Exterminations vs Rejuvenation

Silas

lol ok

ETA: Who exterms is irrelevant, since Eleusis has to deal with it regardless. Forestals need a counter to Mhaldorian aggression, though, not to random scrubs.

Mishgul

Alrena said:

Mishgul said:

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.

Mishgul said:

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.

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'...

Yes but the people who are exterminating haven't asked for change, is the difference here.

Mishgul

You know, having just the Island to defend would be really boring. We do that already anyway when people stand on it, regardless of mechanics. 

I will gladly have it so that all the forests in sapience just are in a perma damaged state, and you guys have to go around rejuvenating and we have to making sure they are all extermed. In the mean time, you guys take damage during the process, but no longer take damage in a non extermed room. We need salt to destroy a room, a decently priced commodity.

We get warnings everytime you guys try to rejuvenate a room.

We can call it Roadstone.

Nim

What @Mishgul is telling us is that we should all create cutesy lolalt lovefreaks to fill Mhaldor with hugs and sparklies, and when it bothers them, they just need to change their mentality so it doesn't, and accept rainbowlovedor. That or he is out of icecream sandwiches. I am not very fluent in @Mishgul :c

Mishgul

Flowerdor. 

Remember the name.

Xer

I prefer Kittendor though

You know. Because of cats.

Silas

700k is chump change too.

Athelas

@silas if 700k is chump chage, you can give it to me, I can use it.

Blujixapug

Athelas said:

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.

If they made all three changes from your original post, extermination will still have big issues. Forestals will still always be defending vs necromancers always attacking, because that's all the mechanics allow. Extermination will still have no win condition that ends the fighting other than "are necromancers bored yet". It will still be vandals vs cleanup crew. That's why these conversations always shift in scope.

1. Counter extermination potential through preservation.

How would this play out in practise? Preservation is already possible through Sharing (but not Portability IIRC). Here's how it goes. New year rolls around. (Druids): Someone probably called something like Meredith says, "Ding-a-ling! Remember to preserve please!" Everyone rotates around all the groves they're allied to and tags them with preservation. You're still left with patchy coverage, and necromancers still exterminate whatever rooms they can find that are not preserved, possibly because they're imprinted by someone who didn't log in to preserve and hasn't allied others to preserve in their absence.

Your stated goal is to "Improve the levels fun and interaction, for all players on both sides of the conflict". Making Preservation work through Portability doesn't really encourage any sort of interaction or strategy. It would just increase the required maintenance every new year. If anything, it would encourage exterminators not to bother with major forests, and to focus on remote areas less likely to be preserved.

2. Improve Rejuvenation and reduce it's cost

3. Add a cost to doing exterminations

The same answers apply for both of these: what's the benefit here, in terms of improving fun and interaction? Reducing the cost to fix the damage diminishes the impact of the action. This turns it even more into petty vandalism, rather than a significant act of war.

Ice already costs a negligible amount, and you shouldn't be paying for it yourself because your House/Eleusis/Oakstone can easily cover the cost. Extermination already costs essence. If rejuving sucks at 333 gold per room, it will continue to suck without that cost. Removing the cost doesn't make rejuvenation any more fun or interactive. You're viewing ice as a low-hanging fruit, but it will make no difference to the overall experience of extermination and rejuvenation. I would also argue that removing ice and losing it as an economical and cultural element is a bad thing.

I don't believe exterm can be properly fixed and made fun with small changes. I'm reluctant to suggest bandaid fixes because I'm concerned they'll come at the expense of a proper redesign. But, I guess if you wanted to try and address the problems with the least number of changes... What I would maybe try is:

- New Groves ability, Resurgence: Spend 5000 sunlight and channel for 90 seconds to transform a city room into the forest environment, by calling up primordial growth from the earth to overgrow the city. Maybe lasts 1 hour and leaves the room destroyed. Maybe can be used on any urban-environment room (ie. villages too).
- Change nothing about Extermination. Lesser changes like making it require a heart don't necessarily make it any more fun. Greater changes don't fit into this "least number of moves" thing.

Athelas

@Blujixapug‌ Thanks for making an on topic post, I do appreciate it.

1. Right now, exterminations are being used as a trolling mechanism, not as an RP invitation to combat that it seems to be aimed at. i.e. Half the player base aren't getting anything other than a negative experience out of it. Meaning that those players log off and find something else to do. Giving these players a mechanism to prevent exterminations more readily, will at least get them to stay online long enough for them to become committed to playing the session. i.e. You have a much higher probability of positive interactions, because you have more players staying online.

2. Doing exterminations while there is no one online to defend, is nothing more than self indulgent trolling. So, doing 40 exterminations when there is no possibility of being interrupted, is doing nothing for interactions of any kind. All the exterminator achieves is to piss off the other half of the player base, because those players have to spend the little time they have online, rejuvenating. i.e. They have no reason to log in any more, so they go play WOW instead or even worse, switch on the TV. Making it cost the exterminator the same as what it would cost the rejuvenator, in terms of gold and time, will result in a similar amount of effort on both sides, leading to a more balanced player base. So, once again, you have a more people staying on and increasing the probability of positive interaction, on both sides.

3. Yes, you are right, my suggestions were based on making the least amount of changes to the existing system.

4. The problem with your new groves ability, is that the forestall will have to do that in the middle of a guard stack of a well defended city. Something an exterminator never has to do. i.e. The risk level to the forestall is an order of magnitude higher than that of the exterminator, meaning that the mechanism will almost never be used. I do feel it would add a lot to the game if a city area can be changed to a forest area, but I see many complaints from city players about this. The advantages of having a grove in the middle of a city was the reason for city gardens being changed, so that one can't port a grove there.

Alrena

Blujixapug said:

- New Groves ability, Resurgence: Spend 5000 sunlight and channel for 90 seconds to transform a city room into the forest environment, by calling up primordial growth from the earth to overgrow the city. Maybe lasts 1 hour and leaves the room destroyed. Maybe can be used on any urban-environment room (ie. villages too).

Can we please, please, pretty please have that? I swear I'll never complain about exterms again. There will be so many complaints about that, though  

Athelas

No city will be safe! Eleusis will be a name feared and hated as much as Mhaldor.