Exterminations vs Rejuvenation

Athelas

Let's face it, extermination is an incredible game mechanic that is absolutely necessary for the game. Things would be incredibly boring without some kind of bad guy, and as much as Mhaldorians are hated, they do provide the game with incredible interactions that are absolutely necessary for Achaea to remain interesting.

Exterminations are, in my view, a mechanism through which a player can say something like: "I wan't a fight, not just a spar, but a legitimate RP fight, and I want this RP to have consequence both for my character and those I play with!". This kind of thing is critical for a game like Achaea, and absolutely necessary for the continued conflict between forestalls and necromancy users.

The problem here, is that some players can not see the difference between using it as a tool for RP and being an OOC troll with it. So, I've spent a bit of time to see if I can't gather my wits on it, and provide something of a mechanic that would retain the current conflict, while removing the potential for being a OOC troll.

Each one of these ideas, is meant to be a balancing mechanism in and of itself. Not all of them are required, only one should do.

My first suggestion is a completely defensive one, and probably the most realistic/interesting.

1. Counter extermination potential through preservation.
Currently, a preserved grove can not be exterminated. Alter this, so that a Groves user can preserve multiple forest areas, not just his/her grove.

In order to make sure one will never be in a a situation where every single forest area is preserved, I suggest that this is done through porting one's grove, and preserving that ported spot.
Yes, this basically boils down to a forest area remaining preserved for the year, after the ported-grove through which it was preserved, unifies.

I find this a workable mechanic because:

1. Only trans groves users will be able to do this because of the porting requirement.
2. The sheer cost in quarterstaffs will prevent the over use of this ability.
3. The sheer cost in time/planning, will require a dedicated forestall player.
4. This mechanism allows for Exterminations and Rejuvenations to remain un-changed.

As a side note, I think this will also drive sales of the Yggdrasian Splinter. It isn't exactly stellar in use right now, because it's little more than a quarterstaff that doesn't decay. Having a quarterstaff that allows you to bypass the cost of sunlight in obtaining one from your grove, will make the item a little more attractive to players.

2. Improve Rejuvenation and reduce it's cost
I've suggested this elsewhere, but don't know how realistic it is.

This idea boils down to the removal of material cost for doing a rejuvenation, and replanting. i.e. The act of rejuvenating a room, no longer requires elemental ice, while also replanting the room with at least one of each plant tipe.

I find this idea balanced because: It's a direct counter to players doing exterminations for the purposes of trolling. In that it caries no cost in either material or time. i.e. Rejuvenations become as easy as exterminations, with similar costs involved.

3. Add a cost to doing exterminations
This boils down to making exterminations as expensive in time and material as rejuvenations are.

i.e. Change Exterminations so that it requires Elemental Fire in order to do, set the scarcity and gold cost of Elemental Fire, to be the same as elemental ice, and balance will be achieved naturally.

Yes, this does mean that the one wanting to troll, can still do it, but at least there is a curb involved and the number of exterminations are limited to the availability of Elemental Fire.
i.e. Exterminations become as expensive as rejuvenations.

In order to add the time expense, one builds in the requirement for a longer time lapse. Currently it takes around a minute to replant a room if all things are available and set. So, increasing the time it takes to do an extermination, while still maintaining the detection times on Oakstone side as they are currently, will balance the time costs of Rejuvenating.

I see this working as follows:

1. The first portion of the RL minute is a preparation stage.
2. The second portion is the actual extermination as it exists in it's current form.

i.e. Okstone detection remains exactly as it is now, only detectable in step two above. With step one being suffered as a meditation/mental preparation for the actual act of extermination.

Bukariin

Athelas said:

The problem here, is that some players can not see the difference between using it as a tool for RP and being an OOC troll with it. So, I've spent a bit of time to see if I can't gather my wits on it, and provide something of a mechanic that would retain the current conflict, while removing the potential for being a OOC troll.

If players choose to become buttmad OOC because of something happening IG, that's their decision.  Exterminating the forests was an IC, RP decision based on the fact that Eleusis declared war. 

Your other points are pretty valid, the war system could use an overhaul, but people are still going to get emotional OOC over things that they can't control IG, like dying, experience loss, extermination, theft, etc.  These changes won't fix that.

Hasar

Daeir said:

I don't think I've ever heard of a meaningful interaction born from an extermination. It's basically having a shrine defiled except it costs money to fix.

Plenty of good skirmishes have come from an exterm starting the fight... Making such a huge blanket statement is just ignorant. That's not to say the mechanic is anywhere close to perfect, but uninformed blanket opinions are scrub.

Aerek

Adding a similar commodity or monetary cost to exterminations would not go amiss. RP and conflict arguments aside, the fact that one side has a tangible cost to this interaction and the other doesn't is bad design.  If it costs Eleusis money to fix the damage, it should cost Mhaldor to inflict it.

Mishgul

It costs less than a shrine does to fix. It's not money that's the problem. It's time. Everything in achaea costs time, and we measure our experience in a weird fun/time equation.

Jules

As someone who's never been involved, extermination has always seemed awesome.  Once you've fixed enough groves though, I've always got the impression it gets to "welp, fuck this" for the forestal side fairly quickly, which is too bad, because there really is something inherently awesome about extermination vs... I guess it was supposed to be the fog?  But the fog never got tied to anything.  Even if it had, I guess you'd have to make it so both sides weren't just experiencing the suck of regenerating their rooms.  What about making extermination tactical?  Like, forestals wouldn't have to do whatever tedious stuff they have to do to regenerate, but it would probably allow the other side to remove the forestal buffs in a certain number of rooms for a particular battle?  I really am throwing that out there as an afterthought, but it occurs to me from hearing you all complain about it over the years that something much more tactical (i.e. temporary) might leave you all much happier about it.  

Mishgul

you couldn't really add anything that Mhaldor could just immediately get attached to to make this a two way thing. I feel like making extermination a neutral mechanic that has a decent cost would give Eleusis better substance from which to choose their enemies and allies, and open up the political landscape a little, and create a better cities vs nature dynamic.

And changing Eleusis' raid mechanic from being similar to everyone elses, to having some sort of super overgrowth effects in cities that only they got and it would be like destroying rooms in a way but different. nature themed. 

I would find Eleusis more interesting as a combatant if things were like that.

Aerek

Mishgul said:

...I feel like making extermination a neutral mechanic that has a decent cost would give Eleusis...

Didn't I just say this, and didn't you just disagree with it?

Mishgul

I don't know why it should cost Mhaldor to do exterminations. It is an individuals choice.

Cooper

Daeir said:

I don't think I've ever heard of a meaningful interaction born from an extermination. It's basically having a shrine defiled except it costs money to fix.

It's actually quite the opposite of what you said on both counts.

Exterminations have provided huge sources of meaningful interaction from basically the beginning of the game. Has it also been used for griefing? Yeah, but show me some aspect of the game that hasn't.

It also costs much less to rejuv a forest room than it does to raise a shrine. It takes an ice (~1k gold, maybe ~2k I'm not sure of current prices). It takes 10-15 minutes of dragon bashing to raise a shrine, in that time making 5-10k gold.

Valaria

I have a question, does forestal have tool that they have the meaning to take something of value from mhaldor? last i check. only thing forestal can do is to heal the land through the meaning of rejuvation. but there is no offense tool for Forestal to use against the Mhaldor as of yet... at best it just defiling shrines of Sartan at best. basically it's 3 vs 2 in term of loss of experience, loss of resources, and defiling. Forestals don't have the meaning to take away mhaldor's valuable resources.

of course, that is best i know at present of what we have on our hand.

just a thought,

Valaria

Mishgul

Mhaldor doesn't have valuable resources. I feel like I have said this thousands of times. There is no precedence to introduce valuable resources or for anyone to defend anything. 

This isn't a forestal vs Mhaldor thing, it's a forestal vs necromancer thing. Necromancers are currently linked with Mhaldor. Mhaldor is more likely to disappear into the ocean than all the forests in sapience disappearing. It's crazy. I would love to have a pk area as large as Eleusis' with the amount of conflict Eleusis can generate, but Eleusis' political landscape is just the opposite of the mechanics it's been given. Maybe they should hand Oakstone to Ashtan for a bit.

Bukariin

Valaria said:

I have a question, does forestal have tool that they have the meaning to take something of value from mhaldor? last i check. only thing forestal can do is to heal the land through the meaning of rejuvation. but there is no offense tool for Forestal to use against the Mhaldor as of yet... at best it just defiling shrines of Sartan at best. basically it's 3 vs 2 in term of loss of experience, loss of resources, and defiling. Forestals don't have the meaning to take away mhaldor's valuable resources.

of course, that is best i know at present of what we have on our hand.

just a thought,

Valaria

Rejuvenating the forest IS a tool that takes something of value from Mhaldor.

Unless you mean, like, gold value as opposed to RP value, in which case you can actually raid Mhaldor and destroy rooms and guards and such.

Austere

Why not just give some experience for rejuvenating?  Would make it worth the effort at least. 

Arditi

Bukariin said:

Rejuvenating the forest IS a tool that takes something of value from Mhaldor.

Unless you mean, like, gold value as opposed to RP value, in which case you can actually raid Mhaldor and destroy rooms and guards and such.

It doesn't take anything of value because the extermination is the conflict vehicle, not the end goal.

Exterminating a forest gives Mhaldor the opportunity to engage in conflict and RP. Having a room free of forest defenses for twenty minutes? That's a bonus.

And I maintain that if people want to whine about exterminations, allow guards to respawn for free after 12 hours and give them the ability to be revived before that with 2,000 gold worth of commodities. Then everyone whining that extermination is just like killing guards can be absolutely right.

Alrena

I don't think comparing rejuvenations to raising shrines is valid, when Mhaldor is just as capable of defiling forestal shrines.

Some kind of a cap on exterms would be nice, so they're used to instigate conflict, rather than grief the rejuvenators into spending a lot of time doing basically nothing but cleaning up. Making rejuvenations faster/cheaper would be nice too.

Mishgul

the sad thing is, over half those forest rooms will never be seen, except by the patrol clan looking for exterms, and novices/new forestals look for groves.

Taraza

Okay so speaking as someone who has both played a high ranked Eleusian and Mhaldorian which either defends the extermination or participates in the act itself. Extermination, like any skill is not necessarily what I would call broken. It is the person that is wielding the skill (or using if you will) at the current time. For example: you will find that some Mhaldorians rarely extermination such as @Alynna where as there are some such as @Ayoxele who exterminate frequently. Extermination defenses -can- be fine and also fun, but it is the same as raids, between the Eleusian and Mhaldorian playerbase there is quite a timezone gap between the two organizations. 

Honestly, while playing my Eleusian there were some days when the exterminations were so great in number and time that I seriously wanted to just simply leave the realms. And vice versa for some Eleusian raids...

Best advice is this on -both- accounts. Try to remember that not everyone really wants to spend their time defending (and yes, honestly Sentinels and quite a few other Eleusisians do have to defend when exterms happen), and not to be too griefy about it. No one wants to login just to spend hours defending, then log out. And seriously no reason to be a down right dick about it (Again that is being stated for -both- sides

Who knows maybe one day there will not be an Oakstone or extermination (I rather doubt it though)

Also what the heck is the plural from for "citizens of Eleusis"  

Harmonia

Also what the heck is the plural from for "citizens of Eleusis"  

Eleusinians. Though I do prefer Bark-eaters and monkeys.

Seftin

Lets see, (almost) everyone who doesn't have to deal with the replanting and rejuvenating believes that exterminate is a perfectly balanced mechanic, that requires no come back at the city that intitates it, should have no cost to the city that initiates it and should cost the defender gold to repair.

(Almost) everyone who has to deal with this mechanic via replanting and rejuvenating argues that this mechanic is unfair/time consuming/costly.

Yes, the people who don't have to deal with it are prefectly correct that it is a fine mechanic.

On the other hand, why should Eleusis have no cost to defending the forests be it via time or gold? Surely having such a big area that they can claim as "theres" should come with a cost to defending it beyond a bit of sunlight from flow-ganks? And it does provide some form of conflict RP for Eleusis to play out, the only issue being it is RP that is initiated by the aggressor every time.

Making Exterminate available to everyone is potentially the worst idea I have heard (in its current form) you think it's been griefed? When has Bonko been a necromancer? Would make Mhaldor seem like kids in comparison, as unlike the reward offered for exterminating, he would do it for free.

Now moving on to the mechanics of this piece - it costs the necromancer essence to exterminate, which should limit the amount of exterminating that can be achieved, however I believe that they were exterminating 100+ rooms a day, mostly just Ayoxele from what I was informed (could be wrong here but seemed he was very intent on winning whatever price Ruth and co offered) now this is perfectly fine, but if we take into account rejuvenating time with replanting which someone speculated at being around a minute(?) that's 100 (1hr 40 minutes) minutes, and at a base of elemental ice of 333 gold per (it goes much higher than this) that's 33,000 gold to rejuvenate 1 persons work, at lets say 10 seconds per exterminate? (could be wrong, please correct me) that's 16-17 minutes worth of damage. Even if we double the time, to lets say 40 minutes worth of work for exterm, that's an extra hour that has to be done by the rejuvenates. And the point of this little (potentially horrendously done, misinformed) math?

Nothing. Enjoy exterminate, quite clear it wont change. Masses love it, people directly affected by it told they are too invested into this and to ignore it.

GG, HF.

tl/dr, you're all wrong.

Seftin

Bukariin said:

Valaria said:

I have a question, does forestal have tool that they have the meaning to take something of value from mhaldor? last i check. only thing forestal can do is to heal the land through the meaning of rejuvation. but there is no offense tool for Forestal to use against the Mhaldor as of yet... at best it just defiling shrines of Sartan at best. basically it's 3 vs 2 in term of loss of experience, loss of resources, and defiling. Forestals don't have the meaning to take away mhaldor's valuable resources.

of course, that is best i know at present of what we have on our hand.

just a thought,

Valaria

Rejuvenating the forest IS a tool that takes something of value from Mhaldor.

Unless you mean, like, gold value as opposed to RP value, in which case you can actually raid Mhaldor and destroy rooms and guards and such.

Except that Mhaldor can do the exact same thing back to Eleusis, costing both rejuvenation cost and the cost for guards etc... sure, maybe the same if Mhaldor couldn't raid Eleusis, I'd be game for that.

Melodie

It is about 22~ seconds from start to finish with reju, part of which is a channeled bit. Before we rejuvenate, we check 'naturalism', which lets us know who the extermer was, which is about 3~ seconds. Then it's just under 6 seconds per plant to replant, and there's eight plants per room, so roughly that's about a minute (or just over) of being completely off balance per room. You also have to harvest fresh "seedling" plants (they cannot be from your rift, or have been on the ground very long, and if you don't use them quickly you soon can't plant with them) in order to replant them, which takes time (one herb per replant, and forest rooms are harvested often). Base ice is 333 or so, but prices nowadays range more in the 400-500 range, sometimes much higher.

We were losing about a hundred rooms a day, between Ayoxele, Vicious, Elazar, Chiam, and then a few smaller names. I think we roughly hit maybe 1000-1400 rooms destroyed in two or so IC years (many repeatedly, especially in the Ithmias).

Some basic math. My main addition to this thread is to simply say: Exterminations are a one-sided conflict, in which we can only ever be on the defensive, not the offensive, and that alone makes it unbalanced. I don't really have any suggested fixes at this moment, but I'll give it some additional thought.

Tharvis

Could move to also make exterminations a channeled ability, with a comparable balance/equi time to rejuvenation, and a similar commodity cost?

Melodie

I believe it already is, though perhaps the whole balance time is channeled (can't say for sure here), whereas reju is half channeled, half just plain off balance. It does use essence to exterminate, and without a room full of plants, they lose out (if the room is full of plants, which outside of war situations it probably will be, they get a tiny bit of positive essence).

As for cost to exterminate, I'm uncertain if it'll really impact it very much (as much as Mhaldor tried to deprive us of ice, we simply looked for it in other places, and banded together to make sure everyone had enough). It still also doesn't really address the defensive-only side for forestals.

Krypton

Meh, speaking as a forestal, it doesn't bother me that it's much easier/faster to exterminate than to rejuvenate. It makes sense to me. Easier to destroy, than to create. Easier to hurt, than to heal.

But I know collecting ice can be prohibitively slow and expensive. Maybe Grove fertility can be repurposed to allow a room to naturally start rejuvenating itself, without needing ice, but at a very reduced speed (taking multiple Achaean days).

Mishgul

Forestals are a defensive class. Their abilities are all designed around the act of defending the forests, and supporting groups in getting around the forest. Implementing some sort of offensive skillset would probably require some rebalancing of all classes involved, which would also be a huge pain in the ass.

Not to mention the whole, Mhaldor has nothing physical to be attached to that you can attack malarkey. Except the city. Which you can already attack.

@Seftin there is nothing stopping Bonko from making a necromancer alt right now and exterminating thousands of times for no reason. He's done it before when I was Eleusian, and I don't doubt he'd do it again if he was so inclined. Your argument is really not valid. At the moment griefers can do what they want. Opening up exterm for other cities would not change a thing as far as griefing Eleusis was concerned.

Grandue

Not going to argue that there COULD be a mechanical fix to exterm/rejuv to make it more balanced, but I will point out that there could be a little bit more parameters in place by the players. 

When I was Eleusian I would often talk to Mhaldor or Ashtan or Shallam about conflict and setting guidelines to what would be best. A simple, "OOC: Hey man, I'm the only combatant logged on right now, can you guys peel a couple people off that party to make it a little more even?" was rarely ever met with rejection and we would get tells from the other cities letting us know that they have people logging off and we would pull out. IC Mhaldorians can be buttholes but I've always had levelheaded conversations with them OOC. Mhaldor could easily put out a post to their necromancers ranting about how the mass exterminations done where no one ever visits is painting a cowardly and weak picture of how strong Mhaldor truly is and demand that all exterminations must be done on the front step of Eleusis and how anyone found breaking that law will be punished for attempting to make Mhaldor look weak. 

Granted, Eleusis would likely have to give up the flow/gank every time some Mhaldorian stepped foot in a forest anywhere other than Eastern Ithmia. If both sides would confine conflict to Eastern Ithmia I'm sure most people would stop crying. Honestly, I loved fighting in EI and I wish every city had some kind of a battleground with a similar layout, not having huge LoS areas and having a multitude of routes to quickly get to any room made the fights unpredictable and more creative in my opinion.

Mishgul

Your argument would be fine if people didn't have specific windows to be online. Not everyone can wait for Nyderrasethi or Rangor or Lothiac to be logged in just so they can participate in something.

Rangor

Let rejuvenations give the druid some kind of buff after doing it. Rejuvenate 1 room, get some solar energy, rejuvenate 10 rooms, get lots of sun energy for grove and boost staff max energy for 1 hour, rejuvenate 20 rooms nature grants you +1 con for 24 hours, rejuvenate 50 rooms you get +1 con, +1 str, +1 dex, +1 int for 24 hours, rejuvenate 100 rooms you get all of the above + xp bonus for 30 hours.

Yaaay, EXTERMINATE MORE AYOXELE. I promisse you, no one would ever complain about exterms again.

Mishgul

That would be cool if rejuvenation gave a buff rather than took a cost. 

Exelethril

Mishgul said:

Forestals are a defensive class. Their abilities are all designed around the act of defending the forests, and supporting groups in getting around the forest. Implementing some sort of offensive skillset would probably require some rebalancing of all classes involved, which would also be a huge pain in the ass.

It's not always fair to be on the defensive without an equivalent form of retaliation, mainly because aggressors get to choose the time and place, usually when it's convenient for them. 

Also, exterminating 100 rooms takes roughly 20-ish minutes while rejuvenating/replanting 100 rooms is equivalent to 1.5 hours plus 30k-ish gold at today's market prices. There's some discrepancy there.