... if you don't have a lot of earwort, you die to Deathsong / can't escape attraction. Earwort gets consumed pretty quickly against bards.

It's an essential herb.

Please no. Changing distort so that it eliminated asshat tactics was one of the best changes to happen to the game. The crying of the griefers fall on appropriately deaf ears. And discretionaries aren't free all the time anymore.

I dont use deaf all the time, better to save it for when you have to run. Its important but it has about the same issues as faeleaf does. Several times Faethorn is stripped but the ethercommunes have it. Anyway, this is far from the point. Do you agree with the other issues?

Not really, I feel that Grace is fine most of the time. Grace in enemy organization territory is a bit overboard, but as long as things exist in that territory that are required resources (ie earwort) it's difficult to touch Grace unless you also make other things that turn those areas fortresses weaker IMO.

And at least Faeleaf can be harvested in Faethorn, which is not enemy territory unless you wish to make it so and is not protected by power-free distortion. Even EthSeren / EthGlom you can just walk out the archways from distortion, which you can't do on elementals.

You are really veering from the point with this harvesting bit. As Fain stated, you dont need grace to harvest, and several people can attest to that same thing. The weakening of fortresses is another matter but one that seems fair and I asked about.

Grace will not care why you are somewhere, if you leave prime it should falter, if you enter enemy territory it should falter faster. People harvest perfectly fine without grace right now, I do not see this being a game changer. Nor by any means should it be the focus of the change as it is actually only related in the fact you force people to wait on you or risk a raid when they leave.

Fain stated something which is no longer valid as his example, though. Things have changed since those days.

You don't need it to harvest (I didn't use it when I grabbed earwort today), but when a resource exists in an area that can be bottlenecked up like Earth can... there needs to be a loophole to get at it even so, I feel.

So it is not veering from the point, they are tied together.

I am discussing with Xenthos in tells to try to find where he is coming from. At the moment just move on and ignore the herbs argument, as that is a very small piece of the change and as pointed out is merely a loophole.

Grace is not really much of an issue.

Attacking loyal denizens should brand you an enemy, whether you kill or not. Just makes sense. I don't mind how it is though.

Distort is incredibly, incredibly strong. It does appear that the admin has gone to great lengths to curb raiding. It makes absolutely no sense to ever try to take down a supermob. However, it does provide incentive to get involved in aetherflares to stop the freebie distort- not that most orgs give a damn about spending 500 power on distort if a large group is after their smobs. The good thing is that it keeps the noncoms happy. Allows you to get a lot done when you aren't on defense all day. And there are other areas to raid that are distort-free. So in conclusion- I don't really care about distort. There are some battles that are just not worth fighting.

It keeps the coms happy, too. The only ones it bothers are the griefers.

Where? Prime cities/communes, villages, and connected planes are all distortable. Where else is there to raid? This is not sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious where else you think raids can happen.

Godrealms, bubbles, wherever shrines are, too.

Have they?

I already told you how they have.

Tagging someone a griefer for not enjoying new-distort is silly. Nor is it true. It is very very strong and discourages the most exciting of raids- the smob raid! Something that was already difficult and required a lot of organization (and people) is now next to impossible. But I'm sure we can all manage and just find new, creative ways/areas to raid.

Yeah, this isn't true. I don't like having free discretionaries. I don't like using them, and I don't like having them used against me. Making them free means they're up 24/7, which means no raiding, ever.

This isn't necessarily true, I've seen plenty of raids since the change.

In board game design - think games like Risk, Axis and Allies, etc. - the accepted and desirable design is to give the attacker the advantage; this forces the game forward and encourages conflicts that will ultimately decide the outcome of the game. In these games, however, once you begin an attack you are usually committed to that attack until it concludes or at the very least you sustain some amount of losses before being given the opportunity to retreat.

In Lusternia, the attacker has the advantage of choosing the time, the place and also tends to have the benefit of being able to prep the area before a sufficient number of defenders show up. I see nothing wrong with supplementing the defender's disadvantage by allowing them to essentially "lock" the attacker into an engagement that they have initiated until they are unilaterally victorious, the attack concludes or they sustain a meaningful amount of losses.

I don't miss raids. I find my fights elsewhere: domoths, revolts, wildnodes, even god realms every now and then.

It is equally silly to tag someone a non-com because they don't enjoy Narsrim/Urazial/Celina "raids". Heck, if we can find a way to make raiding plausible again (I miss smob raids too) without the hassle of hours upon hours of the kick-n-run, I'm all for it.

Oh yes.