Talan:

I do not think that limiting the wrath/gravity or other effects to sanctified rooms is a good idea. Consider a domoth fight on an aetherbubble or another fight in neutral territories. Presumably the holding area will be melded and shrined, making it that much harder for any opposition to reach them. While it is true that this would be the case anyway, the current setup allows the challenging group to set up their own shrine, making the occupying force subject to the same effects as the challenging force, creating a more even playing field. I think this needs to stay intact.

I think this is exactly another reason why shrines need a change. Last I checked this was Lusternia Age of Ascension and not Lusternia the Age of Shrines Deciding Fights. Shrines being so impacting that even a considerably superior force can lose because of spam invasion/gravity/wrath is fundamentally wrong. To use your example, consider a domoth fight again. The side finishing stage 1 can setup shrine/meld before even claiming giving a huge advantage. Even if the sanctifier is being chased, they will always win the sanc vs defile battle because the defiler has to find the edge every time whereas the sanctifier can just move and spam sanc.
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-Limit to sanc area for effects: not a bad idea in theory, but this isn't very limiting as most planes and areas off prime are very small to begin with.
-Fully sanc required: decent, logical
-Redistribute powers amongst shrine types: moving only distort leaves invasion/wrath/gravity on war shrine. Combination of those are too impacting, not enough of a change.
-Cost means little to nothing: if I can wipe a small group with one button invasion commands and a shieldstun who cares about the cost

My solution:
-limit shrines to 1 area power at a time, and activating another cancels previous for ease of flexibility. Distort could arguably be toned down a little too
-limit invasion to once a day and/or remove mob tracking from these

and maybe..

-limit shrines to prime and allied org territories

Zarquan:

One thing I haven't heard mentioned here, but I have noticed in the game, is the sanctifying of rooms across area boundaries. Now, I don't know the mechanics of this exactly, but I have always assumed this was done not only for the protection of the shrines (keep a room or two in your org territory, so you can defend it with statues/totems/guards) but that the shrine powers worked across all areas with sanctified rooms.

Whether that is the case or not, I believe it makes sense to keep the shrines and their sanctified rooms limited to a single area, avoiding issues with Astral spheres, Avenger, and other odd things.

This is extremely unbalanced when you consider Astral; some spheres don't even have 16 rooms on them and already have rooms automatically 'destroyed' every wildnodes (and they have to be replaced when the nodes starts). Not being able to leave the area means that certain spheres just will never be able to use the shrine effects, while others can happily continue to do so.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to not allow shrines on astral...

rika:

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to not allow shrines on astral...

Sure; that's a different argument though. I feel like the current incarnation already favours certain organizations over others simply due to the automatically-dissolving-sanctified-rooms thing going on on some spheres.

Making it local-area-only just exacerbates that problem.

Removing them entirely makes the problem go away.

Just not sure they'll go for it. Also, you can like your own posts... who doesn't like their own posts almost all the time?

While we're at it, I feel like a warning system about enemy shrines going up in home territory won't be included simply because it is part of a defender's duty to patrol their territories and spot any wily shrines.

Otherwise, keep at it. First post edited. They're just ideas for now, they won't all be taken and submitted, naturally.

Here's my personal idea of what can be done, it takes inspiration from all the posts so far:

Raising a Shrine:
-Have shrine costs scale according to affinity, depending on where it's raised: enemy/neutral/allied territory.

Shrine Mechanics:
-Limit shrine effect to within the shrine's influence for neutral/enemy territory, area wide for ally territory.
-Require a shrine room to be fully sanctified before powers may take effect.
-Limit shrines to 1 offensive area power (wrath OR gravity OR distort OR invasion) at a time, and activating another cancels previous for ease of flexibility. In short, only one of the four mentioned will be in effect.

Shrine Effects:
-Uniformly increase the essence cost of all shrine powers using the affinity system, increased for neutral/enemy, decreased for allied.

I really do not think messing around with essence costs of shrine powers or cost to raise them will have any effect at all. Though the shrine mechanic suggestions look good.

Tbh, neither do I, the simplest idea which accomplishes what people want out of this report is pretty much just this:

Shrine Mechanics:
-Require a shrine room to be fully sanctified before powers may take effect.
-Limit shrines to 1 offensive area power (wrath OR gravity OR distort OR invasion) at a time, and activating another cancels previous for ease of flexibility. In short, only one of the four mentioned will be in effect.

This still keeps the idea that war shrines be used for defense (put up gravity then nexus distort and liveforest/ripple; wrath is comparatively inconsequential during these) but severely nerfs them for offensive use.

We would just build multiple shrines from multiple orders to still gain the benefits we are currently accustomed to if you limit them to one power per shrine. This is quite easy to do, I think, since many of the active combatants are also high-ups in their orders. Of course it may not be fair to those who do not have 3 active orders in their org or alliance-group, but my group does, so I am not too worried. (I do not think this is a good suggestion.)

Please explain to me why shrine powers should only be in effect in the shrine's area of influence, rather than area wide. This scenario really does seem to me to just give an even greater advantage to the first-comes in a fight, giving them a tool that cannot be matched by a challenging group.

My wording may be vague.

I mean one offensive power (of the four mentioned) in the area period.

Sojiro:

My wording may be vague.

I mean one offensive power (of the four mentioned) in the area period.

How does this interact with opposing shrines? (e.g. what if both sides try to raise gravity?)

Sojiro:

While we're at it, I feel like a warning system about enemy shrines going up in home territory won't be included simply because it is part of a defender's duty to patrol their territories and spot any wily shrines.

Otherwise, keep at it. First post edited. They're just ideas for now, they won't all be taken and submitted, naturally.

That's really only an argument if sanctifying shrines is made slower somehow. As it is, raising a shrine and fully sanctifying it before a raid isn't hard. It takes five minutes with some help without interference tops.

Raeri:

How does this interact with opposing shrines? (e.g. what if both sides try to raise gravity?)

I'm not overly opposed to whoever raising gravity canceling the other's gravity, so if Serenwilde had gravity up, then Glomdoring put up a shrine and raised their gravity, Glom's gravity would cancel Serenwilde. This is is similar to the melding mechanic (one meld superseding the other's). So you could waste esteem putting it up back and forth, but it sure would be a waste of time/resources.

Or you could just disallow it until the power is defiled down. Simpler.

Let me know what you guys think

Kiradawea:

That's really only an argument if sanctifying shrines is made slower somehow. As it is, raising a shrine and fully sanctifying it before a raid isn't hard. It takes five minutes with some help without interference tops.

Raising a shrine takes longer than setting up a meld, traps, and whatever else raiders can do. Under the proposed change, the use of the offensive shrines will be limited anyway, and since the problem is with stacking all of these together, having to operate only under -one- bad effect makes things much more manageable for both defenders and raiders.

Instead of having new shrine effects replace the old, you could also have them literally cancel each other out. If someone raised a second shrine and used the same power as the one already in effect, an ambient message about the energies of the two shrines becoming ensnared in each other could be echoed, and the the effect could go temporarily dormant (though not gone) until the other shrine was defiled or the timer on one of the two powers ended. Otherwise, I fear that shrines could become similar to melder v. melder combat, where the two people stand in the room spamming FORCE___ until one gets bored and walks away.

Heh, it would be pretty amusing if both sides raising gravity would cancel each other's gravity effect, leaving neither with such a power. We'll see.

Sojiro:

Tbh, neither do I, the simplest idea which accomplishes what people want out of this report is pretty much just this:

Shrine Mechanics:
-Require a shrine room to be fully sanctified before powers may take effect.
-Limit shrines to 1 offensive area power (wrath OR gravity OR distort OR invasion) at a time, and activating another cancels previous for ease of flexibility. In short, only one of the four mentioned will be in effect.

This still keeps the idea that war shrines be used for defense (put up gravity then nexus distort and liveforest/ripple; wrath is comparatively inconsequential during these) but severely nerfs them for offensive use.

I still think invasion needs a more mechanically limiting factor, such as use/day or more preferrably made non-tracking so they don't clump up to instadeath levels (which doesn't take too many, invasion mobs are pretty strong). I'd also personally prefer if sanctifying balance recovery was a little longer so that destroying them would be quicker than raising. Otherwise I'm a fan of what you have so far.

Another thing to tack on to my previous thoughts, shrines should also be destroyed during domoths and flares (if they aren't already) much like they do for villages.

Rivius:

Another thing to tack on to my previous thoughts, shrines should also be destroyed during domoths and flares (if they aren't already) much like they do for villages.

I disagree with this just because it mostly just rewards the prepared. You can defile shrines on bubbles and set up your own prior to domoths pretty easily.

I disagree with your disagreement just because it mostly favors the organizations that have the active orders.

All of the organizations have active orders, though. Hoaracle (Serenwilde), Terentia and Eventru (New Celest), Kalikai and Mysrai (Gaudiguch), Shikari, Viravain, and Nocht (Glomdoring), Raezon and Fain (Magnagora).