Report 871

Report #871
Skillset: Planar Skill: GateMaster
 Org: Aeromancers Status: Completed Jun 2012
Furies' Decision:
We will reduce the upkeep and increase the length of time they last. We will
also allow this ability to let you see where gates lead to on survey.
Problem: The active aspect of the transcendent ability in planar, GateMaster,
sees little to no use. You may bond with a gate, which can only be used by you.
The bonded gate will last only 90 IC days, and drains 1p from reserves every day
it is bonded. Added to the 10p to weave the gate and another 10p to bond, that's
a total of 110p, or 55% reserves, for a personal gate that lasts four RL days.
Due to the variety of other ways one can return to a hard to reach location, and
the relative uselessness of a gate only you can use, most people only trans
planar to maximize the effectiveness of the child skillsets.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Replace the current functionality of GateMaster with
 a passive ability, similar to PlanarSight, that
 expands the use of other planar abilities.
 Suggestions can be found in the comments.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: Replace the ability to bond gates with a new type of
 gate (I suggest calling them wormholes) that fade
 after one IC day, and have a much shorter weaving
 time.
Player Comments:
---[Tulemrah on 6/8 @ 21:47 writes]:
My current ideas for effects for GateMaster (or PlanarParagon, which was
suggested as a new name) are: half time to weave and unravel gates (part of the
current functionality), teleport nexus off-continent or off-prime home planes
(teleport Matrix only from Air and Continuum), tesseract nexus from non-home
planes (tesseract to Flame on Fire from Earth/Water/Air), tesseract nexus from
any Astral sphere (would put you at cosmic nexus)
---[Xynthin on 6/9 @ 00:23 writes]:
When you say 'it sees little or no use,' I have to tell you that you're wrong.
I use it on a regular basis-- not necessarily for the gatebonding itself but for
the speeding up of dealing with gates. I love this skill. When this is
considered, I want to make sure that that part of this skill -does not change-
(despite the report currently being written in such a way that it seems the
whole thing is pointless). I would not mind adding in the ability to teleport
nexus from off-Prime, however.
---[Tulemrah on 6/9 @ 01:27 writes]:
I am in fact referring to the bonding mechanic being pointless. The solutions
are in fact worded with the intention of leaving the half time to weave/unravel
in place. I will update the problem to make this more clear.
---[Asmodea on 6/9 @ 04:31 writes]:
Would be nice if this ability also let you see where gates lead to.
---[Enyalida on 6/9 @ 16:24 writes]:
In my opinion, the entire gateweaving mechanic and all of its add-ons are of
such limited use for the majority of players that it feels inappropriate to
have them figure prominently as the top levels of a skillset at all. As such, I
like the idea of GateMaster getting completly away from the gateweaving mechanic
at its core, and/or introducing a better way (not just a faster way) to weave
gates through it.
---[Tulemrah on 6/10 @ 19:48 writes]:
Since my suggestions for Solution 1 are very city-centric, a few alterations.
Instead of using tesseract nexus from a non-home plane to the home-plane of the
same type (Fire to Air, Celestia to Continuum), allow it to function like a
normal tesseract, between adjacent planes. This would allow commune members to
tesseract to their ethereal nexus from elemental planes.
---[Janalon on 6/22 @ 15:54 writes]:
I also agree with the comments left by Asmodea and especially Enyalida. I find
myself indifferent to the solutions provided in this report, but don't have any
other immediate recomendations at the moment.
---[Shuyin on 6/26 @ 20:13 writes]:
A better solution would be to make GateMastered gates function under distort. No
other change would be needed then. This gives gatemaster a use, however, the
only downside is that such a use would be for slightly more nefarious reasons,
but it is worthwhile nonetheless