Hi fellas,

So that...tangent about shrines was deleted due to too much angst, but I thought that discussion about shrines was very interesting, and I'd like to encourage more talk about it. This may or may not have to do with my role as coordinator and I figured I'd try to address the report's hopeful effectiveness.

Now we all know shrines as they currently exist are lame. They allow for powerful skills to get pretty ridiculous as well as grant nearly overwhelming advantage to whoever can start and maintain them.

Because of this, shrines were included in the special report, which I submitted 2 weeks ago. In that report, the following suggestions were made regarding shrines:

Shrine Mechanics:
1. Require a shrine room to be fully sanctified before powers may take effect.
2. Limit shrines to 1 offensive area power (wrath OR gravity OR distort OR invasion) at a time, and activating another cancels the previous one for ease of flexibility. In short, only one of the four area effects mentioned will be in effect at any one time.
3. Add a cooldown period of approximately 10-20 minutes before you are allowed to call an effect of the same type once again, to take place once said shrine effect is defiled away. Do not start this cooldown if the shrine effect naturally fades away due to time.

Generally speaking, each suggestion was made to address the following issues:

1. Requiring full sanctifications for rooms before powers may take effect nullifies the current tactic of "one sanc and go", where the user runs around (while the enemy, who is defiling, is under gravity/etc) and sanctifies a cleared room once, then immediately leaves to sanctify an adjacent one, essentially making it nearly impossible for the defilers to get ahead of the sanctifier in order to destroy the shrine.

2. Limiting shrines to 1 offensive power at a time heavily downgrades the offensive power of a shrine used in non-raid situations such as domoths and wildnodes. Furthermore, under this suggestion, it would literally be impossible to be subjected to both gravity and invasion, a very powerful combination that usually kills whoever the mobs focus on. With less strong powers activated, it is far easier for the defiling group to move around / survive.

For example, what I foresee happening is that the shriners will just put up gravity. While gravity itself is powerful, this suggestion means that neither distort nor invasion will be up. This by itself is already very helpful because the lack of distort means that group separation moves are less effective (since you can now teleport/etc) -and- the weaker fighters won't be gibbed by strong invasion mobs. This, I feel, is a significant improvement.

Incidentally, if there is concern regarding using shrines for raid defense, the combination of nexus powers and gravity is usually enough to repel most raids. The only thing lacking will be invasion, which, from my experience, was of minimal help when it comes to raid situations.

3. Adding a cooldown to powers that are defiled away is a suggestion made to reward a successful defiling group for actually managing to clear shrine powers away. Currently, even if a group succeeds in doing so, all it takes is one "wipe" for their entire progress to be reset because by the time they come up again, the shrine powers are up and the rooms are once again mostly sanctified. Note that natural decay (timer running out) is not affected.

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Now, with all of this said, Ushaara seemed to imply that even if all of these changes were implemented, they may not be enough to dissuade shrine use.

I personally disagree because of the reasons stated above, but I'd like to know what the rest of the forums thinks. I mean, if it were up to me, I'd have also formally suggested that shrine powers only work within their area of influence instead of within the entire area, but that may have been going too far if you take all the other suggestions into account.

So, I'd like to get more thoughts about shrines in general.

Specifically, I'd like to know what people feel about:
1. Shrines' mechanical role in the game
2. Shrines' RP role in the game
3. How strong/weak they should be

I mean realistically speaking, until the special report is implemented, no envoy can really act on them, but I'd like to see what people think about them right now and how effective they think the special report will be when it comes to addressing them.

TL;DR: are the special report shrine nerfs enough?

Can you explain item one in a little more detail? Does that imply that powers will only hit within rooms that are sanctified?

Razenth:

Can you explain item one in a little more detail? Does that imply that powers will only hit within rooms that are sanctified?

Believe it means that you need x amount of rooms fully sanced before you can raise the corresponding power.

Okay, currently, you just need x rooms sanctified before you can call upon a power. It doesn't matter how sanctified each room is, so long as they have 1 level of sanc.

The change makes it so they need 100% sanc in each room needed before you can call on the shrine power.

While I'd like to just delete shrines (or shrine powers) entirely, I'm waiting to see how effective the special report changes will be.

I do think that the changes suggested will be of significant help. Taking the example of the domoth fight that sparked the latest forum angst, we managed to defile away Gravity at one point (quite an achievement considering what was against us, I think), but were unable to keep it defiled away. If the special report was in effect, then that would have evened the field at that point as the effects would be unable to be put back up and we could focus more on directly securing the goal.

Further, I do like the suggestion of having the powers only effect the actual influence area. This and the other suggestions will make shrines operate more like demesnes, which I think are a largely balanced and functional part of Lusternia.

Specifically, I'd like to know what people feel about:
1. Shrines' mechanical role in the game
2. Shrines' RP role in the game
3. How strong/weak they should be

Shrines are too strong currently. They've become the primary focus of most combat nowadays. I feel that shrines, if anything, should have more minor effects, like what is seen with the personal powers. Because of their strength, their RP role has been diluted. They hardly represent their god anymore, and now represent the org/alliance. Orders now enemy anybody who competes in a domoth against the org, which doesn't really represent a real threat or offense against the Order. And while I'm sure most Gods would like to see their org do well, Orders are still a different group from the org and should have some differing tenets, behaviours and identity, otherwise what's the point?

I feel like Affinity permanently cemented Order -> Organization already.

Oh god. No one respond to Alacardael until we finish discussing the shrine changes lest we get the thread locked.

I would love to see shrines have more of an RP focus. It's sort of disappointing that out of all the orgs you can be a part of, the one with the most potential to be a unique and personal experience is also considered a 'must have' for org combat. I know people that only joined an order because Hallifax needed people who could raise shrines. Yes, affinity made it much easier to say, "You're an enemy to the Glomdoring, you should be enemied to Viravain too," but it has nothing to do with shrines having too much impact in very non-religious situations.

I agree with Shedrin. Orders shouldn't be just another listing on your score. Unlike guilds, which work within the city/commune, orders seem designed to work alongside it. There's plenty of room for differing ideals and goals, they don't always operate in lockstep with the org. I really like this idea. But it's just an idea nowadays. Look at Hoaracle, he stuck to his RP with his stance against the Taint and asked his order members not to defend Magnagora. Isune has compassion as one of her tenets, which is definitely not a thing Hallifaxians care about. This sort of internal interaction, and sometimes, conflict, is what leads to interesting RP. Interesting RP is what keeps the game alive.

It seemed liked everyone's reaction to Hoaracle was, "You've got to be kidding me, you can't ask an org not to defend their allies," and then quitting the order. They were upset because he was their only active god, and he had basically just told them they couldn't use his shrines offensively. Elostian tried to do the same thing, he didn't want war shrines raised at all, but someone finally convinced him that it was hurting the city. It's a shame that gods can't have any sort of RP stance about how their shrines or enemy statuses are used without being accused of holding back their org, or pushing out their followers.

By the way, asking for shrine powers to only work within their influence also happens to heavily limit them when it comes to raid defense, since if taken all together, defiling away your camping room in order to avoid gravity isn't hard.

I personally, have never viewed shrines as too powerful, or the thing that tips the scales in a fight. They help yes, but so does group size. If they're deleted, w/e, but would like a certain domoth restriction removed, and if they stay, w/e.

I would say no to limiting it to just their area of influence. Also I thought the goal was to lessen their impact, not nerf them down to never being used.

Or maybe people would prefer them to not have such a role in offensive campaigns like Domoths for the sake of RP so that their Order doesn't have to enemy everybody who's offended the Org? Though I'm pretty sure their's quite a few god's whose RP would be just fine with eneming people for messing with the org. Probably not somebody like... Isune, but definitely ones like Viravain, or Fain, or Lisaera.

Sojiro:

Now, with all of this said, Ushaara seemed to imply that even if all of these changes were implemented, they may not be enough to dissuade shrine use.

I think something was lost in translation, heh. My issue was with gravity rather than shrines as a whole, because I think gravity is too impacting an effect. We agree that the one power per shrine aspect of special report would just mean everyone will use gravity. Question I tried to ask was, should a shrine effect be that impacting?

For my own part, I don't have an issue with any of the other effects, and think avatar auras, wrath and invasion are pretty neat! I'm just of the opinion that a wrath+invasion+distort combo isn't as debilitating as gravity, which I believe to be the prime culprit in sucking the fun out of what might otherwise be an enjoyable fight for both sides. It was already obnoxious enough to deal with combined with fearaura, imbued rad, pits etc. New abilities (specifically not mentioning them for fear of detracting!) which have taken that obnoxiousness and cranked it up a notch have just highlighted how impacting an effect it is.

However, I can also see that for an org getting raided, gravity would be a very useful tool to help repel the raid and can understand that its complete removal might end up being bad for the defending org in that situation. A potential solution? Move gravity from being a shrine effect to a (costly) nexus one?

There's been lots of talk about providing outlets for conflict over the past while. It's pretty clear that the domoth system is capable of providing plenty conflict. In past threads I've tried to highlight what I think are some inherent biases that can discourage increased participation, and that do not make the system as dynamic for both sides of the alliance as I think it could be. I further maintain that the fact that domoth battles are primarily shrine wars now is a shame.

All that said, I'm fine with waiting to see how special report changes things, but do think that people should look honestly at gravity and question its impact. We are all playing a game, and so combat/conflict should ideally be enjoyable for both parties. For me, gravity sucks the fun from otherwise enjoyable pretendy fun time conflict.

Well, thankfully there seems to be agreement that shrines are indeed too powerful. I feel that shrines should be restricted to order and org territory and not be allowed at all outside (or be allowed for offerings and the like, but shrine powers disabled). I remember during the life domoth, Inagin activated a bunch of gravity on prime to slow people down. If I were to try to defile, I'd get a bunch of people on me with auto-declare. Why should people who relentlessly put shrines everywhere they can think of get an advantage in events like that? I like how shrines have been disabled for a number of events, and I think it's fair this happens with domoths too.

When you compare a shrine to, say, a nexus, they're almost equal in stopping power, and ironically shrines actually beat them out. It's silly. Nexus powers are justified because you're daring to enter enemy territory where you've pretty much accepted you'll be fighting with disadvantages. Shrines within org territory can be justified this way too. But to tell me that players can carry around portable powers comparable or stronger to nexus powers and put them wherever they wish to get an edge? Come on...

I've seen it mentioned that there are counter methods and being proactive helps, and sometimes we actually do overcome the overwhelming power of shrines. It seems disingenuous to me however, when one implies that failing on that front makes you weaker and less disorganized when it's clearly seen that shrine powers by themselves can destroy whole groups. I remember one horrible attempt last year where we were fairly well coordinated, but because gravity and invasion were down, our attempts to stop this were easily thwarted. A number of crow users spammed squall, and most people ended up getting instaganked by shrine creatures.

There's also the stupid metagaming aspect that would instantly go away if we just removed their use from daily combat...

Shrines actually skew RP at the moment.

The average person has likely been enemied to a god they have not attacked at least twice. Usually under some "cause I can", "they are an enemy", "safety/preventative measure", etc. This is so shrines will hit in the future, why you are listed as having attacked a god when you never did anything toward the Order. Some get around this with the "Well it is HIS city, so attacking it is the same as attacking him".

Using the above I think shrines have been used more for combat than RP for a long time. If I were a divine I would slap someone for enemying people so shrines would hit them.

Is it mostly gravity's fault then?

A lot of the forum posts here specifically mention gravity, so I was wondering if altering gravity is also needed. What kind of changes would be good about that? I know Ushaara mentioned changing it to a nexus power, are there any other suggestions?

RE: coordination - TBH, there is a fine line between being uncoordinated and fighting overwhelming odds, so I'm not sure how you can tell there, heh.

I feel that the nerfs in the special report will be sufficient to limit shrine use without removing them.

I do feel that gravity is problematic in itself, however, and would like to see it weakened in general to be more on par with the other powers.

What are the thoughts on making gravity hit everybody in the area, regardless of affiliation/enemy status. Or hitting all but members of the order. Would make it a little more double-edged, though still gives an advantage to the dug in side. Just tossing random ideas out really.

I'm still a bit weirded out by the interpretation of item 1. Is it just that each room has to have 100% before powers go up, or that each room must have 100% before you can start sancing another room. If it's just the first, you still have the problem stated in the special report and nothing has been solved. You can just run around a few rooms making the 100% sanc'd rooms unbreakable.


I've got a few problems with shrines as they stand, and as they will stand if/when all the special report items go through.

1. Shrines have near to 0 RP attached to them. Shrines are a weapon of one sort or another, and nothing else for active orders. If you are offering at a shrine, you're generally (in my experience) trying to either generate karma or stockpile godly essence, which you or others will use to fuel powers.

2. There will still be nothing to stop you from raising two different shrines (assuming your org has that many active orders) to raise gravity and invasion, and not much will be solved there.

3. Many of the powers are... too powerful. I do think that Gravity is the biggest culprit here. Combat in Lusternia is absolutly focused on movement and movement control. If you have a more mobile group that can keep together and track to objectives quickly, you VASTLY outclass even a much larger group. Gravity is the EZ button for this. Many abilities that are normally balanced (or even possibly UP) become suddenly broken by the presence of gravity. The classic example for our side is squall. Squall is normally very balanced, especially with the power cost put on. It moves everyone equally. Throw in gravity and two people doing this, and suddenly you can essentially break a group up permanently with little harm to your own group, as they can just move back without a delay. Any movement or movement hindering skill has this problem in Gravity. To name a few - > treelife, land, currents, gust (!), tornado, whirlwind, scissorflip, reality, ashfall, rainbowclouds, and so on.

4.) I don't like that 'shrine combat' can be used at all outside of the scope of god wars. To me God Wars = God Weapons = Shrines. Granted, the god war mechanism is pretty hilarious. Healing shrines and shield shrines provide some pretty good buffs, but they don't really unbalance combat (any more, now that dodging is gone). Leave those as they are, so that people can ask their god for divine boons, which feels a lot more like what a shrine should be for.

4. (Minor) Shrines mimic melder mechanics, but on a bigger scale, and less drawbacks. I don't know, that just annoys me. I've got this entire ground control thing going on, that I'm chained to. A warrior (or any class) can participate in a ground control war that honestly hits more people with a nastier effect (Gravity).

For these reasons (and probably more), I'd be alright with just removing shrines from combat all together, until something different is put in. At the least, remove war shrines. I'm always hoping that if combat is made less like trench warfare, there will be less zerg combat on all sides of a conflict.

How does 1 not solve 'one sanc and go'? If you can't single sanc then immediately move to sanc another, when you try to raise up invasion again, it won't work since all the required rooms aren't at 100%

Sojiro:

How does 1 not solve 'one sanc and go'? If you can't single sanc then immediately move to sanc another, when you try to raise up invasion again, it won't work since all the required rooms aren't at 100%

What she means is, let's say Team A(wesome) has a shrine fully sanctified and Gravity up(which doesn't need all of the rooms like invasion). Team B(adass) starts defiling, and gets a couple of rooms down, maybe even just need to defile one more to cause Gravity to drop. Somebody from Team A can still go and single sanc a bunch of rooms off of the next fully sanc'd room, which will make the full sanc'd room undefilable again, so Team B have to trudge through gravity back towards where ever the edge is.

Basically you can still use the single sanc tactic to protect fully sanc'd rooms if you know where to place them. That's still better them just doing a bunch of single sancs on the opposite end of the shrine influence to preserve the effect though. <_<