We've just had an Envoy Summit, and one of the issues brought up was the question of balance in the ethereal forests of Glomdoring and Serenwilde. Basically, it was pointed out that ethereal forests cannot be raided as easily as cosmic and elemental planes.

I have always felt, in terms of game system and for RP reasons, that the ethereal forests were extensions of their counterparts on the prime plane, and also a blend, if you will, of both the elemental and cosmic planes (holding beings who are somewhat parallels of the cosmic lords as well as having the non-meld qualities of the elemental planes).

A solution presented was to simply remove the ethereal forest loyalty to Glomdoring and Serenwilde, which would remove the guards and totems from the ethereal plane. Alternatively, we could also revise the fae quests so that all fae, whether loyal to Moon or Night would return to Faethorn (as would the Daughters of Night and Ladies of the Silvery Moon), as well as moving the nature aspects to a more neutral place (thus, retaining the loyalty of the forest itself).

I'd like to hear input from more of the playerbase before jumping to any quick decisions. My concern is creating a situation that overly oppresses a section of the playerbase, which is what happened when "raids" were more frequent on the ethereal. Please share what you see are pros and cons to this issue. Providing alternate and innovative solutions will be most welcome, of course.

This thread will be heavily moderated, so please keep it civil.

In my opinion,
Pros:
- Greater balance between anti-Wiccan and anti-Guardian quests. The Supernals, Demon lords and Avatars would all be relatively the same difficulty to kill. The greater ease in getting to both ethereal forests might be countered by the greater mobility and demesne benefits that the communes have in etherforests.
- The cities could cause significant harm to either commune, which they haven't been able to as of yet, due to a lack of anti-Commune quests in comparison to anti-City quests.
- Glom/Seren conflict would be far more dynamic and engaging.

Cons:
- The Faethorn quests will have to be completely rewritten AGAIN. If there is no real difficulty in getting to either etherforest (crossing the area boundary would mean little), collecting and protecting fae would be next to meaningless. Similarly for the champions.
- Unlike the two cosmic planes, navigating between the etherforests requires only walking. Unless Serenwilde and Glom are pushed into an alliance of necessity, the ethereal plane will be a constant battlezone. Add the fact they are on the same continent, so summoning/teleporting/sporing/etc are all possible where they don't seem to be on the cosmic planes.
- Both Serenwilde and Glomdoring will lose some power generation, but that is probably reasonable.

Personally, I would prefer a different solution, because I am almost certain that going back to 24/7 guard duty and constant back and forth battle would wear us out as much as it did last time.

As part of the balancing disadvantages of the communes involves our prime territory being much easier to raid, what about making the aspects of hart/crow wander the prime forests? I realize that there is still a guard issue, but with ingenuity they should be possible to overcome, shouldn't they?

Pros

* Cities can have a successful raid on a commune so it feels fair.
* More likely to have city/commune conflict instead of "good/evil" conflict.
* Neutral Avatars prevent clear good-evil lines.

Cons

* Unless very careful, RP changes might cause player suffering.
* Need to be very careful so quests are bug-free when changing them.
* A minority could end up causing harrasing "pwnage".

Xenthos had a reasonable fix for this whole thing that he showed me a while ago...but he said he'll only post it tomorrow, he's too tired to today or something. I'm supporting that one, anyway.

Would be interesting to have the Avatars inside Maeve's Palace, sort of like Court Nobles..vying for control over the crazy queen.

Also, it would bring the communes together in a way, that if the cities came to raid, the Night Avatars would be in danger just as the Moon Avatars, which would definitely be interesting.

I'm going to copy and paste my post from the 'Idiots!' section, with a large addition at the end in response to several issues that were raised in that topic. If you've already read it, feel free to skip the first half.

Overview
Currently the Ethereal Communes and the Cosmic Planes serve the same purpose to their respective organizations. Each is connected to a city or commune, and that connected organization has a guild of wiccans or guardians assigned to guard and generally oversee that plane. These areas house that organization's special entities, be they Fae, Angels, or Demons. Each cosmic plane holds five supernals/demon lords, each commune holds three major aspects. They serve the same general purpose, granting their guardians/wiccans extra skills.

The functionary differences between the communes and cities are thus:
- communes may gather wild fae to increase their counts of entities. If the organization controls Faethorn, each Fae gathered is worth 10 power, if Faethorn is neutral it generates 5, if Faethorn is controlled by the opposing organization it generates 3. When one of these controlled Fae is slain an equal amount is lost dependant upon the above factors.
- every month the commune receives power based on the number of face they control, following the same formula above. If one controls Faethorn and has 20 Fae, they recieve 200 power per month, ect.
- whenever enough fae are converted by a commune they produce either a champion of moon or a daughter of night. They are used in the Faethorn battle, but within the scope of this argument they can just be considered to be bonus guards that attack anyone enemied to the moon or night spirit
- guards can be placed in any ethereal commune room and totems in any forest-type room, whereas no guards or statues may exist on the cosmic planes with the exception of guards at the nexus

On all other points the two are similar. The Flame of Glinshari and Drums of the Dead generate 1000 power/month, which is equal of the 200/month provided by all five demon lords/supernals. Also, in order to give perspective

- When a cherub/imp is killed the respective nexus loses 1 power, devas and fiends drain 2 power, angels and demons drain 4 power, archangels and archdemons drain 5 power.
- When those creatures' corpses are turned in to the opposing side, an equal amount of power is gained by them. Note that Fae give +3 power upon conversion into cosmic beings.
- Dead cherubs and imps placed in the Well of Souls generate a piece of essence that is worth 1-5 power based on sands status

Argument
There are clearly imbalances present in this system. The communes are obviously better at generating power, as they generate the same amount as the cities plus more based on the number of Fae they hold. Cosmic beings contribute no power on a monthly basis.

The amount of power generated directly upon Fae conversion is also too great. When Faethorn is neutral one fae is equivalent to an archangel or archdemon, and when one side controls Faethorn their Fae are worth twice what an archangel or archdemon is. And yet, these Fae are located in an area directly adjacent to their own. It is easy to reach and the Fae do not have anyone to cry out to help for. The Fae do not need to be killed and are simply picked up with the correct item. On the other hand, one must actively raid, fight, and alert defenders in order to obtain cosmic corpses.

The second point is how easily an area may be defended. The cosmic planes are completely without guards and statues, save for guards placed at the nexuses, and so must depend solely upon player defenders responding. On the other hand, the ethereal communes are nearly invincible. Small raids have been successful in the past, but these days, with the sheer number of guards and totems, in addition to the fact that they often contain Moon Champions and Daughters of Night who attack moon/night enemies, it is almost impossible. This means that controlled Fae are only rarely slain, and the avatars are untouchable.

Proposed changes
- No guards can be placed within Ethereal Glomdoring or Ethereal Serenwilde, except at their respective nexuses
- No totems may be raised within Ethereal Glomdoring or Ethereal Serenwilde
- Fae converted when an opposing side controls Faethorn give 2 power each and per month, when neutral 4 power, when they control faethorn, 6

Alright. The guards and totems fixes are no-brainers. The Fae should still be worth a hefty bit of power, both when turned in and monthly, because it is quite a bit harder for the communes to get their hands on essence than the cities. The champions should remain as they are, and maybe even have some summoned when avatars are attacked, because the Demon Lords and Supernals are defended by numerous demons and angels.

One could easily argue that the increased availability of power to the communes is balanced by the fact that they have a harder time getting essence. However, it is rather easy for Serenwilde to collect light essence from water and convert it with no risk to themselves, and though Glomdoring has a harder time of it they too can pilfer essense without too much risk. That isn't the big point, though. The main point is that the communes have totems, a source of power that the cities have no equivalent of which produces thousands of power per month. This more than compensates for the lack of essence available.

As Xenthos stated in my topic, if guards/totems are removed from Ethereal then it will even further imbalance commune power gain. The reason for this is that, although the communes have totems on ethereal, they also have tons of guards. The power gained by no longer having to support these guards would surpass that lost by no longer allowing totems. So: if this course of action is taken (and I hope it is), the staff must then reevaluate totems and either cut their contribution significantly or remove their power bonus entirely.

Also, ethereal glomdoring and serenwilde should still retain a small edge over the defensibility of the cosmic planes to make up for the fact that they are so much easier to reach.

Finally, Estarra, I understand your reasoning that the ethereal glomdoring and serenwilde are much more akin to their respective communes than Nil and Celestia are to Mag/Celest. So, it actually does make sense that guards and totems are there from an IC perspective, but in this situation we have to sacrifice that bit of RP for the sake of balancing and improving gameplay.

Dunno about you, but the idea of fighting the demon lords and supernals at the same time doesn't sound attractive at all, which this is comparable to

If that's in reference to my idea, I didn't mean have them all in the same room, but all in seperate rooms in her palace. So, that would mean a small expansion to the north and south of the lower floor.

He was referring to Fallen's suggestion.

Guido, I think you can probably cut out two-thirds of that post as given. On your suggestions, there is no way I would agree with removing totem power generation.

Ah, there's no way they'd be in the same room. Not only would that be aesthetically ugly but make no RP sense.

I do kind of like the idea of having the Moon and Night avatars as part of Maeve's court.

What if Moon and Night had their own aetherbubbles where the aspects live?

Most of it is obvious, yes, but I wanted to be careful to present all the facts as clearly as possible. And whatever happens the totem power ought to be cut significantly, perhaps in half. That way it would still compensate for the essence disadvantage but not be overkill.

That would be..interesting.. but wouldn't that put a kink in the "bring Fae to Avatars" quest? It would make it sort of unfeasible. And if the Avatars ever were attacked, there'd be a high probability that no one could get there to defend.

Placing the aspects in aether bubbles would make them utterly impossible to defend and extremely tiresome to ressurect. Wouldn't make such sense, either, tossing the aspects of Night and Moon off into aetherspace.

Not if Moondancers and Shadowdancers (or all commune members?) had special powers to go there!

That's possible, but it still wouldn't make a lot of sense. Instant teleportation to an aether bubble? It's a feasible idea certainly, and it would make aetherspace more interesting, but I believe something simpler could be done to fix the current situation.

What about a quest similar in difficulty to the old raising hart/raising crow quests that summons one of the avatars to a neutral location? Where it could then be attacked or defended. A ritual that calls one of Moon's daughters to manifest in an overgrown temple on prime, which includes requiring some difficult to obtain commodities and the right time of the month? The same with the Avatars of Night. If they aren't killed in a certain time, they disappear again.

then you'd have to give the same abilities to Guardians, if you're talking about instant teleportation to the aspects

Unless i'm missing the whole "aether bubble" idea

Guardians already have instant teleportion to Nil. Its not difficult to go from the Megalith to any of the Lords/Supernals. And i'm guessing by ability to get there, she meant needing to go through the Nexus or Portal Chamber.