Forest Conflict

Kyrra

I was just optimistic about toteming entire forests. The highway pales in comparison

@Trilliana, I remember back when you could implant in groves. Kind of miss those days.

Sherazad

Kyrra said:

I was just optimistic about toteming entire forests. The highway pales in comparison @Trilliana, I remember back when you could implant in groves. Kind of miss those days.

Haha, cute.

NU. >(

Mishgul

Implanted totems not conducive to fun. Giving people more reasons to entrench in any fight is the wrong way to go.

Fix icons using something similar to exterm mechanics causing temporary damage to create renewable and sustainable combat, and have icons give a better boost like an extra major trait or something.

Exterminations are fun for some people on both sides regardless of snide remarks or complaints from either side. The issue has always been lack of respect towards players shown by either side, which is not something i have seen from anyone except Ravien and Rangor (personally speaking).

I've come not to expect it really, most of Mhaldor and Eleusis treat each other with childish disdain which breeds a foul OOC atmosphere into the conflict, making it ten times worse than it should be. It's a shame because i love the atmospheres in both cities a lot more than any other place in the game, and have active characters in each.

Delphinus

Trilliana said:

We used to have totems EVERYWHERE, every grove had one, and then the forests ate the totems, IIRC. Great event too if I remember it.

The removal was a bit more justified in the days of grove trap/cage, and especially in the days of pre-nerf Oakstone defences. There's still the minor point about people wandering off the highway into totems, but if Oakstone and exterm go, that'll be a non-issue as well.

Really, I'm mostly thinking of org-owned properties here. It'd be nice to rezz people in a place where we don't lose XP for doing so.

Nizaris said:

[2] Where is "the suck" in my suggestion? It's true that I envision it as essentially a flavoured monolith that stops flow/summon/forest defenses. Hell, I don't really object to your suggestion, as it would certainly be easier than exterming: monoliths are quicker to throw down/flame, monos stop more than just flow/summon, monos don't cost essence. But, there's still a flavour that's missing -- Evil needs to be, well, evil, dammit.

The word "extermination" carries an awful lot of baggage, and is less than ideal as a result.

That said, I'd be opposed to monoliths stopping grove summon. Alchemy displace already works that way, and without the environmental constraints.

Mishgul said:

I've come not to expect it really, most of Mhaldor and Eleusis treat each other with childish disdain which breeds a foul OOC atmosphere into the conflict, making it ten times worse than it should be. It's a shame because i love the atmospheres in both cities a lot more than any other place in the game, and have active characters in each.

Hey now, I disdain both sides equally.

Skye

Delphinus said:

Mishgul said:

I've come not to expect it really, most of Mhaldor and Eleusis treat each other with childish disdain which breeds a foul OOC atmosphere into the conflict, making it ten times worse than it should be. It's a shame because i love the atmospheres in both cities a lot more than any other place in the game, and have active characters in each.

Hey now, I disdain both sides equally.

^^^

Xith

Replace the forest defs with lycopods. Problem solved.

But in seriousness, is the problem that one side is underpowered?

Because it seems to me that forestals should be overpowered in the forest, and that if you manage to exterminate a room and establish those footholds to cancel forestal power, you've earned your foothold.

Portable extermination was an interesting suggestion, but extermination might need a different dynamic altogether. Few options:

1. Extermination is an essence investment that in turn can return essence to the necromancer. But right now it's one shot per room and takes a long time investment.

a) give exterminating a room destruction flair, where if multiple necros do it at once, the exterm is faster and each gets a yield of essence on completion

b) or when a room is exterminated, other necros can syphon additional essence from the room, making eventual repair more difficult for forestals

c) just damage the forest room in stages, pulling more life essence out of the room

2. Make extermination temporary, but increase the time based on adjacent rooms also being exterminated. A sort of spreading decay mechanic perhaps. Something like Permeate, useable in an exterminated room that forces a level of decay into adjacent rooms and restores the present room to 100% decay.

- Add entities to Necromancy that can be summoned into an exterminated room, the way Apostasy ents require a pentagram, thus giving necro defs to a room after forest defs have been negated. And give extermination or permeate possibilities inside Eleusis to take the fight home.

3. For the reverse, give forests more power.

- Change the timing and such on wolves and vines. 

- add other forest defs like an occasional tripping vine or ensnaring tendrils, small bee attacks, offbalancing birds, poisonous spitting flowers like in Jumanji, snakes, etc. BUT make them random and timers infrequent enough that they aren't predictable or overly harassing, allowing forest enemies to still successfully navigate through places they might need to without dying.

- you'd see more trouble from the forests, but on the flip side, let exterminate decay a room in stages, slowly stripping certain forest defs from the location. ex: 20% destroyed removes poisonous flowers and entangling effects, 40% removes bees and birds

Awan

Nizaris said:

I propose neutering extermination quite fully: one room per necromancer, have it not even generate an Oakstone warning because no damage is truly done:

• Picture a cloud that inhibits natural processes; not one that destroys and burns nature.
• Shorten time limit of extermination to something similar to rites/vibes/harmonics, at which point, the cloud dissipates and natural processes continue.
• Cloud is moved when summoned to a different location. This allows natural processes in the original location to continue as though nothing had happened in the first place.
• Give forestals the ability to gust the cloud away when in the same room in one of their morphs.

Evil wouldn't even have a goal to accomplish in the forest itself; the goal would be in Eleusis, or shrines within the forests, perhaps -- systems that are already balanced in the sense that each side can attack the other equally. Extermination would just be reduced to a defensive measure to facilitate those conflicts, not a conflict in itself.

I guess this could be okay, actually. We'd have to not call it "extermination," but you could replace extermination with a necromantic ability that gave no warning, was entirely temporary, didn't need to be fixed, and caused no long-term harm to nature but merely "suppressed" Nature's power for a brief time. If it was framed that way, we could freely decide to not be anxious about that or to need to defend against it. But it would keep a little bit of the flavour: we could keep grove flow/grove summon as our special naturey skills, while giving necromancers in particular a way of countering them.

Sure, that sounds nice to me.

Sherazad said:

Honestly, these threads tire me so much and I sort of feel bad about people who are optimistic with it. There are so many good ideas but it's like the thing with Sartan. There's a problem but it looks like it's being forgotten. I mean, I wanna be optimistic in everything but ugh. 

Who's optimistic? It's become crystal-clear that fixing nature conflict, despite how desperately broken it is, is an incredibly low priority for the administration.

Sherazad

@Awan: People continuing to post their ideas on forest conflict counts as optimism, yes?

EDIT: I just woke up and I think my eyes, lips and nose are misplaced.

Blujixapug

Xith said:

But in seriousness, is the problem that one side is underpowered?

No. The problems are that...

1. Forest defendable territory = any and every forest or jungle environment room, spanning hundreds of areas across islands, continents, and planes.

Imagine your city had lone guards standing around in dozens of random areas, from Ulangi to Jaru and Arcadia. Now imagine defending them. You can't ignore them or leave them dead because roleplay.

2. Necromancers can attack the forests, but have nothing to defend. Forestals must defend the forests, and have nothing they can attack.

There is no defensive win condition or end. Imagine a game of Team Fortress 2 where one side is an engineer defending their base, and the other side is a spy attacking the base, with no time limit, and the game only ends when the spy wins or logs out. Or imagine a penalty shootout in soccer ("futbol") where one side has unlimited kicks and can keep trying until they score, while the other side can only endlessly defend the goal.

3. Forestals have no option to turn around and be the aggressive ones and get some payback.

There's no extermination equivalent, they can't go Febreze the red fog. They can raid Mhaldor - but so can Mhaldor raid Eleusis, so it doesn't count. They can defile shrines - but so can Mhaldor defile their shrines, so it doesn't count.

That's why you see people saying "just delete the whole thing", because minor patch fix nerfs or buffs will not make up for the huge fundamental problems.

Nizaris

Delphinus said:

Nizaris said:

[2] Where is "the suck" in my suggestion? It's true that I envision it as essentially a flavoured monolith that stops flow/summon/forest defenses. Hell, I don't really object to your suggestion, as it would certainly be easier than exterming: monoliths are quicker to throw down/flame, monos stop more than just flow/summon, monos don't cost essence. But, there's still a flavour that's missing -- Evil needs to be, well, evil, dammit.

The word "extermination" carries an awful lot of baggage, and is less than ideal as a result.

Remove name "extermination"? Deal. I think that's what I was going for, anyway.

Awan said:

Nizaris said:

I propose neutering extermination quite fully: one room per necromancer, have it not even generate an Oakstone warning because no damage is truly done:

• Picture a cloud that inhibits natural processes; not one that destroys and burns nature.
• Shorten time limit of extermination to something similar to rites/vibes/harmonics, at which point, the cloud dissipates and natural processes continue.
• Cloud is moved when summoned to a different location. This allows natural processes in the original location to continue as though nothing had happened in the first place.
• Give forestals the ability to gust the cloud away when in the same room in one of their morphs.

Evil wouldn't even have a goal to accomplish in the forest itself; the goal would be in Eleusis, or shrines within the forests, perhaps -- systems that are already balanced in the sense that each side can attack the other equally. Extermination would just be reduced to a defensive measure to facilitate those conflicts, not a conflict in itself.

I guess this could be okay, actually. We'd have to not call it "extermination," but you could replace extermination with a necromantic ability that gave no warning, was entirely temporary, didn't need to be fixed, and caused no long-term harm to nature but merely "suppressed" Nature's power for a brief time. If it was framed that way, we could freely decide to not be anxious about that or to need to defend against it. But it would keep a little bit of the flavour: we could keep grove flow/grove summon as our special naturey skills, while giving necromancers in particular a way of countering them.

Sure, that sounds nice to me.

Awesome. I'm glad that we're on the same page, and can get something constructive done. The way that you put it is exactly what I envision, and I support your wording. I'm especially pleased that both sides get to keep flavour and utility. Garden, please make it so.

Sarapis

Blujixapug said:

Xith said:

But in seriousness, is the problem that one side is underpowered?

No. The problems are that...

Imagine your city had lone guards standing around in dozens of random areas, from Ulangi to Jaru and Arcadia. Now imagine defending them. You can't ignore them or leave them dead because roleplay.

Forests being quite spread out is not something you can do anything about of course, nor is that something that's going to change, but the latter point, re: "roleplay" is a self-created problem. You define your roleplaying, and if you choose to define it as requiring that you respond to every extermination, then that's how you've decided to rp. If you decided that, for instance, that you have limited resources to fight back and so are only going to worry about certain forests, that'd also be roleplaying. If you decided that you're not going to worry about it at all because <in-game justification>, that'd also be roleplaying. 

Roleplaying in a shared world is about reacting to the world around you, not about defining your character and its actions in the absence of consideration of the environment/context in which you exist, to me. It's also not about picking a class and then adopting an unchanging "template" for your behavior based on that class. 

Extermination isn't going anywhere, btw. It may see some changes, but it will still be what it is now: The severe damaging of normal nature within that room. The mechanics by which that happens may see some adjustment.

Beyond that, let's just say we're going to even things out a bit and give Nature a way to be aggressive rather than purely defensive.

Drauka

Sarapis said:

Blujixapug said:

Xith said:

But in seriousness, is the problem that one side is underpowered?

No. The problems are that...

Imagine your city had lone guards standing around in dozens of random areas, from Ulangi to Jaru and Arcadia. Now imagine defending them. You can't ignore them or leave them dead because roleplay.

Forests being quite spread out is not something you can do anything about of course, nor is that something that's going to change, but the latter point, re: "roleplay" is a self-created problem. You define your roleplaying, and if you choose to define it as requiring that you respond to every extermination, then that's how you've decided to rp. If you decided that, for instance, that you have limited resources to fight back and so are only going to worry about certain forests, that'd also be roleplaying. If you decided that you're not going to worry about it at all because <in-game justification>, that'd also be roleplaying. 

Roleplaying in a shared world is about reacting to the world around you, not about defining your character and its actions in the absence of consideration of the environment/context in which you exist, to me. It's also not about picking a class and then adopting an unchanging "template" for your behavior based on that class. 

Extermination isn't going anywhere, btw. It may see some changes, but it will still be what it is now: The severe damaging of normal nature within that room. The mechanics by which that happens may see some adjustment.

Beyond that, let's just say we're going to even things out a bit and give Nature a way to be aggressive rather than purely defensive.

Dang, and I came back into the game as an Apostate. Druids are pretty awesome.

Awan

Sarapis said:

Forests being quite spread out is not something you can do anything about of course, nor is that something that's going to change, but the latter point, re: "roleplay" is a self-created problem. You define your roleplaying, and if you choose to define it as requiring that you respond to every extermination, then that's how you've decided to rp. If you decided that, for instance, that you have limited resources to fight back and so are only going to worry about certain forests, that'd also be roleplaying. If you decided that you're not going to worry about it at all because <in-game justification>, that'd also be roleplaying.

This is absolutely not a fair response.

Forestals didn't just make this up and decide to be obsessive about protecting Nature whereas the other factions decided more sensibly to be chill about things. The game gives us a different relation to this: the forests are Nature Itself, which is the thing we're dedicated to protecting, as our highest goal, by the definition of the faction itself.

No one else has such a thing. There's no physical thing such as Evil Itself which we can attack, and there's no way to make one, because that wouldn't make sense. So anything we could do to Mhaldor would have, in the game, a far less important status. That's not by virtue of our decision. It's by virtue of the way the game world is written.

So sure, we have a choice. We can either drop everything to protect every forest every time it is attacked, or we can decide to play bad, hypocritical forestals who care more about our own convenience than about Nature. Maybe we could give up the whole idea that we're dedicated to Nature at all, and make protecting it just a sort of part-time hobby?

But no one is going to want to do that, because it would require giving up everything that is valuable about roleplaying in the forestal faction to begin with. And that's not our fault. No one else is forced into a choice where they would have to absolutely abandon the in-game ideals of their faction in order to make the game tolerable to play.

Acting as if forestals themselves are the source of the problem is incredibly unfair. The administration has a responsibility to handle this situation in a way that works for us, given that we are obligated to respond to all attacks on Nature as our first priority.

Mishgul

You guys are quite fascist (not meant as an insult, i genuinely mean the ideology) about defending. I remember the Fianna was set up as a response to exterminations and forest based combat and now it's completely made obsolete by the fact that everyone is almost conscripted into forest defense. 

It's not a matter of WE'RE FORESTAL THROW OUR LIVES AT STANDING IN A SAFE PLACE WHILE WATCHING WANTON DESTRUCTION. When Mhaldor gets raided and i'm doing a newbie orientation, i go off to Thera and finish the orientation, for example. I am not "abandoning" my duties, I am -doing- my duties, in a different way. If there was a sermon, or a ritual going on, I would not stop either, because I, the character, am a fanatic, and see that spreading of my words as something that would benefit everyone more.

You guys should sit down and repriorities. I am not saying that you are -wrong-, I'm saying, take a step back, try and look at things from a different perspective. It's your responsibility as players, as much as the administrations responsibility, to put yourself in an environment that you enjoy playing in. 

If you aren't doing that, why are you playing? The fact that you keep playing isn't a warning sign to the administration that something is wrong, it's telling them that people are getting involved and that means that this must be a good thing. I know -some- people enjoy exterminations on both sides, perhaps even a minority, and that is why it's still here. If exterminations actually caused people to stop playing, it would have gone the way of theft.

Oakstone has always has communication problems within the organisation, and the fact that forestals are so diluted doesn't help, (see current Sylvan house, old druid house, oakstone vs eleusis arguments etc). Everyone really needs to get together and get on the same page. 

Gaia is a good stepping stone for this and people should really listen to her. I've seen some horrific things lately coming out of Eleusis. 

Mhaldor is in a good place and it's atmosphere is reaching a point where it can sustain players and make the game fun for them, and I don't think people will be looking to take that away from them any time soon. It all comes down to what keeps the players playing and keeps the players more involved too.

I could be off my rocker too I guess, apparently I am not a stable person, but if people genuinely start quitting the game, I would feel bad, unless it was @Ayoxele.

Xith

Blujixapug said:

3. Forestals have no option to turn around and be the aggressive ones and get some payback.

There's no extermination equivalent, they can't go Febreze the red fog. They can raid Mhaldor - but so can Mhaldor raid Eleusis, so it doesn't count. They can defile shrines - but so can Mhaldor defile their shrines, so it doesn't count.

Sarapis said:

Beyond that, let's just say we're going to even things out a bit and give Nature a way to be aggressive rather than purely defensive.

Gate                Open a gateway of light.

Harmony             Seek Nature's blessing through absolute harmony.

Hive                Create a hive of stinging bees to defend your grove.

Overgrowth          Return a runic totem to the embrace of Nature.

Rejuvenate          Restore an exterminated room to its natural state.

Snowstorm           Spread the white cloak of winter across the land.

Wildgrowth          Ensnare your enemies with tenacious plantlife.

Barrier             Form an impenetrable barrier of light itself.

Forestbinding       Prevent all entry and exit from the forest.

Resurrection        Restore yourself or a friend to life.

Febreze             It's a breath of fresh air.

Guardian            Summon an earth golem to guard your grove.

Dampen              Put an end to aural interferences.

Lightning           During a storm, strike at your foe from the heavens.

Panacea             Nature's touch can heal all ills.

Portability         The ultimate expression of the bond with your grove.

Ladies and gentlemen, GROVE FEBREZE.

Awan

Mishgul said:

When Mhaldor gets raided and i'm doing a newbie orientation, i go off to Thera and finish the orientation, for example. I am not "abandoning" my duties, I am -doing- my duties, in a different way. If there was a sermon, or a ritual going on, I would not stop either, because I, the character, am a fanatic, and see that spreading of my words as something that would benefit everyone more.

That's exactly the point. That reasoning you offer makes perfect sense when it's a matter of raid defense. I would also not stop a sermon or ritual to defend against a raid if it were possible to ignore it. It is perfectly consistent with Mhaldor's actual roleplay ideals to prioritize sermons, rituals, care of newbies, and other such valuable things over raid defense.

But suppose I was giving a sermon about or holding a ritual around dedicating our lives to protecting Nature, and then someone started exterminating. Are you seriously suggesting that I should continue talking about the importance of protecting Nature, and everyone should continue listening and nodding their heads piously, and thus that we prioritize talking and ceremonies about protecting Nature over actually protecting Nature? No, that would be crazy.

The situations are not at all analogous. They cannot possibly be analogous unless we either a) replace extermination with something which is characterized as doing something other than actually harming nature, or b) delete the forestal faction entirely, do away with its ideology entirely, and replace it with a group of people who like living in treehouses.

Pretending nature defense and raid defense are analogous and then blaming forestals for treating them differently is completely unfair.

Sarapis

Awan said:

Acting as if forestals themselves are the source of the problem is incredibly unfair. 

(First, let me just echo other peoples' frustrations with how annoying it is to try and break up quotes to respond bit by bit to them.)

Forestals didn't just make this up and decide to be obsessive about protecting Nature whereas the other factions decided more sensibly to be chill about things. The game gives us a different relation to this: the forests areNature Itself, which is the thing we're dedicated to protecting, as our highest goal, by the definition of the faction itself.

So sure, we have a choice. We can either drop everything to protect every forest every time it is attacked, or we can decide to play bad, hypocritical forestals who care more about our own convenience than about Nature. Maybe we could give up the whole idea that we're dedicated to Nature at all, and make protecting it just a sort of part-time hobby?

Actually, you did decide to be obsessive about protecting Nature. That's your choice.

Let's say you work for the Humane Society, irl, and that you are very dedicated to animal welfare. How many of those people, do you think, spend every single waking moment doing nothing but rescuing lost puppies? Not very many, I'd bet. Instead, they are probably whole individuals with multiple interests and cares, including but not limited to their family, their friends, their personal health, what brings them satisfaction in life, their religion (if they're a religious person), their hobbies, etc.

This doesn't make them any less of a real character who really helps animals. It just means they don't do it 100% of the time and that it is not their only priority in life to the exclusion of all others.

Or how about soldiers? The military, quite wisely, does not stick people into 24/7 battle continuously for years on end. They let people leave combat between tours of duty, and go pursue other things that are important to them. Or just recover, because it is not reasonable to expect people to be vigilant all the time and give up everything for a single goal (though of course soldiers irl actually do that sometimes, due to rl having permadeath). 

If it's your character's roleplay to have one and only one thing you care about in life, that's your choice. We all have different ideas about what good roleplaying is, but I tend to look at good roleplaying as resulting in characters that feel real, that have flaws, and are multi-dimensional. The number of folks who would be, realistically, interested in being on 24/7 guard duty in any situation approaches 0, so why would you consider it necessary for -everyone- in your faction to roleplay that way?


But no one is going to want to do that, because it would require giving up everything that is valuable about roleplaying in the forestal faction to begin with. And that's not our fault. No one else is forced into a choice where they would have to absolutely abandon the in-game ideals of their faction in order to make the game tolerable to play.

So, when the folks at the Humane Society want to go on a date rather than searching for lost puppies to help one night, that's making them absolutely abandon their ideals?

When a firefighter takes a vacation, he's abandoning his ideals?

When a military service member retires after 20 years to do other things, he's abandoning his ideals?

The administration has a responsibility to handle this situation in a way that works for us, given that we are obligated to respond to all attacks on Nature as our first priority. 

You're the one saying that you're obligated though, not us. You are not an automaton, and actually can make choices for yourself.

Aktillum

My one complaint during my time as an Eleusian was that Team Green had no retaliation for exterminate except to try a counter-raid. I would love to see forestals able to turn red fog rooms into forest rooms, turning the entirety of Sartan Isle into a lush, tropical forest that fights against them until they exterminate it back to ashes.

Sarapis

Yep, that is a legitimate complaint, and something we're going to do something about. There will be tears.

Chryenth

Sarapis said:

A legitimate complaint, and there will be tears.

Business as usual, then.

Guhem

From what I can see, the problem right now stems from perspective between @Sarapis and @Awan.

I remember as a Druid now, and as it continues on, part of the ideology of is that Nature and protection of Nature is above all. So to us, it is an obligation we do have to see through. To forsake Nature for something else is in fact becoming a hypocrite. It's something that starts from the foundation of becoming a forestal.

The whole forestal faction is based on dropping everything for Nature, because that is the oath that all forestals (correct me here if I'm wrong, it's this way with the Druids') have taken.

To choose to be a forestal is to choose to have this obligation, it goes hand-in-hand.

If this is the resolution that the garden has chosen, then I do think there has to be a huge change for the Nature faction, starting from the very foundations.

Mishgul

Awan said:

Mishgul said:

When Mhaldor gets raided and i'm doing a newbie orientation, i go off to Thera and finish the orientation, for example. I am not "abandoning" my duties, I am -doing- my duties, in a different way. If there was a sermon, or a ritual going on, I would not stop either, because I, the character, am a fanatic, and see that spreading of my words as something that would benefit everyone more.

That's exactly the point. That reasoning you offer makes perfect sense when it's a matter of raid defense. I would also not stop a sermon or ritual to defend against a raid if it were possible to ignore it. It is perfectly consistent with Mhaldor's actual roleplay ideals to prioritize sermons, rituals, care of newbies, and other such valuable things over raid defense.

But suppose I was giving a sermon about or holding a ritual around dedicating our lives to protecting Nature, and then someone started exterminating. Are you seriously suggesting that I should continue talking about the importance of protecting Nature, and everyone should continue listening and nodding their heads piously, and thus that we prioritize talking and ceremonies about protecting Nature over actually protecting Nature? No, that would be crazy.

The situations are not at all analogous. They cannot possibly be analogous unless we either a) replace extermination with something which is characterized as doing something other than actually harming nature, or b) delete the forestal faction entirely, do away with its ideology entirely, and replace it with a group of people who like living in treehouses.

Pretending nature defense and raid defense are analogous and then blaming forestals for treating them differently is completely unfair.

Why is talking about nature talking about -protecting- nature.  This is somewhere where I believe your ideals fall short. Your city has become exactly that. The city of "defending" nature. Just by your ideals you're already on the backfoot.  And then people seem to join Eleusis for reasons other than defending nature then complain that they have to defend nature.

What exactly is going on?

Awan

Sarapis said:

Let's say you work for the Humane Society, irl, and that you are very dedicated to animal welfare. How many of those people, do you think, spend every single waking moment doing nothing but rescuing lost puppies? Not very many, I'd bet. Instead, they are probably whole individuals with multiple interests and cares, including but not limited to their family, their friends, their personal health, what brings them satisfaction in life, their religion (if they're a religious person), their hobbies, etc.

This doesn't make them any less of a real character who really helps animals. It just means they don't do it 100% of the time and that it is not their only priority in life to the exclusion of all others.

So, when the folks at the Humane Society want to go on a date rather than searching for lost puppies to help one night, that's making them absolutely abandon their ideals?

Sorry, this comparison doesn't work. Here is the correct comparison:

Suppose there is a meeting of the humane society. Perhaps someone's giving a talk about the importance of protecting animals, or perhaps they're having a ceremony to honour someone's dedication, or perhaps they're having a banquet or just taking an opportunity to relax and socialize with like-minded people.

Then someone starts beating a dog to death in the room next door. And they can hear it howling, so they know it's happening. And it's possible for them to prevent it.

The members of the humane society have to go stop the guy from beating the dog to death. If they choose not to do that, and decide to prioritize their talks and ceremonies and socializing over preventing an actual dog from being beaten to death, they are horrible hypocrites and have abandoned the ideals they claimed to have.

That is what forestals would be like if they decided to prioritize their ceremonies and socializing and so on over preventing exterminations. We've never thought we were obligated to be protecting nature 24 hours a day (patrolling the forests over and over and over again, or something). But we do take ourselves to be obligated to prevent the dog from being beaten to death next door, and unfortunately, we can't schedule when that's going to happen.

Extermination conflict is utterly intolerable when it's happening a lot. The only reason forestals still continue to defend all the time, despite how completely frigging sick of it they are, is that the alternative is to completely abandon the entire identity of our faction. We'd be the humane society person who "loves animals" but wouldn't try to prevent someone from beating a dog to death if she'd just had her nails done. I'd much rather not play the game at all.

Delphinus

Mishgul said:

Gaia is a good stepping stone for this and people should really listen to her. I've seen some horrific things lately coming out of Eleusis. 

Eleusis already seems intent on ushering me out the door, such that I'm getting contested for culturing the Team Red/Blue breakups that we discussed at length in the leaders forum. People were outwardly arguing with @Gaia about their right to defend Cyrene. If you think Eleusis is interested in listening to her, or to any authority figure, you are mistaken.

Sarapis said:

Extermination isn't going anywhere, btw. It may see some changes, but it will still be what it is now: The severe damaging of normal nature within that room. The mechanics by which that happens may see some adjustment.

Beyond that, let's just say we're going to even things out a bit and give Nature a way to be aggressive rather than purely defensive.

Events have worked out just fine for Shallam, Cyrene, Ashtan, etc. without the need for attacking their basic essence. There is no "essence of Evil" you could ever strike, as @Nizaris, the Mhaldorian player who started this thread, pointed out. Nothing that resembles the current build -- really, nothing that you'd call "extermination" as it's identified today -- will ever be balanced, fair, or worth the torn follicles.

If extermination isn't disappearing, that's just one more reason for me to go. Given how much I love Achaea, I say that with more weary honesty than I'd like to admit.

Skye

Sarapis said:

Blujixapug said:

Xith said:

But in seriousness, is the problem that one side is underpowered?

No. The problems are that...

Imagine your city had lone guards standing around in dozens of random areas, from Ulangi to Jaru and Arcadia. Now imagine defending them. You can't ignore them or leave them dead because roleplay.

Forests being quite spread out is not something you can do anything about of course, nor is that something that's going to change, but the latter point, re: "roleplay" is a self-created problem. You define your roleplaying, and if you choose to define it as requiring that you respond to every extermination, then that's how you've decided to rp. If you decided that, for instance, that you have limited resources to fight back and so are only going to worry about certain forests, that'd also be roleplaying. If you decided that you're not going to worry about it at all because <in-game justification>, that'd also be roleplaying. 

While what you say makes sense, it's also a little unfair to push the onus onto us. As things stand now, extermination has become the round-the-clock go-to option for bored pkers because of the sheer availability of targets, ease of execution due to lack of hindrances or real repercussions etc, even the fact that it's the best way to farm experience because we're practically the only source of conflict in which the attackers can level up off swarms of rapidly discouraged midbie combatants since dying in cities now only costs exp for the raiders not the defenders. How would we say it, 'even when we don't look for trouble, trouble looks for us'? We're like the 7-11 of pk.

The forestal community has also suffered from the sheer lack of administrative guidance in this affair. From the time I've been forestal since god knows how many years ago till now, I've not encountered any Nature-aligned God who's made any notable progress in reforming or even redirecting our efforts to something that you might perceive as 'more sensible roleplay'.

We've been left to our own devices for so long that the entire faction has dug itself into a Shallam-esque rut, incapable of change due to the sheer amount of red-tape and self-pwnage. By this point, I'm likely to believe it's not even enough to just throw a God in our direction because the playerbase apparently finds the very idea of some 'higher power' an alien concept. The ham-fisted way the recent fracas was handled by both parties is, in my eyes, proof enough of that belief.

Exelethril

I think the tl;dr version is - 

• Forests are vast and can be accessed and attacked easily(as opposed to cities), often to the convenience of the raiders.
• Hit and run tactics are viable with gravehands, especially when there are so many directions to run around in without totems and guards to worry about. This wouldn't be possible in other cities.
• Experience loss to defenders when other cities don't suffer from it.
• No real repercussions to raiders beyond getting counter-raided. They don't lose exp if they die in Mhaldor either and it' s much easier to "turtle" there.
  

I know it's probably taboo to talk about experience loss but it is a factor and Eleusis is the only faction that fights with disadvantages other cities do not suffer from with a much larger area to defend.

Talonia

The foundations for new offensive forestal RP are there - in fact, I think they've been made quite explicit by the Garden with several recent admin-level moves, including the effective replacement of the Nature goddess Melantha and the pseudo-Nature god Lupus with Gaia, the Wildwood Queen. Gaia uses a lot of thorn and weed metaphors and imagery from what I've seen or heard of her thus far, and is generally far more aggressive than recent predecessor divine. I'd take this to mean that Nature doesn't have to be represented by blankets in groves and tidy gardens and perfectly-maintained treehouses with tsol'aa and treekin inside. There is room for ruthless spear-thrusting barbarians who hate and disdain civilized folk (Artemis' tribe could be this, and barbarian isn't used as an insult here), vine-wreathed prophets preaching destruction of all five other cities to make way for new forests, and hulking, ancient, feral monsters summoned from the depths of the forests.

If Eleusis oriented itself toward an "overgrowth" ideology, with a long-term strategic goal of undoing built environments in favor of natural ones Sapience-wide, they could allow for short-term losses like a few dozen exterminated rooms here or there with the mantra "in the end, we will return all to its Natural state." There has to be a way of making it so that losing one room is not a tragedy anymore. 

Unfortunately, if Delphinus' comments above are any indication, this is highly unrealistic at this point, which is too bad.

Awan

I should say: I'm not totally closed to the idea that there could be some version of extermination conflict which could be okay.

But if you approach it with the idea that you're going to make it "fair" and "even" by giving us something to do to Mhaldor in return, then you've failed to grasp what the problem even is. There is no way to have an extermination system which doesn't thereby give far more leverage to Mhaldor, even if there's something we can do in return which is, in the most basic game-mechanic terms, equivalent. It won't actually be equivalent, and can't possibly be.

The only way a system could be created which filled that role and didn't suck for forestals would be if the administration actually took seriously the perspectives of those forestals who participate in extermination conflict, but hate it. But it's obvious from this conversation alone that the administration is not at all interested in doing that. After years of waiting for you to fix this, you're still prioritizing the concerns and interests of Mhaldorians and those handful of forestal combatants who actually kinda like the current system but wish they could do something back.  And that's not fair, because it's that other 95% of forestals who have always paid nearly all of the costs of nature conflict, and are going to continue to do so.

To deal with the things that make nature conflict so intolerable, you will need to do a lot more than this farce of trying to make it "even-handed" by giving us something to do in return. Giving us something to do in return would be nice, but that was not the only problem, and there'd be a lot more to it. At the very least, extermination would need to become more difficult to accomplish than raiding, rather than an easier alternative than it is now, and it would need to be majorly nerfed and limited.

I get that people want there to be an avenue of conflict other than raiding. It seems to me that a better method would be to invent one that applies even-handedly to all 6 factions. But extermination will never actually be equivalent to those other things you could invent, and it is unfair to pretend it could be. If you just invent something that is mechanically equivalent to extermination, then modify those systems to be "reasonable" as considered from a perspective that ignores the unique importance of protecting nature in forestal roleplay, then Mhaldor will still have a great deal of unfair leverage over forestals and forestals will still be in a very crappy situation, with the added insult of being told we have nothing to complain about now because everything is "even."

Drauka

What do forestals do all the time? Would they like to get into combat and raiding more? Have Nature be an equal force as Good and Evil (suppose Chaos people don't care as much, Babel did come back?)?

Just curious. The grand vision of improves forestal presence would be a more definable footing to engage other forces?

Mishgul

That was my question. What else would Eleusis do if not defend nature.