Post here for things you want the envoy-person-thingy to bring up. Feel free to agree/disagree with what other people suggest, but no getting this thread locked please.

I'd much rather talk about godrealms, order wars, and shrines than the actual envoy person thing report, considering you don't even know the scope yet.

Then it's the pre-envoy things to talk about. If what we talk about ends up being in the scope, good. If not, well we got it out there and perhaps the discussion here will influence the envoy person's available range.

I agree that for the most parts, shrine potentially play too much influence in battle and some of the abilities (gravity, I'm looking at you) can throw otherwise okay skills out of whack, into the "eh... that's uncomfortably cheap for how strong it is" to "Wait, wat?" range of balance-ness. I feel that it also cheapens the RP of (most) orders to not be able to defend god realms, or for their shrines to be used in battle how they are. If you don't use them though, you can be at a big disadvantage against an order that will.

EDIT: The defunct (?) nature of Orderwars also means that there really isn't any way to attack another order. For better or for worse, all you really can do is harass other orders by killing their god realm things and leering at their order members. Not sure how it would play out, and it's by no means my final stance, but I feel that shrine should be primarily used to attack other shrines/order, not used as just another tool in normal battle. (Also, raising a shrine on enemy territory should warn that territories owners immediately. No setting up a war shrine, melding, THEN kicking an ent, so they walk onto their own territory with all the disadvantages.)

EDIT..AGAIN: I hope all my rapidfire editing isn't messing people up yet. Orderwar type things should not be primarily based in godrealms either, IMO. The god should be free to design a terribly hard to defend realm without getting gimped down the line.

Here are a couple of the things I'd like to see:

Shrines: Remove/Rework area-wide shrine effects. For something that is so optional and RP directed, shrine effects have too much effect on fights. The argument I hear most often when there's an issue with orders is that you don't have to be in one. However, not being one means you won't have access to these powers while the other side's powers will still affect you. I suggest just removing the area effects all together, but the biggest offenders are invasion, gravity, wrath and distort.

Experience loss: Consider removing experience loss for dying to players, either in non-organisational enemy territory or just in territory that is your own. It is very hard for the "losing" side to keep trying to defend when every time they do, they lose a bit of experience. Yes, I am a big advocate for making it harder to get experience, but the psychological factor of losing experience is more than enough to deter people from defending over time. Defending and dying once is no big deal. What if you do that twice? Three times? Four times? Each death stacks up and eventually more and more people will want to stop defending.

Loophole/bug abuse: As a player who does their best to follow the rules, it is really disheartening to hear when someone finds a loophole, abuses it and gets away with it. I heard about people (long-time players, who definitely know better) finding bugs that allowed them to move guards on non-Prime planes off their Nexus, wiping out a raiding group. They got off with nothing more than a warning. Instead of playing the game how it should be played, fairly, should we instead try to find loopholes and bugs to take advantage of?

Regarding EXP loss, I think I've commented on the exp-loss thread before, but while it may lessen the frustration from defending, it's also going to encourage and exacerbate aggressive behaivor. While you won't see me making suicide runs, do you really want to hear rude pipsqueaks kicking your ladies and dying without even killing one... repeatedly? Do you want to hear them say "Nyah, you can kill me all you want you , I'm not gonna you ."

Now apply this kind of exacerbation from the little, occasional newbie-trolls to the more griefy combatants that are already in the game.

Lessening the exp loss might be a good idea, but how much to lessen is certainly a big concern (too much and you get the problem I listed, too little and nothing changes) and I'm almost certain removing it entirely will cause more problems than it will solve.

For this, and for everything else really, when it comes time for the report, you really must be extremely specific. I don't want to hear "rework area-wide shrine effects", rather I want each shrine effect listed and specifically a proposal of how each should be changed. I really don't even care about the justification (i.e., don't say that shrines have too much effect on combat or whatever), I just want to see specific proposals of what needs to be changed. It's quite easy to be general and point at things you want changed, it's quite another thing to actually devise what those changes ought to be.

It is why I specifically said either in non-org enemy territory (so it would include places like Faethorn) or just in your own territory. Exp loss in org enemy territory would still be as it is right now.

GODREALM DEFENSE:

I feel like a big part of why people feel obligated to defend godrealms is because of The Mechanic Which Must Not Be Named, which essentially ties the order to the org.

I felt that before the advent of this mechanic, orders were more about the members in it and not so much what org they formally belonged to, which led to more...interesting roleplay, shall we say. By tying orders and orgs together, the larger population and broader RP of an org makes the people in it feel more obligated to defend.

SHRINES:

A large part of the issue with shrines is the ease and relative cheapness of them to put up/maintain, distort in general, the way they stack with nexus effects, and the wild variation (and probably awesomness) between invasion mobs.

I'm not really sure how to tackle the first problem aside from either making it harder to put up (need a shrine influence of 20-30 instead of 15, then scale powers (and costs) accordingly), easier to take down (less defiles/faster balance), or just generally weaken them all.

I've thought long and hard about both gravity and distort, and I feel that gravity serves an important (and unique) role in delaying the movement of the enemy, and given that it affects just about every kind of movement, I feel like it's less of an issue compared to distort, which now protects both the raider and the raided.

This, I feel, depends entirely on the admin's vision on whether war shrines are meant mostly for defense, or if they should also serve as offensive tools. I can't make a suggestion either way until that has been decided upon.

Edit: Though you know what, I think it would be interesting if wrath/gravity/etc only affected rooms with the shrine influence, and not the entire area. Then you can buff/nerf each power with respect to the smaller sphere of influence. I feel like this will help both people on offense -and- defense and will lead to an overall more strategic experience.

Between you and me, nexus effects and shrines together aren't as bad, but I feel like any change to the latter must take into account the former. But gravity + liveforest/stun is such a pain.

Invasion mobs are invasion mobs. While I know that the admin get a limited pool/damage type and have to cater to their own RP, I'm afraid there's no way to truly standardize and make things truly fair on that end without insulting the volunteer admin. Aside from that, I think the invasion power needs a cool down of about x minutes before you can call it again, because as is, the group can defile one room down (taking away invasion) only for the shrine group to put it back up somehow, call invasion again, and it'll be back to square one.

ORDER WARS:

No one in their right mind will accept an order war from a stronger order, so I'm not sure how to encourage this aside from a bigger carrot than "TF's for all".

Oh, sorry about the misunderstanding. Didn't read that part about non-enemy territory. (Edit: @ rika)

Since I'm usually the inflammatory ass who brings it up, and they are the huge elephants dancing in the room:
Choke
Reality
Warriors (in totality need a reworking)

Those are the biggest three off the top of my head. You'll also note that other than the warrior issue, they're pretty much divided down org lines. Why? Because the viability of Necromancy's 'gimmick' was effectively crushed, and the raw potency of balestone was diminished. One side has already lost their 'trumps' for the sake of balance, even if it occurred despite much protest. For the equivilent trumps to remain on the other side of the field is an issue that I know has resulted in the vast majority of the fatalistic despair on one side of the field. I'm speaking as someone who doesn't play glom-gaudi-celest alliance combatants (though I do play there for the fun stuff, simply because it's a much more pleasant place to live due to the relative safety that said superiority grants) for just that reason. I've used them in the past. They are win buttons. They bored me while using them just as much as they anger me when facing them.

The most common reason that any plane defense becomes futile versus reality? Reality cannot be stopped by ANY of the methods that prevent forced movement, afaik, and can break entire groups at a time, scattering them. In our age of scent/mapper chasing this means that reality becomes a win button. Reality, mop up the people left, chase down the disoriented stragglers. Choke has been an issue, a fundamental one, ingrained into the sheer nature of a single target retardation vibe applied to group combat. It vastly overpowers its Achaean equivalent due to the higher emphasis on group combat, and the brutally surgical nature of the skill. This is not something that can be remedied by tweaking. Only removal or a divinefire-esque change will suffice.

Warriors... I can't afford to post all the things wrong. It'd take too bloody long.

You mentioned specific. That's as specific as I can get. The Parrot has repeated its refrain. It's a major issue, and one nobody who fights will agree on, with lines strictly drawn down faction lines. Then again, balestone and trample/sac held the same quality of being split down faction lines, and they were mitigated, so I haven't entirely abandoned all hope.

The removal and replacement of choke with something that -isn't- inherently hostile to the principle of group combat (it's not nearly as lethal 1v1, but it -is- a gamebreaker in group), the application of the same methods which prevent all other methods of magical forced movement to reality, and the reworking of the warrior system, these three major balance issues would forever change the scope of Lusternia. I'm sure that venom will emerge from both sides over the issue. My suggestion? Make wane perform the exact same effect as choke and grant a reality clone skill to other Rituals specs. Make them -identical clones- of each other skill. It may run contrary to the 'vision' that players perceive the admins as having (no clue how real that perception is or not), but I will promise you that people will either stop bitching about them, or both sides will bitch and come to the mutual conclusion that they must be fixed.

RE: Experience loss - people stop defending because they lose morale, they don't stop defending because they've lost experience.

Even if defenders lost no experience on death, I bet they will still give up defending after the 7th time we grind them into dust.

Edit: In fact, I'd even say that it'd just encourage the griefers to keep on pummeling, since the defenders lose essentially nothing anyway.

I fear the warrior thing is the only one that sounds like it would qualify as part of the report in this case.

Choke, Necromancy, Etc all count as envoyable items and thus would not be allowed unless the report specifically is given permission to balance and variate the existing skills. Or if that sounds like gibberish, if admin say you can make things more "fun" and make everything work, which would be a considerable undertaking.

Quick notes though:
-Clones don't fly, so do not expect it.
-Some of these things were envoyed and have been denied, which means either admin disliked the solutions or disagreed with the issue.

Hey, they asked for the major issues that everyone knows about. Those are very major, and everyone knows them. This is made rather apparent by the innumerable massive threads/derails/post-deletions that those three topics have spawned. They are major. They are universally known. They are universally bickered about because one side loses the will to fight when it comes into play due to two simple skills negating a vast numerical advantage of fighters without that much disparity in skill. Or Seren/Halli/Mag are just wusses with no skills, whose best fighters hop to said orgs or stop playing.

Regardless of your opinion on whether the problem is there. The issues are major. They are universally known. That's what Estarra asked for. That's what I mentioned.

I would also like to note that you, Mal, raged plenty about the 'C' word... until you hopped to Glom. Strangely it was -using- choke with a Glom character that made me aware that there was something very very wrong with it.

I am pretty sure choke and warriors will be talked about, and there are numerous constructive ideas about both floating about already.

But I'm unconvinced that reality deserves to be in the same breath as either, given that reality hits everyone. In fact, it actually makes plane defense easier for the defenders (since defending usually means gravity/nexus powers, and gravity/nexus powers kind of kills quick regrouping and chasing for the raiders). Plus, you know, no one knows how many, who, and where you will get poofed to, small chance of it actually ticking, just read Iytha's 627 report.

I'd also like to see an example of a reality thread, I remember tons of choke and warrior ones, but I can't remember a reality one!

While we're at it, reality is also the latest skill to be officially addressed by the admin, dated June 2011:

Godrealm defense is a mixed basket. Someone I will not name has told their Order not to defend at all, and often times they will not. Does the God care? He has neither said such, nor will an inactive one ever care anyway.

Experience loss? Eh that is up in the air, really I would prefer a great equalizer instead. Like, if you kill too many people on EtherWilde the power of Moon manifests a blazing aura to spare her followers or calls down Ladies or something to assist. I just have to agree lowering experience loss will not have the desired impact.

Shrines....
- Move gravity to shield shrines which are currently under used, this would also have the impact of making war shrines not a beat all.
- Gravity should slightly adjust what it effects in some cases, such as climbing out of a pit, or moving WITH gravity (down or any variation).
- Lower the level of invasion mobs, or greatly increase the cost.
- Slightly lower the damage from wrath, or at least its tics.

I would also like to see raiding more equalized. Ethereal Glomdoring is a fortress between shrine powers, liveforest (which is free), and daughters. You will not readily progress against defenders in these cases. Ripple is also a major pain and hits far too often. These effects should be reduced in effect, lowered in power cost, and made more uniformly powerful. That is, if ripple stuns 1s and its a 4s writhe to leave liveforest, shouldnt liveforest be 4ish times slower to tic? Maybe 2/3 as stun also stops all curing?

Another thing I would add to this is "wandering" code which is the main reason we get large clots of mobs in places. I have bugged this before and was told wandering code would have to be changed.

Apologies. Seems that until now Reality bitching has been kept mainly to Seren/Halli/Celest clans. And only really became a problem when you started abusing it on planar bottleneck points. Most users prior to you never realized the sheer power of it and its impact on group, despite efforts in the past to see to its utilization (I'm looking at you, Iytha Reality lets even non-combatants utterly change the scope of a group fight, simply by sowing chaos and shattering groups.)

Alright, in the face of the wisdom of the furies decision that Reality should not be subject to the same effects that apply to every single other method of magical forced movement, I defer. So, I'll strike-out reality from that list and give it another 6 months to brew. It may turn into less of an issue. Who knows. Apologies.

Choke and Warriors truly do need to be handled with finality, so please, let's not let the still pending status of reality derail those major points.

Eh, I've seen reality used a few times it didn't seem like a big deal. I imagine it would only be problematic if you just put it down and camped one place. Even then, it's not worth this kind of thing and can easily be address by the current envoy system if need be.

I think choke, warriors and monks can use a look at and I'll probably have a lot more to add to that list when it isn't 2am.

Edit: druids

Years of envoy reports still have not resolved either the Choke issue, or the issues with Warriors.

Obviously these two cannot be solved by the envoy process and need specific and special care.

Edit: Yeah, Riv. Now that I think about it, 90% of the reality bitching comes from when it's used to essentially lock down a camped group on etherwilde and make it pretty much impossible to dislodge, which is more due to the horrendous advantage the plane's layout gives to invaders. In most other situations it's more just frustrating than gamebreaking, hence my retraction. Apologies for sidetracking the real issues.

Agree with all counts above except perhaps xp loss. I see what you mean though Rika.

One problem I have with shrine influence is that if you offer to sanctify one room (once), you can instantly move on to sanctify the next, getting VERY rapidly up to the maximum. Then you only spend time fully upping the last few rooms, or you place the breakpoint somewhere that anyone trying to drop the shrine can't really get to.

EDIT: See. Reality is sort of a problem, but it's not really such a big deal. Your enemies get thrown all over, but so do your allies. BUT. If you have shrine gravity up, your allies all run right back, your enemies, not so much. Add in distort (though how exactly shrine distort works, I'm not sure) and effects that make all the rooms the same (no scent/scry tracking without a map.). It's mostly gravity though, that's some killer stuff there.

Really, I'd be all up for nerfing everything that ever bugged me, but it's been about 4 months since I went Illu, and the experience pool simply isn't long or wide enough to fairly decide one way or another.

Frankly, the self-admission that it's only been bitched about privately on clans says a lot more than you'd think, since I feel that if it were truly a Game Breaking Issue ™, someone would post up logs and rant about with almost as much zeal as choke/crucify/trueheal/Eventru.

For every story where reality ruins your group, I can bring up similar stories where it ruined mine.

I put up reality and it dropped me right in the middle of a clump of ladies (I got away anyway, but I had to divinefire), not to mention the times when it dropped us into avatars/nexii, and so on. I also distinctly remember that once, I put up reality, Vadi got poofed into a lady clump, somehow managed to make his way back to the archway, only to have reality tick again and drop him into another clump of ladies. Also one time I dropped reality, it booted a fair portion of my group into astral, only shuffled a part of the enemy group around, and I got sad.

Edit: Oh crapola, my bad, didn't notice it all moved. Ballsacks. Someone move this too. Yeah how about them shrines and monks!