Report 1478

Report #1478
Skillset: Tracking Skill: Disarm
 Org: Serenguard Status: Completed Apr 2016
Furies' Decision:
Solution 1+2.
Problem: Traps, most concerningly pits, last indefinitely in a room until
disarmed by an opposing tracker. DISARM has two syntaxes available to it.
Regular DISARM may disarm the trap at a balance loss of 2 seconds, however comes
with the chance of tripping the trap and suffering its ill effects. Currently,
if the tracker who placed the pit happens to be online, your fingers will 'slip'
(which costs balance) and then you fall into the pit. If the tracker is offline,
you do not fall into the pit, but instead your fingers will 'slip' and you lose
4 seconds of balance. Falling into a pit leaves it in FIRED status which means
you can conceal it once you emerge. One also can deliberately TRIP a trap to
simply fall into it, lose the balance loss on trip and then emerge from the pit
to conceal over the now FIRED pit. As an alternative, the syntax DISARM
CAREFULLY was introduced which currently costs 2 power and guarantees disarming
of the pit. The current mechanics present some problems, however. (1) If an ally
has an area pre-pitted and not present, the tracker must expend considerable
amounts of time OR power to remove their traps before being able to place down
their own pits. (2) Cleaning up an enemy's traps when not fighting takes a lot
of power OR a lot of time. For reference, a completely pitted Faethorn can take
me an entire hour to disarm and re-pit. This is unneeded tedium that adds
nothing enjoyable to the game, and further, allows trackers who are not even
online to exert a hindering effect that is not warranted. Laying a pit down
costs 2 seconds in each direction and a minimum commodity cost (which coal
artifact owners don't even need to pay). By contrast, tripping a trap and
reconcealing it could take as long as 11 seconds per trap and spending 2 power
per trap is excessively costly and hindering when considering reserve
regeneration. The solutions below are offered and intended to all be considered
together.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Repurpose the MARK ability in tracking. When a trap
 is marked, your allies can not only see it, but can
 also CONCEAL (or new syntax) over your traps
 regardless of its fired status. In this way, they
 need not disarm your traps later.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: Reduce the power cost on DISARM CAREFULLY to 1 power.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #3: Add in a decay time for pits if placed in territory
 that is not within the trapper's organization. I
 suggest 4 hours at this time. In this way, trackers
 need to constantly be proactive about pre-pitting an
 area, rather than have traps be active for weeks at a
 time. Alternatively, have the pits deactivate over
 this time and simply require reconcealing rather than
 disarming.
Player Comments:
---[Rivius on 4/6 @ 11:47 writes]:
Solution #4: If the person who laid down the traps originally is offline or not
in the local area, have those traps always succeed on DISARM. Keep the trip
chance if the tracker is still within the area, allowing for DISARM CAREFULLY to
be used in these instances.
---[Xenthos on 4/6 @ 22:48 writes]:
I must note that the original report got deleted and so all of my comments
against the proposal as initially stated went away. I will still state that I
emphatically disagree with problem #2 in this report. It is not a problem.
Traps are very powerful. They absolutely should take time to deal with if you
want to take them over and replace them to give your team the advantage that
they can provide. I am quite happy to spend my time taking over pits to give my
side an advantage (and am, in fact, doing it as I write this!). If you take
over someone's traps, they have to spend the same amount of time to replace and
take it over. It is absolutely the choice -of the tracker- whether they feel it
is worth the time to invest. I feel that it is, which is (obviously) why I do
it. This "problem" is simply Not A Problem, and attempting to address it simply
opens the door to abuse from the other side (making it too easy for raiders to
take over an area with a powerful advantage).
---[Xenthos on 4/6 @ 22:58 writes]:
That said, your solutions have changed somewhat. I can see a point to Solution
1. It makes it so that traps in a defending area are not locked specifically to
one person and another defending tracker does not have to do the whole
disarm/rearm routine. It should require being mutual allies, however (along
with the trap being marked). I don't see a need for solution 2-- it's still
using power. It just means you can go a bit longer before running out. I can't
say I'm -strongly- opposed to that one, but I just don't see a compelling need
to make disarming traps easier than it currently is. Solution 3 I am adamantly
opposed to, however. That is the most severe & overreacting "solution" offered
to this "problem" yet-- it means that any time, anywhere, you have the ability
to cover an entire area with pits with no significant time delay (as long as
someone else didn't do it within the previous 4 hours). I strongly feel that if
you want the advantage that pits can offer, you should be willing to invest the
time to gain that advantage.
---[Xenthos on 4/6 @ 23:05 writes]:
Also 100% opposed to Solution 4, for the same reasons as 3 and my first comment.
So: TL/DR, Solution 1 only, making sure it requires Mutual Allies.
---[Synkarin on 4/6 @ 23:31 writes]:
I can get on board with solution 1, allies shouldn't hinder your abilities to
fight, and they likely are willing to have their traps be useful rather than
wasted while they are not around. I could reasonably see pits made with solstice
coal decay after a time, but pits that use coal should remain, and then there
should a syntax to allow the use of comms. I'm not a fan of the other solutions
for the reasons stated in the previous report.
---[Cyndarin on 4/7 @ 00:31 writes]:
I really don't support this report in the context of how strong pits are. They
shouldn't be easy, cheap, and quick to replace On the surface, solution 3 sounds
okay until you consider removing pits first before establishing a fortress takes
time, and I think it's important to keep that. Having instant access to area
wide pits for every domoth or revolt or wildnodes just exacerbates the fortress
meta. Pitting shouldn't be easy, it shouldn't be cheap. They are really freaking
powerful. Right now the only counter to pits are someone else's pits. I think
the lack of counters justifies the cost and time.
---[Cyndarin on 4/7 @ 00:33 writes]:
Admittedly I am torn about solution 3. On the one hand, it eliminates some of
the current issues with pits, walking into an area and the enemy already having
a semi fortress set up. On the other hand, it makes turning domoths and nodes
and what not into fortresses easier for whoever arrives first. I dunno.
---[Tredian on 4/8 @ 12:48 writes]:
I'd support solution 1, 2 and/or 4. Solution 3 might be a bit hard of area-
pitters, which remains a strategic decision, takes time and comms, just to have
those burst to bubbles in a few hours. If we wanted them to decay, we might
consider lessening the effort/cost for putting them up. In any case solution 1
allowing it to be used by allies is alright, and disarm carefully which still
costs time and power may make it a better match now, given that putting up a
trap costs time and comms (definitely a lesser 'resource' than power). Solution
4 is alright as well, since those would still take time, making it match with
pit-setting, and can only be done on the condition that the setter is not
around.
---[Wobou on 4/8 @ 14:39 writes]:
I'm most in favor of Sol. 1 or 2. Although I agree with Xenthos that Sol. 1
should require mutual allies. I think a potential alternative to sol. 3 would be
to have demesnes/pits/etc. scrubbed at the beginning of village
revolts/domoths/etc. (I thought some mechanic like this was introduced but now I
can't remember.)
---[Lerad on 4/10 @ 01:13 writes]:
Support for solution 1 with mutual allies.
---[Cerin on 4/21 @ 05:49 writes]:
I support solution #1 with the caveat that it includes all current mutual
allies.
---[Enyalida on 4/23 @ 21:20 writes]:
If the issue is that pits are too quick and easy to replace/place, then the
solution is to make it take longer to place pits, not to keep it taking forever
to remove them. All four presented solutions are fine by me, consider a solution
5 making pits take a short time to dig to address Xenthos, Synkarin, and
Cyndarin's concerns if that's the issue here.
---[Enyalida on 4/23 @ 21:24 writes]:
Also, an analogue to Environment - Perceive or Discernment - Hexes, showing
traps in your room and who owns them would be very welcome. Give it the standard
eq cost (4s) if there are concerns.
---[Xenthos on 4/23 @ 21:35 writes]:
Pits already take a short time to put down, so not sure what you're getting at
there. I still strongly feel that pit mechanics are fine as-is as long as pits
remain as strong/powerful as they currently are. Can't see an issue with people
being able to check traps in the room though.
---[Rivius on 4/23 @ 23:40 writes]:
In regards to solution 1, the intention is for mutual allies, yes. I envisoned
that as long as a trap is marked, a mutual ally can use a new command syntax to
take over control of the trap with the same balance time as CONCEAL.
---[Rivius on 4/23 @ 23:40 writes]:
My personal preference for this report is solutions 1 combined with solutions 3
and 4. I clearly disagree with the assertion that there is no problem here. In
fact, if anything, this report unfortunately is not being aggressive enough with
the many issues regarding traps and disarming them. The time/power taken to
disarm and replace traps is not acceptable, even less so when the tracker is not
present or even online. Being completely absent should not allow you to exert
this level of hindering. I am also puzzled by the assertion that the relevant
solutions are being rejected because 'pits are so strong'. If pits are so
powerful, logically they shouldn't be so unilaterally difficult to remove. I
don't follow the logic. In any case, there is talk of not wanting for traps to
be easily replaceable as long as 'pits are so strong', but the discussion is
lacking on relevant points as to why that is, and what conditional changes to
pits would make this acceptable.
---[Xenthos on 4/24 @ 01:22 writes]:
The time / power spent to deal with pits is absolutely acceptable, once again
said as the person who spends the most time doing it. And no, logically, if you
make it easier to remove pits when people are not around you are making it
easier for an invader / aggressor to quickly and easily put their own pits in an
area and give their side a fast boost. As far as the "discussion lacking
relevant points on why that's an issue," that is *entirely your own fault*. I
wrote pages and pages explaining this on the previous iteration of this report
and you *deleted* all my comments. It is absolutely absurd to delete all of my
comments and then complain that they are no longer there. Come on.
---[Cyndarin on 4/24 @ 01:33 writes]:
Hard pass on solution 1, it just makes pits easier to change hands between
trackers. Which is absurd. Would you make melds exchangeable between allies?
Hell no.
---[Rivius on 4/24 @ 01:54 writes]:
@Cyndarin: Melds are dissolvable. Traps are not. Especially when 1329 is
completed, you will never run into a situation where you would need to break an
absent ally's meld before placing your own.
---[Rivius on 4/24 @ 01:58 writes]:
@Xenthos: I deleted the entire report because my problem statement and solution
approaches were different to the previous draft. In addition, many of the
comments were beginning to become polluted with conversation regarding the coal
artifacts and other things I should have better left out of my problem
statement. If you felt like your voice and salient points not stated here were
lost in my purging of the report, please re-comment them. The discussion I
specifically want more clarification on is what individually about pits
justifies the current disarm dynamics, and what (if any) changes should be done
to pits to make changes to disarming more palatable?
---[Xenthos on 4/24 @ 02:35 writes]:
I stated in the previous report that got deleted my thoughts on that-- I believe
that pits are very strong. They can hit any enemy who walks in, the enemy finds
themselves locked in the room for at least a couple of seconds (giving a group
time to start afflicting and holding them in place). In group combat, they can
take enemy forces out of play for useful periods of time (gusting, fearaura,
even staticfield-- anything that pushes you out of the room can trigger it both
on exit into an adjacent pitted room and return back into the pitted combat
fighting room). It is a crowd control ability. It has enormous strength and
capability and can sway a fight. This is also one of the main purposes to being
a tracker-- pits and springtraps. I do not feel that weakening pits is called
for. They are an essential component and essentially make the skillset useful.
However, as long as they are this strong, they should -not- be able to be
flipped willy-nilly (again, something that I went into in great depth on the
previous report that you decided did not deserve to be saved). I'm not sure why
you think that we need to re-write the same things over and over and over again
just because you put some comments in that took things off-track. My comments
in the original report were as relevant to this discussion as they were to that
one because they are the same discussion.
---[Xenthos on 4/24 @ 02:38 writes]:
In addition, the solutions are almost entirely the same with the addition of
solution #3 (which goes further) and solution #1 (which I am fine with). Other
than that, there are no real changes. You could easily have just put solution 1
in place of one of the others. The problem presented really did not change much
at all, it is the same thrust... so I'm just at a loss on that. I really wish
you had just left it as-is because wiping out all of our thoughts leaves us
here, where we've already -made- our arguments and now they are gone (with us
being frustrated).
---[Synkarin on 4/24 @ 18:21 writes]:
I'm having a hard time seeing why it's suddenly such an issue that disarm/trip
or whatever takes so long. The only argument for making it shorter that I've
heard from Rivius seems more of a 'I don't want to have it take so long to
disarm, so I'm envoying it to take less time' rather than it being any actual
balance concerns. Please explain why the tracker being offline should suddenly
make it so much easier to disarm traps and why it's a balance concern. Why is it
fair to make it easier if the tracker is offline than if they are online. You
are obviously sitting here stating that if the tracker is online, the time it
takes is fair, but why is it suddenly unfair if they are offline? I don't think
being online or offline should make a difference in how long it takes to disarm
traps, so given that you've stated the time is fair when the tracker is online,
I think it's only fair to keep things as they are. The only solution I'm really
behind is #1. The rest can be ignored. (Also, I have no idea what Enyalida is on
about, making traps take longer to put up than disarm is incredibly illogical,
why change it all then?)
---[Cerin on 4/25 @ 03:51 writes]:
Agreed w/ Xenthos on this one. Solution 1 with mutual ally required. Traps are a
pain for a reason, they should be a pain to the person wanting to change them
out as much as they are to the person falling into them.
Type MORE to continue reading. (53% shown)