New methods of stopping travel

Dunn

Just been thinking a little bit recently about how widespread things like empress/earrings/deliver are. I'm guilty of having two of those things (many of one), but I think it's time for us to move away from having mass access to travel.

What I've come up with is something akin to a monolith sigil that you activate in your inventory. While it is activated, it acts as a monolith sigil for the entire room. Further uses could be discussed such as having the same properties as a monolith, but perhaps with the added benefit of blocking earring use into and out of the room. It should be an activated thing that remains active for a set time and out of control of the user otherwise it removes the cons of use.

This could be either a Crown item or a reasonably expensive artifact given its power. I think the double-edged sword nature of it justifies it blocking things such as earrings/empress/deliver. 

I could see this being a buff to grave hands/piety/tentacles, though, which none of us really want.

Discuss.

Fitz

I don't think it's a bad idea....

But...

The price is either going to be exorbitant because of the power if it has a relatively decent up time, at which point only those with the wealth to have it will have it and those that don't will have something else to whine about. See: Earrings and Veils.

Or...

It has a really shitty cost in addition to the credit/crown price like it wipes out half your eq/endurance or makes you more readily killable by increasing your incoming damage or something equally bad.

Solution:

Delete Targossas

jk

Dunn

Was thinking of a cooldown on it as well. Once an hour or something.

Fitz

One hour cooldown, few minute uptime?

Xith

My initial thought is that it should last 15 minutes on activation and be useable once per Achaean month.

Dunn

Was thinking five minute uptime so that you had to use it situationally and couldn't just have it up forever.

Strata

If it were on some sort of timer, Mhaldor/Targ would just wait in guardhouse/barracks for the timers to expire.

Edit: not to mention how something like this could affect infiltration. If something like this were implemented as an artefact, it could work like this:

At a high balance or equilibrium cost (such as how long it takes to touch a crystal tattoo), you can afflict it upon someone and they will be unable to use any form of quick travel (emp, wings, earrings, deliver, worm warps, gallop, dash, etc. - basically the only thing they can do is walk one room at a time) - This affliction should last a short period of time (say 1/2 a minute), and the timer ticks twice as fast if the afflicted person is not in the same room as the person who afflicted it.

I don't like the idea of it being a simple room-wide thing on a timer because once people understand how it works, they'll just figure out a way to bitch themselves out of it. Making it only work against one person at a time as a timed affliction could still give the desired effect (which I'm assuming Dunn just wants bitches to stop being bitches), but still leaves an (albeit slower) avenue for escape as opposed to the triggered PT ZOMG I'M IN MELEE empress/earring/whatever.

Edit2: Oh and I forgot to mention: There should be a cooldown timer when using it. Say if the affliction lasts for 30 seconds, you shouldn't be able to re-activate it for 45 seconds. (regardless if the person left the room and hastened the timer)

Having it only work on one person instead of an entire room would stop people from sending some chump into the room to activate it, and then LoS'ing the entire group anyway - which would be worse than the current situation of things.

Keywords being "could" here for you WTF'ers who don't wish to say why my thoughts on this idea are WTF.

Strata

Dunn said:

Discuss.

Dunn

Make it so you can't give it to anyone or using it produces a def/aura that doesn't transfer if you do...? I said there should be a cooldown on it. Did you read OP and following posts?

I could see this as an auction item, really.

Bambizlo

Eh, why not make it simpler: After X number of "free" usages in a game-day it requires (X - free usage) seconds of uninterrupted channel to go through. This minimally impacts non-combative use and infiltration while still addressing the escape aspect.

For example: Let's say earrings of sinope allow 2 free usages per day that work like they do currently. The third usage would require a 1 second channel, fourth usage would require a 2 second channel, etc. The channel would be interrupted by anything that prevents equilibrium usage on message tick. Once the day turns over, this counter resets.

Dunn

Yeah good luck convincing any of the coders to go for that. That's a nightmare.

Bambizlo

Eh, the only complication is the channel time which can be further simplified to just be a static timer, everything else would just be a cut and paste of other channeled abilities.

Cathy

Orb of Confinement

  - Stops people from rising to the skies when turned on by someone in the

    Ministry of Security. This includes all types of flying, including

    Eagle's and Atavian's wings.

  - Cost: 5 million gold + 100 DPs.

Something like this.

Kyrra

Only those wings? I'm all for that.

Bambizlo

Heh, if that stopped all forms of travel, it'd have to set a defending city much further back to use.

Katzchen

The problem with the orb is it effects citizens, so it's near useless... if it effected only enemies or non citizens we'd suddenly see every city with one. It could make things interesting.

Cathy

The point is that it is a burden to have, and you'd only activate it when you needed to. It would stop all the earring in and out of raid areas etc. The security ministry could deactivate it whenever they are done. The cost of defending your city against some things should be felt by the people too in my opinion.

But yes, I expect it would have a font-like power, where you can use it, then you need to go quest or whatever to refill it's power.

Bambizlo

Well, my major concern about upgrading an orb of confinement to include more forms of travel is that city defenses already have quite a few advantages to being on home territory including, but not limited to totems, guard stacks, font, no xp-loss. Adding another layer of passive defense on top of that isn't going to turn the tide in a fight. It'd essentially just encourage raiders to come with more to have the odds be more favorable or just raid when no security is around to turn on the improvement. Additionally, it doesn't do a thing against border raids or other skirmishes outside of defendable. So, at best, all it would do is limit city destruction, which seems counter-productive to the whole point of the system in the first place.

Cathy

I would actually disagree. I think removing earring from raid offensive capabilities would just lead to less lolz-raids, where someone pops in, a group earrings to, then a few things are attacked, then they earring out.

Edit: Also, I didn't mean extend the Orb of Confinement, I was suggesting a new upgrade, highly expensive that would just deal with "instant travel" such as earrings, empress, deliver - the things that are instant (excluding portals for instance)

Blujixapug

I hate the idea of solving artifact-creep by releasing another artifact.

Achilles

Easier solution is to just delete earrings (should also look at puppet travel/summon then).  The other travel skills whether its empress, deliver, raido, portals, pilgrimage are blocked by monoliths and now that you can't just drop 50 flamed monoliths its a good balance between sacrificing your own escape options versus your opponents.

Fitz

I agree, delete Earrings. I get by with out them.

because no one likes me

Kyrra

Might as well delete all forms of travel that aren't walking then.

It's highly frustrating to be out hunting or doing something on the other side of the continent and having my raido fail because some serpent was bored and decided to waste a couple hundred monoliths around a city.

Most of my earrings are for convenience of getting around, especially when hunting. I'm less likely to go walking into some loose roaming ur'Vamp after getting stunned by some undead thing since I can immediate travel and follow and keep going.

I know I am in a minority here but not everyone is a raider.

Why not change earrings to be similar to the pebble portal to Meropis? Only work for one person and disallows follow. It would be a much better compromise.

Fitz

Would need a price reduction then

Kyrra

Well, it's 400cr when split between two people which isn't that excessive.

I paid the full 800cr for all the earrings I wear, which is a little high but it's on par with buckawns and shackles etc. I think worm sticks are the same price.

Price is still justified in my opinion.

Katzchen

Not allowing people to follow would be nice for the actual intended purpose. It'd be a semi buff, semi nerf too. Nerf for combat situations, buff because it'd help it be less of a security risk when traveling into a house hall, house, order area, etc.

Another solution would be to only be allowed to wear one at once, with a short balance on wear/unwear during which time you cannot travel.

Melodie

All of the above, please.

Iocun

One of the major problematic thing about earrings is that you can spam their command, unlike wings for example, making them far more viable to use them in tiny gaps when you are unhindered. If earrings had a two second delay between using the command and making you travel (and making hindering restrictions count at the moment of actual travel), that would be fixed and their escape potential would be seriously reduced. It would slightly reduce utility as well, but not very much.

Xith

Achilles said:

Easier solution is to just delete earrings (should also look at puppet travel/summon then).  The other travel skills whether its empress, deliver, raido, portals, pilgrimage are blocked by monoliths and now that you can't just drop 50 flamed monoliths its a good balance between sacrificing your own escape options versus your opponents.

Partially correct, except that both Jester and Shaman lost what little raid utility they had with the star/thurisaz changes.

Removing earrings would make jesters and shamans relevant/necessary for that escape tactic alone.

(Now that I think on it, forcing melee is good for tarot/curses, but fixing earrings would be nice)

Kyrra

Iocun said:

One of the major problematic thing about earrings is that you can spam their command, unlike wings for example, making them far more viable to use them in tiny gaps when you are unhindered. If earrings had a two second delay between using the command and making you travel (and making hindering restrictions count at the moment of actual travel), that would be fixed and their escape potential would be seriously reduced. It would slightly reduce utility as well, but not very much.

There is a delay when you arrive though. Takes EQ from memory. Sure you can spam it getting it to work (I held down my alias key when Bella was last strolling around her keep) but you can't spam it over and over for use.

Used to be able to but that was changed a while ago.

Alrena

Kyrra said:

One of the major problematic thing about earrings is that you can spam their command, unlike wings for example, making them far more viable to use them in tiny gaps when you are unhindered. If earrings had a two second delay between using the command and making you travel (and making hindering restrictions count at the moment of actual travel), that would be fixed and their escape potential would be seriously reduced. It would slightly reduce utility as well, but not very much.

There is a delay when you arrive though. Takes EQ from memory. Sure you can spam it getting it to work (I held down my alias key when Bella was last strolling around her keep) but you can't spam it over and over for use. Used to be able to but that was changed a while ago.

The EQ cost isn't long at all, and usually you'll be safe enough once you arrive to escape death.