Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Comments
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
This was supposed to be an idea, for @Sarapisand @Tecton to consider. I did not think it would end up being such a great discussion.
Welcome to the forums.
What's wrong with an overhaul, if that is what's needed?
It's crap for one side to always only ever be defenders, and the other side to always be the attackers. Defenders have no win condition except "are the attackers done yet". This shapes their attitudes: necromancers want to wreck shit because their fun comes from raiding forests, while forestals are stuck cleaning up the mess and want to be left alone so they can get back to other activities which are more fun for them. Forestals never get to participate on their own terms, they can never initiate a forest battle, only respond, so forest conflict will always be a bothersome intrusion from their perspective.
Asymmetrical gameplay can be a good thing, eg. red wins with 10 kills, blue wins by stealing red's briefcase. Or red wins by capturing blue's 3 bases, blue winds by defending for 10 minutes. But forests vs necromancers has not been designed asymmetrically. It exists that way due to incomplete design.
You made the valid point that Mhaldor has no external assets for forestals to attack. Last time this thread was posted, I suggested that necromancers could gain an ability to raise ghouls and skeletons at major graveyards like Azdun, Belladona's fens, Harae volcano etc, creating some places for forestals to attack that are also actually, mechanically useful to necromancers. Admittedly they would lack the cultural importance that comes from long-term association.
For the record, here is the last forest conflict discussion thread from 2012. Here is my redesign proposal from that thread, where I tried to address issues like allowing forestals to attack, giving necromancers valued external sites of vulnerability, win conditions, and time parameters. Here is the forest conflict thread 6 months before that one, from ye olde forums. I think people get more jaded with the subject and less willing to enthusiastically weigh in each time.
There's nothing wrong with an overhaul. It's just that people want to see the system changed before they change the way they think, which I think is the wrong way to go about it personally.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
In all fairness, you can't exactly hope some long-term association will magic itself into existence. This might be a short-term issue, but in the long-term I don't think it's really a problem. Just tie it into Mhaldorian culture in such a way that it can only grow.
In an evil sort of way, not in a leafy way. Eh, well, I guess it can be in a leafy way too, just as long as it's an evil, corrupted sort of leafy.
That's it! If Mhaldor wants a forest, give them a bloody forest or ten of their own to protect from Eleusis! Make it really, really big and vast, and scattered too!
I think I originally had a point with this, but now I'm too busy thinking of how awesome a creepy Flowerdor forest could be. Like there could be dryad wraiths that appear innocent and cute and might even try to give you quests, but then you greet them and they try to eat your soul, or a bog in which you can't see anything even with nightsight on (does that even do anything???), but you can sort of hear things, and if you misstep you might run into lost souls and proceed to join them (at least 'til you EMBRACE DEATH).
You can't just "tie it into Mhaldorian culture". Really need a better reason to be suggested before an argument can be formed.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
(Mhaldor) Sartan angrily says, "I took a forest from Gaia Herself. Be prepared to protect it when the Eleusian dogs inevitably come to throw themselves upon Mhaldorian blades, and when their weakness overwhelms them and they cease covering its ground with their blood, sacrifice your own until its land is indistinguishable from that of My island."
Then throw an event where Mhaldorians try to corrupt the entire forest, and every unique death counts or something like that. Don't tell the Eleusians that their deaths only help Mhaldor in the end, just let them go attack of their own silly mortal accords or something.
Then hard work will have gone into the land becoming Mhaldorian. Hard player work that is. The real hard work of creating a new area (even if an existing forest is used, all the rooms would have to be changed!), new denizens (same!), new events and quests, etc. and some game mechanic where Mhaldorians benefit from the land remaining cursed while Eleusians can sort of undo that benefit (but not quite repair the land outright) should probably be done in advance maybe.
Hello Shala-Khulia event.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
You do that, and you'll have an outcry that will make the Reckoning honors lines debacle sound like a mild disagreement over whether someone wanted one or two lumps of sugar.
It'd be a massive bait and switch, and given that Eleusis already feels like there's no way that they can win in an extermination conflict, giving them an event where they were designed to lose is a dick move. Mhaldor gets to be put into events where they lose because they're the antagonists for 2/3 of the player base and their RP is "Sapience hates you, Sapience will try to kill you, grow stronger so that you can kill them first". No other city gets to have that because no other city would be able to tolerate always losing and having 5/6 organizations in the game teaming up on them. It's part of Mhaldor's unique RP and charm and losing gracefully is pretty much one of the first things you have to learn in the city.
Forcing another city into that role is cruel because I don't think any city could actually handle it without a population hemorrhage. Bal'met is as close as we got and even then, it wasn't a "Gotcha! Your hard work actually made you lose harder! <twirls mustache".
See the reason they can't win is because there's nothing to win.
You give Mhaldor something they can hurt, and maybe they can win.
You make it so that it originally belonged to Eleusis and it becomes personal.
The whole "it's going to happen no matter what they do" bit was probably an awful idea, and I hope they don't actually include that, but there are two ways it can go, one is that the event happens and then they do builder stuff, and the other is they do builder stuff and then the event happens.
The first one means the event's going to be a really long event. The second one means they're going to hate it if they have to redo all the stuff they built (and that it still could be a really long event if they go ahead and do that).
We're trying to get this across to you: Mhaldor doesn't get hurt because Mhaldor literally has nothing to lose.
The city was founded on people committing suicide and Sapience trying to stop them from doing so.
You can kill every guard, smudge every totem, defile every shrine and replace them with <insert non-Mhaldorian deity>, invade every House estate and kill every denizen in there, and Mhaldor is still going to get back up, spit up some blood and maybe a tooth, and say "That all you got? Weeeeak."
You're approaching this from the wrong angle. As the joke goes:
The masochist says, "Hurt me!"
The sadist says, "No."
@Arditi: Yeah, but... isn't that the problem with conflict in Achaea in general?
I guess it would be OOC for Mhaldor to suddenly have to protect something? I don't know, I think maybe it could still be done in the form of diabolic plots that have a realistic chance of failing if they don't protect it, preferably in a way that doesn't require constant administrative oversight, but maybe they're OK not only with being beaten down, but with failing too.
Maybe Eleusis could find a way to injure Sartan himself?
Maybe there just should be no attempts to give Eleusis a way to attack back, and exterminations should just be deleted as an inherently flawed system?
edit: and if they are okay with failing, then it sounds like Mhaldor has a problem too. I get that they're supposed to be villains, and accepting defeat gracefully is important if they're going to play the fall guy a lot, but I think it's terribly cliche for the villains to always lose, and besides in terms of villains, right now Cyrene is the only city that isn't in some way "villainous," so I don't think they need to play that role anymore honestly.
The problem is that conflict between cities is a zero-sum game.
Mhaldor wins, the forests burn. Eleusis wins, Mhaldor gets its teeth kicked in and sulks for a few days while they reraise shrines and guards. So on, so forth. Same for every other organization: Ourania drops a few moon rocks on Mhaldor and Apollyon's temple, Mhaldor sulks. Mhaldor razes Ourania's order, Ouranians sulk and reraise shrines and call for Ashtan who kicks Mhaldor's teeth in. I could go on.
What actually matters is conflict between players. Conflict between players is where you actually get something out of losing.
Taking the time to develop the RP behind the mechanical conflict is the difference between a good rivalry where you can say "Yeah, I lose every time to that @Strata / @Antidas bastard but it's still fun" and the boredom that is "Oh hey, @Santar's ganking people. Let's go sort that one ou--oh, he shipreturned. Welp."
Or maybe, just maybe, we can get back on topic and look at actual suggestions for BALANCING, that were put forward in the original post.
All right, let's see.
We can fiddle with the numbers on extermination/rejuvenation and make it really really hard to exterminate and really really easy to rejuvenate, since that will teach Mhaldor a firm lesson not to pick on poor little Eleusis. We can make it so that necromancers can only exterminate one room, since groves users can only have one grove, that would make it fair and balanced. We can make it free to rejuvenate, since a few thousand gold is way too much to spend.
Or we can look at the actual issue, which is that extermination is the means towards actual meaningful conflict, which would require Eleusis to do something other than mindlessly go out and rejuvenate/preserve every room and Mhaldor to do something beyond
"10 ARE FOREST DEFENSES HITTING US IF SO GOTO 20
20 EXTERMINATE GOTO 10"
Unfortunately, meaningful conflict requires both sides to come to the party. I laughed my ass off at the Mhaldorian terms of surrender for Eleusis because they were way too easy. Unfortunately, Eleusis didn't bite and now we're stuck here, whining once again about forest conflict and exterminations.
The system sucks, but nobody's working within it to change it.
(P.S: You want to talk about horrible unbalanced mechanics? Go get yourself involved in a warp war and we'll talk.)
Here are the things this thread are about in terms of the Original post:
1. How to balance the use of extermination with regard to rejuvenation, through the use of any one of three suggested changes, that focus on existing game mechanics.
2. Improve the levels fun and interaction, for all players on both sides of the conflict.
If you are responding on this thread without having the above as a central theme of your response, you are either trolling or need to start your own thread.
Here are the things that this thread are NOT about in terms of the Original post:
1. Mhaldor/Mhaldorians Rule/suck
2. Eleusis/Eleusians Rule/suck
3. The war system is broken/inadequate
4. Winning/Losing war should/should not be RP based
5. My RP is better than yours
6. You RP is better than mine
7. All ur base R belong to us.
8. I am right, you are wrong.
9. You are right, I am wrong.
Focus people, focus!
This game does not revolve around any one individual, and neither does this forum. Stop the complaints and get to actually dealing with the issue.
i.e. Stop feeling and start thinking!
And please, for the love of @Sarapis, re-read the original post!
I agree with Carmain's plan of 'Make protecting the forest an Ashtani job'.
Get back to the good old days of dreading accidentally pathing through a forest room as an enemy.
Also, Mizik could be Sentinel, everyone wins! (Everyone here being people Mizik doesn't want to kill)
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Sounds like you lost at Yu-Hi-Oh a lot.
Also has no understanding of mdor arpee.
Mhaldor is capable of losing (as much as one can lose in Achaea). I can think of several times where we lost and that's just starting from when I played (which is rather recent compared to the oldies >.>). What you are describing isn't something specifically Mhaldorian. It's just something that stands out because of the way our roleplay (designated villains) has molded our play style where we just become better at picking ourselves up after conflicts.
I agree with the other parts of your post, although I'm not sure about the warning that Achaea being cyclic in its staticity is going to players off the game until it just fades. I think it's been happening for a long time now, it's just that there are really good changes that are being introduced which help keep players addicted.
As for exterminations, I've read other threads like this before. The only things that are new are the people who are complaining. I've read other Mhaldorians agree with forestals about how it can be improved, but from what I remember, Sarapis just said it's fine as it is. Someone can correct me if I am wrong.
내가 제일 잘 나가!!!111!!1
Can we please close this thread, it is obvious that people have zero interest in actually sticking to the topic I initially created.
But dude..you didn't even truelock Otha.
(Or whoever it was, I remember there being a log and a really long argument)
the issue with both achaea conflict and in relationextermination is that it's designed to be used until the other dude is griefed out of willpower to do anything about it
It's pretty ignorant to say there's nothing Mhaldor could be made to care about. Mhaldorian RP is characterised by a slavish devotion to Sartan. If you give Eleusis X to attack, all it takes is for Sartan to threaten death and dismemberment to those who fail him in defending X, and bam, Mhaldor are obliged to care.
The use of Suffering/Oppressiom as a tool to not give a shit about the targets every other city has to deal with in the current barely-existent war system is very lazy, and something that should be discouraged on the whole.
I don't think Eleusians should be able to disperse the fog at will, though, since the red fog is a manifestation of Sartan's will, which should be much more durable than a tree. There absolutely needs to be a target offered to Eleusis, though, because enforced defensive/reactionary stances are terrible. Everybody should have the opportunity to match the other side in terms of aggression, or the conflict will always be unbalanced since the aggressors always choose the time and location of their attack.
Why specifically to Mhaldor though?
Also Mhaldor's aligned classes are really selfish in comparison to Eleusis' and we really don't have great mobility and area/group attacks for supporting in a defensive role like Druid/Sylvan can. If Mhaldor was going to be given an area that they would have to defend, I would like to see abilities like flow, gate, thornspray, eject, summon etc to supplement that, or else people would just not bother defending unless there are larger numbers of people.
Also the static politics that would create would make the non physical conflict side of things much more boring.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
Specifially to Mhaldor because exterms specifically target Eleusis. Either both sides should have that mechanism to attack each other or neither should.
Mishgul said:
I'm sorry, I just found that amusing. Seriously though, exterms wouldn't even be that much of a problem if the people who had the ability used it a little more responsibly. If there's one side who has to change the way they think(/act), it might not necessarily be Eleusis'...
Exterms aren't specific to Mhaldor, like devotion isn't unique to Targossas.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important