Report 1805

Report #1805
Skillset: Hunting Skill: BondRecall
 Org: Glomdoring Status: Finalised
Problem: Currently Ecology (and to a lesser extent Tracking) see a lot of their
skills tied to their respective animal familars. Unlike other entourage skills,
Ecology and Tracking both require equilibrium to summon their companions back to
the caster. This is particularly confusing given that BOND MOVE <direction> is
free and instantaneous, meaning that a particularly savvy coder could simply
code a script to automatically move their companion back to the owner, if at the
cost of spamming the server with hundreds of commands at once. This report aims
to remove this pointless restriction in order to make the Hunting
specializations more user-friendly.
[A: 4 R: 3] Solution #1: Remove the equilibrium usage for BOND RECALL, for
 both ecologists and trackers.
[A: 3 R: 3] Solution #2: As suggested by Rolsand, reduce or remove the 5p cost
 for BOND RECALL when used across planes; this is
 likewise not present for other entourage based skills.
Player Comments:
---[Moi on 3/9 @ 22:34 sets as pending]
---[Maligorn on 3/10 @ 11:41 writes]:
I feel like you could reasonably mark this as QoL, given the information you've
provided in the problem statement. Supported, either way.
---[Moi on 3/11 @ 07:15 writes]:
Forgot to flag it as one.
---[Yarith on 3/12 @ 21:53 writes]:
Sure.
---[Aeldra on 3/14 @ 08:37 writes]:
Sure
---[Moi on 3/15 @ 22:23 writes]:
Added a second optional solution, as per Rolsand.
---[Auriella on 3/17 @ 05:21 writes]:
If you're going to remove the eq cost, then you should add a skill to do that
like wiccans and guardians have to do to with OPEN CHANNELS so they can call
them eq free.
---[Ejderha on 3/21 @ 02:06 writes]:
I've thought about this for a while, and I actually disagree with this report,
and in fact disagree with it being a QoL report too. Separating someone from
their entourage/companion/beast is a form of counterplay against those classes,
and eliminating counterplay is a balance concern. Furthermore, exactly where do
you draw the line? Some class offenses are clearly built around and require a
beastmastery beast. Should muster and whistle also be eq free? The only way I
would support this change is if it were masochism restricted to prevent it from
removing a valid form of counterplay to ent/beast classes. I will be voting no,
but I would be willing to support if it were masochism restricted.
---[Aeldra on 3/21 @ 09:55 writes]:
Following both Auriellas and Ejderhas reasoning on this.
---[Deichtine on 3/21 @ 14:58 writes]:
More than happen to add an OPEN CHANNELS 10 power effect. Although to the flip
side of that I'd be more than happy to just make faecall/fleshcall/etc be
instant without requiring OPEN CHANNELS. Because if we think about it its a def
that lasts through death there is almost no reason for an ent class currently to
not have instant ent summoning. Open channels is a 10 power def up on log in tax
for no real purpose. Add in that guardians/wiccans are already pretty high power
on def up Sol4 would be to also remove open channels power cost/make calls
instant and just simply remove open channels