually.

edit: and the reason the EI matters more is because it's our doorstep. Exterming in a far off island is one thing, but exterming in the EI is considered a direct challenge to Eleusis.

Sarapis

Yae said:

. You don't see a building on fire as a fireman, and say that it'll put itself out in a few years.

No, because buildings don't fix themselves. Nature does. As a steward of the forest irl for instance, not only do you sometimes stand by and let fires consume vast swathes of forest (as forest destruction is a natural thing), but you may sometimes burn them yourself if too much undergrowth has built up as a result of unnaturally suppressing forest destruction throughout the years.

It's completely understandable that forestal attitudes evolved as they did because for a long time, Nature in Achaea could not heal itself.

Shirszae

@Yae This talk has been had so many times now. I just don't think it is true that changing your rp requires meta-gaming. Characters, like people, evolve and change their ideas and opinions. They don't have to be drastic changes, like outright letting nature always heal itself. But the fact is that nature does heal itself.  Realize that you can acknowledge defeat and say, "This too will pass" without having to beat yourself over it if you just don't feel like repairing everything in a sitting. Without having to make the game unenjoyable for yourself.

Also, for the love of holy, don't go 'this is the way a forestal character would think' but 'this is the way MY character would think.'

As it is, I think I agree with @Sarapis. 

Sarapis

Btw, this isn't to dismiss the frustration some of you feel OOCly over forest conflict. That's totally valid and not something that can be argued with. You feel what you feel.

Rangor

Lol, we're going to continue to RP as a faction devoted to the protection of Nature. I don't want my faction to be based around things like... sip tea, hug fairies and laugh at the silly Mhaldorians who futively try to kill the forests. We already got cyrene and Hashan for that.

I want Eleusis to be a faction where "zealotry" is the norm, where even the non-coms engage and participate in world-wide conflict, ignoring attacks on what we're devoted to is ridiculous.

I don't mind the game being hardcoded the way it is, but it does suck for those who don't WANT to be fighting every second they are logged in. It does put some rawr into the snugglebunnies though.

And @sarapis should stop encouraging us to turn into another boring faction with weaker ideals than what we have now. I'd like the game to remain fast paced, action based, with lots of conflict. I wouldn't mind it if things were changed so we aren't mostly on the defensive though.

Yae

@Shirszae
I am sorry.