Splicing/Canceling Wormholes

Kresslack

Just throwing this out there, but I think it would be nice to have some sort of area message when a wormhole is being spliced or canceled. Something along the lines of: The air vibrates faintly with potent magic. For each tick of both processes. This could possible be an add-on to the Wormholes skill in Vision, or if someone has the ability to Splice/Cancel in Subterfuge. This wouldn't tell you who or exactly where it was happening, but it would allow you to sense that something in the area is happening. Especially useful for Serpents who create and maintain warp networks.

Riashain

Disagree. Already lengthy process to splice (unless it was reduced while I was away). Don't need to be harrassed while doing it anymore than can already happen. My opinion.

Kresslack

Riashain said:

Disagree. Already lengthy process to splice (unless it was reduced while I was away). Don't need to be harrassed while doing it anymore than can already happen. My opinion.

It doesn't take that long, based on a splice last night (unless the other person had a jewel I didn't know about). This is mainly geared at canceling wormholes, which someone has been doing a lot lately. The issue is that it's very difficult to either catch/discover whoever is doing it since it only takes one person to cancel where it takes two people to splice.

Tharvis

30 minutes @Kresslack. Is a really lengthy process without that gem

Kresslack

Tharvis said:

30 minutes @Kresslack. Is a really lengthy process without that gem

Same for canceling as well, I take it?

Riashain

Agreed that random cancellling is annoying. Still not a fan of this idea though.

Jules

This is a bit of an aside, but pretty related.  At this point, Achaean wormholes that aren't directly used for raiding or the like almost seem to be community property due to the crowdmap (and that helps IRE sell a lot of sticks, too).  What about making some key wormholes indestructible for that purpose?  Obviously those wormholes couldn't be right next to a city, or a temple or something.  

Tharvis

Kresslack said:

Tharvis said:

30 minutes @Kresslack. Is a really lengthy process without that gem

Same for canceling as well, I take it?

yep, 30 minutes cancelling

Riashain

Also neg on that idea. The crowdmap is pretty wrong on wormholes to be honest. Better in some areas than others. To be fair they can change at the drop of a hat, unlike the map itself. Anyway, no to perm wormholes.

Kresslack

Jules said:

This is a bit of an aside, but pretty related.  At this point, Achaean wormholes that aren't directly used for raiding or the like almost seem to be community property due to the crowdmap (and that helps IRE sell a lot of sticks, too).  What about making some key wormholes indestructible for that purpose?  Obviously those wormholes couldn't be right next to a city, or a temple or something.  

That wouldn't be ideal because it would require administrative involvement in deciding where to place them, which might also contradict with already existing wormholes.

Either way, I really thing the whole canceling of wormholes aspect needs to be re-evaluated. That one person can seemingly easily undue the work it usually takes a group to do, generally for no other reason to be a nuisance, seems a bit unbalanced.

Shirszae

Be that as it may, I really would be against area-wide messages. Maybe, at most, add a minuscule chance of you sensing when a wormhole you helped splice is being cancelled.

Tael

I really don't like the idea of a passive area-wide message.

I could, however, see an active ability for this in vision or something.

Maybe something like SPLICERS, which would return something like this:

"You sense one individual manipulating wormholes in this area and three more individuals manipulating wormholes worldwide."

That way you can go on "wormhole watch" and can know if someone is splicing/canceling, but you have to actually check areas by hand to find out where, and even if you find the area, you need to search manually or use fullsense or WHO or something like that, with all the usual defences against detection by those means.

Maybe Serpents would get a slightly nicer version of this that actually gave the area names of worldwide splicers ("You sense individuals manipulating wormholes in the following areas:") or gave locations/identities of local-area splicers ("You sense [one individual/Sarapis] manipulating a wormhole [in this area/at Outside the Cave] and three more individuals manipulating wormholes worldwide."). Always nice to give serpents a slight edge while giving the general public more abilities or artefacts that interact with their skills.

Cobault

Kresslack said:

Jules said:

This is a bit of an aside, but pretty related.  At this point, Achaean wormholes that aren't directly used for raiding or the like almost seem to be community property due to the crowdmap (and that helps IRE sell a lot of sticks, too).  What about making some key wormholes indestructible for that purpose?  Obviously those wormholes couldn't be right next to a city, or a temple or something.  

That wouldn't be ideal because it would require administrative involvement in deciding where to place them, which might also contradict with already existing wormholes.

Either way, I really thing the whole canceling of wormholes aspect needs to be re-evaluated. That one person can seemingly easily undue the work it usually takes a group to do, generally for no other reason to be a nuisance, seems a bit unbalanced.

Administrative involvement. When they sell an artie that directly steals the ability from Serpents and gives it to other people for easy transportation. So without Serpents sacrificing half hours at a time, wormholes wouldn't exist, thus, their precious 800 credit vibrating stick would become moot, since all it does is worm warp.

Then you have Serpent trolls that get bored, and run around cancelling, for no reason. NO REASON, other than to troll. Why? Because they know it annoys people.

I'm all for a handful of admin-placed perma wormholes-- within reason. So if they wanna put a two or three room warphub in every city, I'm fine with that, as long as there are some guidelines, like a door that enemies can't pass through, or you can't warp to/from them if you're enemied or have enemies following you, etc. etc.

I've never been fond of vibrating sticks, nor really any artie that steals a skill that's specific to a class or two and gives them to the world (I'm looking at you too, Mask of Lifevision.) They've just never really seemed that fair.

Jules

Yeah, I didn't get why admin involvement would be a problem.  If anything, I was expecting people to be worried about new and creative griefing tactics or something - even with the wormholes carefully placed away from key strategic spots.  But as with all of these things, whatever happens happens.  If it's any comfort to you, I'm really, really surprised they never gave some of our runes to the general population through artefacts (because it probably would have been less game changing, and many of those people essentially had access to them anyway if they had access to a friendly runelore user).  

Cobault

Mostly because Runewarden would have ceased to be Runewarden. It would've had to become something else, or their runes would've had to be altered, or something complex involving totems and totems only. It would've been a lot of critical thinking to rip Runelore away from RWs and give them to the world as a miniskill.

I'm willing to bet you money it crossed Their minds once or twice, though.

Jules

Yeah, I just meant like, the old weapon stat runes and Jera, Berkana and Algiz.  Lots of people got those all the time (and they still get the three body runes).  It's also a non-aligned class... If it were those, frankly, with the abilities they've taken from other classes, I don't think we'd have been able to bitch that much (I mean, we would have, I'm sure, but it would be hard for us to say we'd been done dirtier than say, serpents).  Anyway, with that derail, who knows.  It sounds like serpents are likely tired of repeatedly fixing wormholes that really are just utility/travel for them and half the game, but they also seem to be against most things that might help with the problem (including Kresslack's idea).  

Kresslack

It wouldn't even be so bad if there were some way to actually know when a cancel was happening, or if it didn't require just one person to cancel a wormhole it takes two people to splice. A Serpent with a Jewel can just hope on in low peak hours and run around canceling wormholes (which seems like what's been happening for the past few months) and no one knows until they're running a path and realize, Oh, this doesn't exist anymore.

So it's heavily in favour of people who just want to cancel wormholes randomly for no other reason than to be annoying. The Serpent community knows who it -likely- is, but there's just no way to accurately 'catch someone in the act', as it were, to be able to do anything about it.

If nothing else, maybe make the canceling of wormholes a two person operation? The only time I've noticed wormholes being reasonably canceled was during faction disputes between the old Serpent Houses and sometimes cities, and corrections to wormholes made redundant and resplicing to offer a better hub layout. That's a far step removed from random cancelings just to be an annoyance.

Herose

It would be neat if you could sense when someone was tampering with wormholes that you spliced. 

"You sense that Herose is closing the wormhole between here and there."

Kenway

@Kresslacksaid:
If nothing else, maybe make the canceling of wormholes a two person operation?

If by this you mean two-person from a single side of the wormhole, I think that -might- be reasonable or at least the start of something reasonable. If you mean one on either side I shall kick and scream till we're all deaf and bruised. 

In the cases where the management of subdivisions falls through (be it through poor MoD upkeep or just a massive backlog of people not paying the attention where they should or people simply not checking wormholes regularly) people occasionally get wormholes into sub houses. This can be innocent enough, but it can also lead to subdivision raids which are one of the least pleasant things around for the defenders because they have to just sit in a room for half an hour trying to keep the serpent who is canceling alive and uninterrupted while those on the other side hop through, attack the group, attack the canceler, yank the canceler (they can't keep up mass) etc. So if you're wondering why it's comparatively easy to cancel, that's why. 

Yes it's abusable by asshats. But it's definitely not something that has an easy balancing solution unless you were to give wormholes factional identities or make some way for them to be preventable in a room (perhaps function for dropped star sigils?)

I dunno, just my thoughts on that, take it or leave it. Wormhole raids suck.

Silas

Cancelling/splicing is fine. It's a form of conflict that isn't stacked in either side's favour. If you want to find out who it is, keep an eye on the usual suspects, and do what you can to disrupt them. Then you can focus on maintaining the wormholes you spliced for convenience, knowing that they're not actually some inalienable right.

See also: shrines, etc.

Herenicus

Ugh, please not more staring-contest tedium cloaked as conflict. 

Antidas

Tharvis said:

Kresslack said:

Tharvis said:

30 minutes @Kresslack. Is a really lengthy process without that gem

Same for canceling as well, I take it?

yep, 30 minutes cancelling

For the record, this information is incomplete. For a serpent, it takes 15 minutes to splice and 15 minutes to cancel. With the gem, that is halved to 7 1/2 minutes to splice and remains 15 minutes to cancel. For any non-serpent, it takes 30 minutes to cancel.

Kresslack

Silas said:

Cancelling/splicing is fine. It's a form of conflict that isn't stacked in either side's favour. If you want to find out who it is, keep an eye on the usual suspects, and do what you can to disrupt them. Then you can focus on maintaining the wormholes you spliced for convenience, knowing that they're not actually some inalienable right.

See also: shrines, etc.

Wormholes and the canceling thereof are in no way relative to shrines. People get messages when shrines are being tampered with and a quick scan of an area can generally reveal who's responsible. So in effect, I'm asking for something similar. You can't really keep an eye on the usual suspects if they're not around until off peak hours and/or gemmed/veiled. 

I like Herose's suggestion, about getting some form of notification regarding wormholes you've personally spliced, but I feel like that would be too definite in identifying them. I don't think it should be that easy to discover who it is.

Instead, perhaps you get a message that a wormhole -you- personally spliced is being attacked and it maybe gives you the area name. That still requires you to go investigate in effort of discovering who is responsible, akin to shrines.

Kresslack

Daeir said:

Nope, not needed.

Fullsense exists for a reason.

I think you missed the point that this was to help Serpents keep track of wormholes, especially the canceling of wormholes they spliced.

Arador

For splicing, no. For cancelling, could be interesting.

Grandue

Just make it so that it requires two serpents to cancel a wormhole. The don't need to be on both sides of the wormhole, they can both be in the same room. This would stop lone serpents who are just being dicks from going on a canceling spree. I also think there is a possibility that novices are doing it, they get an ability and just want to check it out and figure they won't get caught. Requiring two serpents would also eliminate this. 

Tharvis

Grandue said:

Just make it so that it requires two serpents to cancel a wormhole. The don't need to be on both sides of the wormhole, they can both be in the same room. This would stop lone serpents who are just being dicks from going on a canceling spree. I also think there is a possibility that novices are doing it, they get an ability and just want to check it out and figure they won't get caught. Requiring two serpents would also eliminate this. 

I'd really rather not limit cancelling to serpents. Just require it to have two people that have the ability in either Subterfuge or Survival.

Borran

I love the way it is- Among serpents, it's a game of infiltration/planning vs reconnaissance/sabotage. The part I don't like is that it takes sooo long to setup. Granted, with how powerful they are and how much they change the game, it makes sense. 

I'd like to see it easier to make wormholes, harder to destroy them, and a way to conceal them from wormhole sensing (maybe temporarily) so that wormholes get used more for infiltration.

Arditi

Just have an empower similar to totems. Allow a limited number of them to report if they're being attacked/cancelled, simply as "The wormhole at <place> is being attacked!".

Thus, your important ones can be protected, and if you're going to have an island sized warp hub, you have to pick and choose which ones are actually worth it.

Rip

I would love an announcement that told me some ass wipe is taken down a warp. It needs to be serpent wide...and open PK just like shrines.