Pathfinding isn't exactly fun when you're a newbie and trying to figure out Hallifax's map, and there's always the possibility of mixing colours wrong, or the Primary Generator randomly shifting to another colour while you're mixing spheres the long way.
But those facts don't really fit in your ill-informed paradigm, I guess.
Whoa, whoa. No need to get salty, man.
First off, CHELP GENERATOR has literally every room number you need. Secondly, I've never, ever heard of the generator randomly changing colour unless someone else is doing spheres.
This isn't a pissing contest.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
while there is talk of power "parity", don't forget that it's possible to drain city nexuses by bashing cosmic mobs*. And that one quest that no one does but is still technically viable to drain even more power from cities. Also, aren't mechanics still in place from that one event that if you're enemied to both Moonspirit and Nightspirit, you are also made an enemy of Faethorn (disclaimer: I don't remember if this outright prevents you from influencing fae, or just makes it a pain)?
my main point I suppose is that it's not easy, and might even be pointless, to seek "parity" between power generation methods because 1. there a lot of moving parts, and 2. power is grossly abundant no matter how you slice it. Add in factors like how anyone can both influence fae and bash elementals/ethereal essence mobs despite them being "native" power sources... just remove the passive 2k+ gain of communes, make totems rune-able, and call it done.
*for Nil and Celestia, at least. Is it the same for Vortex and Continuum?
ps 2k a day, minimum. That's more than 700k over an RL year. The upkeep of trees and totems is a gigantic pain, sure, but that amount of passive power is nothing to scoff at, either.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but I do wonder how much time it takes per day to upkeep totems vs how much time it takes per day to actively generate 700k power in a year.
It has been a good while since I have played druid, but IIRC, totems revert back to elder trees every IG year (12.5 RL days). To carve a tree back into a totem, it takes 4s(?) equilibrium and 10p, and a powerstone can be used. Both elder trees and totems producr 10p each per RL day, but totems cannot be chopped down.
I am no longer sure of how many trees/totems can fit into Serenwilde and Glomdoring exactly, but it is probably more than 200.
The biggest pain regarding totem upkeep isn't really the upkeep at all, rather, it's replanting trees. Druids upkeep totems by carving in order to avoid the ordeal of replanting them.
To start, you would need to plant 5 nuts (obtained by the pixies or shadows quests). Once 5 nuts have been planted, you wait for the next Full or New Moon (every 36 RL hours). Then, saplings will grow. Next moon cycle, saplings will grow to mature(?) trees, and after another 36-hour cycle, elder trees.
This whole process is susceptible* to chopping, and taking down just one tree stalls the process until that one 'catches up' to the others.
*wyrdenwoods and wildewoods can protect trees from being chopped, I think, similar to the ironbark discretionary.
It should also be noted that saplings and mature ravenwoods still produce power, but ofc they can't be immune to chopping unless they're grown to elders and carved into totems (or ironbarked, etc.)
Old passive power and how much it is worth is not really relevant to the discussion of this report. Not to mention, of course, that segue into Hallifax's power quest. I don't know how the Hallifax power quest works, and I have zero interest in finding out - or changing anything about it via this report.
I am intent on removing passive power entirely, and alongside that, the act of replanting. I am targeting these two parts directly. The addition of active power sources is not really a concern to me, but in the interests of being fair, I will consider any and all suggestions.
Now that I'm home from work, and have time to actually look through the thread, I've singled out the comments (only two) that consist of actual, concrete suggestions that were made in earnest. There were many earnest posts, but most of them were earnestly arguing parity - just like the above debate about the significance of passive power generation, that doesn't help me.
I think that those reports are fine. I got the vibe that forests don't mind abolishing their passive power generation in return for more native (i.e. in their prime forest or ethereal forest), active powergen (and the removal of chopping mechanics). Even if it means adding 20 ethereal beasts in each ethereal forest that repop on their own, it'll be much more palatable and not as prevalent as city essence.
I don't even think you need to go as far as adding in the active powergen. Just remove the upkeep, remove the power regeneration, and we can go from there.
I did not include your post about 50 essence creatures, Falmiis, because I think that was not made in earnest. If you want that to be considered seriously, let me know again.
What I want to know is where the consensus is, if there is one, on how many essence creatures to add, and if possible, why that number. Parity as the basis of an argument does not move me - or rather, not in this specific context because Estarra has literally declared that they will not consider it a valid argument. Therefore, I will not either.
I'm perfectly amenable to adding 20 essence creatures to each ethereal forest - and I'm also amenable to Silvanus' suggestion of not doing so - this is my solution as it currently stands. I'm waiting to find out from Iosai how many essence creatures there actually are in the two ethereal forests. I will make amendments to the solutions as needed.
Even if they were unwilling to give us a few more respawning essence mob, one possibility would be to increase the amount of fae in faethorn at a future date if we can remove the passive power and the tediousness of replanting.
Avurekhos says, "Dylara's a PvP menace in my eyes, totes rekting face."
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable. Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but I do wonder how much time it takes per day to upkeep totems vs how much time it takes per day to actively generate 700k power in a year.
Working with the estimate of 180 for a cosmic clear, 36 elemental critters, and 20 from a nexus quest.
For cities: (second number is the number of times you'd need to clear relevant cosmic, elemental, and do your nexus quest) 0 Sands = 8.12 3 sands = 5.57 5 sands = 4.61
Of the 700k, 302k would have been from cosmic at 5 sands, 533k at 0 sands. If you were just doing cosmic it's like 10.65
Cause I had the google sheet there I started doing some other calculations.
For communes(just using 36 critters which is probably high): 0 Sands = 34.25 1 sand = 20.85 3 sands = 11.69 5 sands = 8.13
Communes with 50 critters. 0 sands = 27.40 1 sand = 15.98 3 sands = 8.72 5 sands = 5.99
For funsies, I added in the estimate if you did full clears of half the planes with the 36 critters for ethereal
Cities: 0 = 6.23 3 = 3.03 5 = 2.26
Communes: 0 = 14.98 3 = 4.24 5 = 2.87
I guess your answer is between 2.26 and 4.61 clears every day if the city is upkeeping sands. (If you clear all six org critter loads you'd get it down to 1.28 a day)
Of course, there are the other benefits. Active power generation is far more visible than passive due to logs, it normally gives some experience and karma, and you are typically in control of when you want to do it where trees are often a case of "we need to do this right now"
((i spend all day working with excel sheets, when I started wondering I just started putting numbers in a sheet))
With all those numbers out, just I don't think that adding more critters is the answer because essence fluctuates so much based on sands.
Cause of the event I can't seem to find logs of their generation. If the 210 estimate from before is accurate but split between both communes, maybe we could reward following the tah'vrai stuff?
Maybe they could have their tah'vrai set on reset, hopefully ensuring an even split. Taking a fae that wants to go to Glom or stay in faethorn to Seren might give less power, but gathering those that who want to go with you would give more. Again, don't have the numbers to do the math but you could probably work it out so a full clear is the same as now, but like, a clear where you just grab your own communes fae is pretty decent too. Cities being icky would, of course, get bad power gen from fae or potentially could even just be locked out of them.
With all those numbers out, just I don't think that adding more critters is the answer because essence fluctuates so much based on sands.
Cause of the event I can't seem to find logs of their generation. If the 210 estimate from before is accurate but split between both communes, maybe we could reward following the tah'vrai stuff?
Maybe they could have their tah'vrai set on reset, hopefully ensuring an even split. Taking a fae that wants to go to Glom or stay in faethorn to Seren might give less power, but gathering those that who want to go with you would give more. Again, don't have the numbers to do the math but you could probably work it out so a full clear is the same as now, but like, a clear where you just grab your own communes fae is pretty decent too. Cities being icky would, of course, get bad power gen from fae or potentially could even just be locked out of them.
Cities stealing fae is one of the more enjoyable conflict mechanics during City vs Commune fights. The Communes have an obvious RP reason to hate it, the Cities have an obvious RP reason to do it, but the fight itself happens in Faethorn, which is an excellent arena for conflict. There's trees, flight, water, enough area for multiple melds, special exits to every other organization, non-enemy congluts for everyone involved.
I on an ooc level don't mind city players being able t steal them, I do wish there were more though (and that this event was resolved).
Avurekhos says, "Dylara's a PvP menace in my eyes, totes rekting face."
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable. Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
Why should cities be locked out of fae power, when communes can just as easily bash elemental essence?
And to @Iytha as well, I did include that the cities might just get the bad power gain from it.
For Anak, they're not essence, if you want extra essence you can hunt the essence creatures that exist on ethereal. The fae are more like the ~180 power an hour that the cities have uncontested access to.
Though it does seem worth noting that this city v commune mechanic seems to again be that the communes aren't doing their job, people just likely care less because the fae respawn
@Lerad: 50 was definitely hyperbole but my point is that the number is really not that important. The point that some people are making is that cities have respawnable essence and communes don't do communes are disadvantaged and I'm just telling them that it's not the big deal that them seem to think it is.
To everyone else: I don't think we really want to get any further into this discussion where we list out all of the advantages that cities have and all of the advantages that communes have and try to make them equal. This buzzword, "parity", sounds great, but it is clear that the design of Lusternia has very little room for it or we wouldn't have different specialisations in each organisation (as one of many examples). There are meant to differences, especially when it comes to the designs and mechanics of the communes compared to the cities. There are things that are downright annoying and I get that. Elders are one of them and they are what this thread and the reports contained within are trying to address. They are not about trying to bring "parity" or any other ideal where communes and cities become homogenised, because that is not what this game is designed to be.
To everyone else: I don't think we really want to get any further into this discussion where we list out all of the advantages that cities have and all of the advantages that communes have and try to make them equal. This buzzword, "parity", sounds great, but it is clear that the design of Lusternia has very little room for it or we wouldn't have different specialisations in each organisation (as one of many examples). There are meant to differences, especially when it comes to the designs and mechanics of the communes compared to the cities. There are things that are downright annoying and I get that. Elders are one of them and they are what this thread and the reports contained within are trying to address. They are not about trying to bring "parity" or any other ideal where communes and cities become homogenised, because that is not what this game is designed to be.
Realistically though, having a look across all power generation. All of it is ultimately shared. The only aspects that aren't common to all orgs are totems/cosmic generation, so once totem generation goes away whatever the cities get from cosmic is their advantage over the forests in relatively safe power generation.
@Falmiis you can use that emoticon, but realistically the arguments being made that cities and communes should be different has nothing to do with parity whatsoever. Ultimately these arguments are used almost exclusively to defend situations where the communes have specifically worse mechanics than the cities.
The goal should be to make communes and cities different but still equal, a simple example would be swapping totem and statue bonding. The cities have an average of what... 3 entrances?, they also have less in them that they'd want to protect, They don't need the ability to have statues in every single room yet the get the better deal in both of these aspects. Forests, however, have far more entrances and generally have something in every room that they want to protect, so it would make more sense for them to be able to have totems everywhere. Different, but balanced towards ideally ending up the same.
Similarly, all power generation will be equal once totem generation goes away except for cosmic. The arguments being presented here are that this is what is desired, but that cities should be better than communes at generating power.
I'll quote @Estarra this time: Communes and cities were never meant to have exactly the same mechanics (in fact we wanted the mechanics, downsides and upsides of each, to be unique and different). Yes, it's not fair but any argument will have greater weight if it isn't based on 'cities don't deal with X, so communes shouldn't either' or 'communes deal with Y, so cities should have something similar'.
There is absolutely nothing in that, that states that we shouldn't have parity between communes and cities. Just that they shouldn't be achieving that through the same mechanics.
Serenwilde 16 to 41, depending on how you count the river and bridges. Glomdoring 9 to 19, depending on how you count the river. Magnagora 4. Three land, one water. Celest 3. Two land, one water. Gaudiguch 2, or 3 if you count Zoaka separately from Razines. Hallifax 2, or 3 if you count the elevator.
E: The thing about rivers is that one reasonable definition of "entrance" is a room connection between a room that is part of commune area and one that is not, while another reasonable definition is a room connection between a room where the commune can carve totems and a room which they can't. You can get pretty far into Serenwilde/Glomdoring without running into a totem if you stick to the rivers.
All right, let us use the assumption that totem power is the equivalent mechanic to cosmic power.
Totems, no matter what form (sapling, mature, elder, totem), produce power. Semi-passively, one could say, as it is a set-and-forget mechanic until you need to set (carve/plant) it again usually every 12 RL days.
Cosmic mobs, on the other hand, need to be done at least every RL hour. There are not nearly enough mobs to match it with totem power unless the cosmic plane is almost always camped.
It's not the treasure trove of power that you think it is.
Further more, cosmic mobs can be killed, in which case the nexus loses power (both in the actual death of the mob, and if that mob wasn't empowered, then the opportunity to produce power from it is gone until it respawns). Cosmic mob corpses can then be made into gray essence at the Well of Souls (if it's filled). That is still technically a mechanic, which means almost all of a city's out-of-prime power generation is free game to all orgs, just like communes'.
If you want parity, increase the rate that ethereal essence mobs spawn per fae brought in. That way, the power mechanics can be different enough, but still also require actual active generation.
@Iytha, if you're looking at defences you'd need the latter because you're looking at how much coverage you need to at least hit the person with one totem/statue on their way in.
Serenwilde easily has more than forty due to the river and long tracts you can sprint. Like, you could go up the moon river from the inner sea, sprint across to the library, and then step east, step south, or sprint south. Similarly, the centaur hills add in a few spots because you can reach them from the river and we can't grow totems there. Glomdoring is a bit more weird because some of their river entrances go to places that are sectioned off.
Celest arguably has a few more in that case because of the harbour design, Mag also has like two or three more.
Even with those extra rooms, I'd expect that just guardians and rituals warriors would be easily able to cover all of those entrances while still having some extras to cover some other spots.
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@Anaklusmos, yet as the expectation is the removal of passive, the discussion would be about balancing purely active generation once totems are removed. Again, the math is quite simple and with everyone just doing their own stuff, the cosmic planes are responsible for the vast majority of your power income.
You're also ignoring the fact that while cosmic mobs might be killed, such is realistically raid, the moment you try you even hit one of them you will have alerted the relevant city and will likely find defenders popping in very quickly, if you kill one of them you'll have enemy statuses slapped on you which will make the entire area aggro towards you and likely prevent you from using one of the entrances. I can't just go farm crystals whenever I need a bit of extra power, especially with Continuum and Vortex given they are the more difficult ones to get to, short of flying over there your only option is through the guarded nexus or a cubix.
Faethorn is easily accessible by anyone, even if you can't transverse to another plane through your nexus, there are rifts on prime to get you there (can even make more), similarly you're not killing the fae so there aren't any enemy statuses to them involved. You might get enemied to the forests for doing it, but that's not going to impact your ability to gather the fae, and the only way you'd be enemied is if you actually get caught. There's also no alerting, to be caught you'd likely need someone to actually go to faethorn and scent to know you're there. (I'd expect there will be people arguing that you can borrow a cubix, so you can borrow a gem to hide from who checks.)
Realistically, if you do consider it to be the forest equivalent to cosmic, it follows the standard forest formula where it's inferior to the city version though, if we accept earlier arguments, then it's not a forest power generation mechanic so you can't make the comparison. Also I'd suggest that the power gained from cosmic mob corpses is likely closer to a raid reward mechanic than power generation, in comparison you don't really raid ethereal for fae, you just sneak in and run off with as many as you can get or claim you were gathering them for your allied forest.
And regarding just adding more critters, it's neater to just add rewards for paying attention to the tah'vrai. It will add power that only the communes can actually access, it's not susceptible to sand counts, it reinforces existing mechanics/rp, and if your actual concern is about the communes being too much like the cities, increasing the number of critters and making them respawn duplicates city mechanics, while this does not. It would be a power generation mechanic that others could steal but it is most beneficial for the org it is intended for.
The cosmic plane has never been responsible for more than a meagre fraction of our power income. Aint nobody got time for that.
EDIT: This tangent seems to be detracting from the purpose of Lerad's thread as much as I was. He's looking for opinions on his reports and ways to help them. Not validation for why totems should lose their power income. That's in the report already.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
Still a no on adding commune-specific power generation methods outside of the simple Prime ones (shadows, pixies, initiates, kinsfolk, beggars, joules).
You're perpetuating the idea that communes should get a free source of power. It's active as opposed to passive now, sure, but it's still power that cities do not get.
And regarding the power produced via cosmic mobs -- having experience in Celest, Gaudiguch, and Hallifax, I am pretty confident in telling you that, no, it is far from being a major source of city power, even discounting things like villages, domoths, and epic quests.
I also want to add that power generation from gathering fae for cities is more or less a red herring -- just because the mechanic exists doesn't mean that people are going to do it. Both Serenwilde and Glomdoring express "don't do this" heavily in their treaties. People who do it anyway get heavily sanctioned, or end up severely weakening ally ties, which we saw a great example of with the release of Xeeth Labs and eafs.
Still a no on adding commune-specific power generation methods outside of the simple Prime ones (shadows, pixies, initiates, kinsfolk, beggars, joules).
You're perpetuating the idea that communes should get a free source of power. It's active as opposed to passive now, sure, but it's still power that cities do not get.
And regarding the power produced via cosmic mobs -- having experience in Celest, Gaudiguch, and Hallifax, I am pretty confident in telling you that, no, it is far from being a major source of city power, even discounting things like villages, domoths, and epic quests.
And you're arguing that the cities should have more options than communes. You're arguing that everything that communes have access to the cities should also get, but the cities should have more options than communes. You're somehow arguing that raiding a cosmic plane is in any way equivalent to gathering fae.
You do realise that your arguments for there to be more fae in ethereal ultimately means that you're arguing that something that should compensate the removal of passive generation HAS to potentially benefit the cities as well. This entirely goes against your arguments that the organisations should be mechanically different.
You're complaining because of a suggestion that would offer a point of difference between communes and cities, because it's unfair that cities don't benefit from it.
The cosmic plane has never been responsible for more than a meagre fraction of our power income. Aint nobody got time for that.
EDIT: This tangent seems to be detracting from the purpose of Lerad's thread as much as I was. He's looking for opinions on his reports and ways to help them. Not validation for why totems should lose their power income. That's in the report already.
Solution 1 in the report, last I checked, included modifications to ethereal essence creatures as compensation for the loss of passive power generation. Solution 2 incorporates a reduction in the passive power generation.
Discussions relating to this compensation are actually on topic.
EDIT: The reason cosmic is in any way relevant, is that it just offers a target for what the compensation could offer.
EDIT2: You're welcome to disagree @Yarith, but even on this page there is discussion about the replacement for the passive power gain from Lerad
Comments
See how easily this talk can quickly devolve.
First off, CHELP GENERATOR has literally every room number you need. Secondly, I've never, ever heard of the generator randomly changing colour unless someone else is doing spheres.
This isn't a pissing contest.
Signature!
my main point I suppose is that it's not easy, and might even be pointless, to seek "parity" between power generation methods because 1. there a lot of moving parts, and 2. power is grossly abundant no matter how you slice it. Add in factors like how anyone can both influence fae and bash elementals/ethereal essence mobs despite them being "native" power sources... just remove the passive 2k+ gain of communes, make totems rune-able, and call it done.
*for Nil and Celestia, at least. Is it the same for Vortex and Continuum?
ps 2k a day, minimum. That's more than 700k over an RL year. The upkeep of trees and totems is a gigantic pain, sure, but that amount of passive power is nothing to scoff at, either.
Accountability is necessary.
I am no longer sure of how many trees/totems can fit into Serenwilde and Glomdoring exactly, but it is probably more than 200.
The biggest pain regarding totem upkeep isn't really the upkeep at all, rather, it's replanting trees. Druids upkeep totems by carving in order to avoid the ordeal of replanting them.
To start, you would need to plant 5 nuts (obtained by the pixies or shadows quests). Once 5 nuts have been planted, you wait for the next Full or New Moon (every 36 RL hours). Then, saplings will grow. Next moon cycle, saplings will grow to mature(?) trees, and after another 36-hour cycle, elder trees.
This whole process is susceptible* to chopping, and taking down just one tree stalls the process until that one 'catches up' to the others.
*wyrdenwoods and wildewoods can protect trees from being chopped, I think, similar to the ironbark discretionary.
It should also be noted that saplings and mature ravenwoods still produce power, but ofc they can't be immune to chopping unless they're grown to elders and carved into totems (or ironbarked, etc.)
Accountability is necessary.
I am intent on removing passive power entirely, and alongside that, the act of replanting. I am targeting these two parts directly. The addition of active power sources is not really a concern to me, but in the interests of being fair, I will consider any and all suggestions.
Now that I'm home from work, and have time to actually look through the thread, I've singled out the comments (only two) that consist of actual, concrete suggestions that were made in earnest. There were many earnest posts, but most of them were earnestly arguing parity - just like the above debate about the significance of passive power generation, that doesn't help me.
I did not include your post about 50 essence creatures, Falmiis, because I think that was not made in earnest. If you want that to be considered seriously, let me know again.
What I want to know is where the consensus is, if there is one, on how many essence creatures to add, and if possible, why that number. Parity as the basis of an argument does not move me - or rather, not in this specific context because Estarra has literally declared that they will not consider it a valid argument. Therefore, I will not either.
I'm perfectly amenable to adding 20 essence creatures to each ethereal forest - and I'm also amenable to Silvanus' suggestion of not doing so - this is my solution as it currently stands. I'm waiting to find out from Iosai how many essence creatures there actually are in the two ethereal forests. I will make amendments to the solutions as needed.
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable.
Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
For cities: (second number is the number of times you'd need to clear relevant cosmic, elemental, and do your nexus quest)
0 Sands = 8.12
3 sands = 5.57
5 sands = 4.61
Of the 700k, 302k would have been from cosmic at 5 sands, 533k at 0 sands. If you were just doing cosmic it's like 10.65
Cause I had the google sheet there I started doing some other calculations.
For communes(just using 36 critters which is probably high):
0 Sands = 34.25
1 sand = 20.85
3 sands = 11.69
5 sands = 8.13
Communes with 50 critters.
0 sands = 27.40
1 sand = 15.98
3 sands = 8.72
5 sands = 5.99
For funsies, I added in the estimate if you did full clears of half the planes with the 36 critters for ethereal
Cities:
0 = 6.23
3 = 3.03
5 = 2.26
Communes:
0 = 14.98
3 = 4.24
5 = 2.87
I guess your answer is between 2.26 and 4.61 clears every day if the city is upkeeping sands. (If you clear all six org critter loads you'd get it down to 1.28 a day)
Of course, there are the other benefits. Active power generation is far more visible than passive due to logs, it normally gives some experience and karma, and you are typically in control of when you want to do it where trees are often a case of "we need to do this right now"
((i spend all day working with excel sheets, when I started wondering I just started putting numbers in a sheet))
Cause of the event I can't seem to find logs of their generation. If the 210 estimate from before is accurate but split between both communes, maybe we could reward following the tah'vrai stuff?
Maybe they could have their tah'vrai set on reset, hopefully ensuring an even split.
Taking a fae that wants to go to Glom or stay in faethorn to Seren might give less power, but gathering those that who want to go with you would give more. Again, don't have the numbers to do the math but you could probably work it out so a full clear is the same as now, but like, a clear where you just grab your own communes fae is pretty decent too.
Cities being icky would, of course, get bad power gen from fae or potentially could even just be locked out of them.
Accountability is necessary.
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable.
Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
For Anak, they're not essence, if you want extra essence you can hunt the essence creatures that exist on ethereal. The fae are more like the ~180 power an hour that the cities have uncontested access to.
Though it does seem worth noting that this city v commune mechanic seems to again be that the communes aren't doing their job, people just likely care less because the fae respawn
To everyone else: I don't think we really want to get any further into this discussion where we list out all of the advantages that cities have and all of the advantages that communes have and try to make them equal. This buzzword, "parity", sounds great, but it is clear that the design of Lusternia has very little room for it or we wouldn't have different specialisations in each organisation (as one of many examples). There are meant to differences, especially when it comes to the designs and mechanics of the communes compared to the cities. There are things that are downright annoying and I get that. Elders are one of them and they are what this thread and the reports contained within are trying to address. They are not about trying to bring "parity" or any other ideal where communes and cities become homogenised, because that is not what this game is designed to be.
Ultimately these arguments are used almost exclusively to defend situations where the communes have specifically worse mechanics than the cities.
The goal should be to make communes and cities different but still equal, a simple example would be swapping totem and statue bonding.
The cities have an average of what... 3 entrances?, they also have less in them that they'd want to protect, They don't need the ability to have statues in every single room yet the get the better deal in both of these aspects.
Forests, however, have far more entrances and generally have something in every room that they want to protect, so it would make more sense for them to be able to have totems everywhere.
Different, but balanced towards ideally ending up the same.
Similarly, all power generation will be equal once totem generation goes away except for cosmic. The arguments being presented here are that this is what is desired, but that cities should be better than communes at generating power.
I'll quote @Estarra this time:
Communes and cities were never meant to have exactly the same mechanics (in fact we wanted the mechanics, downsides and upsides of each, to be unique and different). Yes, it's not fair but any argument will have greater weight if it isn't based on 'cities don't deal with X, so communes shouldn't either' or 'communes deal with Y, so cities should have something similar'.
There is absolutely nothing in that, that states that we shouldn't have parity between communes and cities. Just that they shouldn't be achieving that through the same mechanics.
Glomdoring 9 to 19, depending on how you count the river.
Magnagora 4. Three land, one water.
Celest 3. Two land, one water.
Gaudiguch 2, or 3 if you count Zoaka separately from Razines.
Hallifax 2, or 3 if you count the elevator.
E: The thing about rivers is that one reasonable definition of "entrance" is a room connection between a room that is part of commune area and one that is not, while another reasonable definition is a room connection between a room where the commune can carve totems and a room which they can't. You can get pretty far into Serenwilde/Glomdoring without running into a totem if you stick to the rivers.
Totems, no matter what form (sapling, mature, elder, totem), produce power. Semi-passively, one could say, as it is a set-and-forget mechanic until you need to set (carve/plant) it again usually every 12 RL days.
Cosmic mobs, on the other hand, need to be done at least every RL hour. There are not nearly enough mobs to match it with totem power unless the cosmic plane is almost always camped.
It's not the treasure trove of power that you think it is.
Further more, cosmic mobs can be killed, in which case the nexus loses power (both in the actual death of the mob, and if that mob wasn't empowered, then the opportunity to produce power from it is gone until it respawns). Cosmic mob corpses can then be made into gray essence at the Well of Souls (if it's filled). That is still technically a mechanic, which means almost all of a city's out-of-prime power generation is free game to all orgs, just like communes'.
If you want parity, increase the rate that ethereal essence mobs spawn per fae brought in. That way, the power mechanics can be different enough, but still also require actual active generation.
Accountability is necessary.
Serenwilde easily has more than forty due to the river and long tracts you can sprint. Like, you could go up the moon river from the inner sea, sprint across to the library, and then step east, step south, or sprint south. Similarly, the centaur hills add in a few spots because you can reach them from the river and we can't grow totems there. Glomdoring is a bit more weird because some of their river entrances go to places that are sectioned off.
Celest arguably has a few more in that case because of the harbour design, Mag also has like two or three more.
Even with those extra rooms, I'd expect that just guardians and rituals warriors would be easily able to cover all of those entrances while still having some extras to cover some other spots.
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@Anaklusmos, yet as the expectation is the removal of passive, the discussion would be about balancing purely active generation once totems are removed. Again, the math is quite simple and with everyone just doing their own stuff, the cosmic planes are responsible for the vast majority of your power income.
You're also ignoring the fact that while cosmic mobs might be killed, such is realistically raid, the moment you try you even hit one of them you will have alerted the relevant city and will likely find defenders popping in very quickly, if you kill one of them you'll have enemy statuses slapped on you which will make the entire area aggro towards you and likely prevent you from using one of the entrances.
I can't just go farm crystals whenever I need a bit of extra power, especially with Continuum and Vortex given they are the more difficult ones to get to, short of flying over there your only option is through the guarded nexus or a cubix.
Faethorn is easily accessible by anyone, even if you can't transverse to another plane through your nexus, there are rifts on prime to get you there (can even make more), similarly you're not killing the fae so there aren't any enemy statuses to them involved.
You might get enemied to the forests for doing it, but that's not going to impact your ability to gather the fae, and the only way you'd be enemied is if you actually get caught. There's also no alerting, to be caught you'd likely need someone to actually go to faethorn and scent to know you're there. (I'd expect there will be people arguing that you can borrow a cubix, so you can borrow a gem to hide from who checks.)
Realistically, if you do consider it to be the forest equivalent to cosmic, it follows the standard forest formula where it's inferior to the city version though, if we accept earlier arguments, then it's not a forest power generation mechanic so you can't make the comparison.
Also I'd suggest that the power gained from cosmic mob corpses is likely closer to a raid reward mechanic than power generation, in comparison you don't really raid ethereal for fae, you just sneak in and run off with as many as you can get or claim you were gathering them for your allied forest.
And regarding just adding more critters, it's neater to just add rewards for paying attention to the tah'vrai. It will add power that only the communes can actually access, it's not susceptible to sand counts, it reinforces existing mechanics/rp, and if your actual concern is about the communes being too much like the cities, increasing the number of critters and making them respawn duplicates city mechanics, while this does not. It would be a power generation mechanic that others could steal but it is most beneficial for the org it is intended for.
EDIT: This tangent seems to be detracting from the purpose of Lerad's thread as much as I was. He's looking for opinions on his reports and ways to help them. Not validation for why totems should lose their power income. That's in the report already.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
You're perpetuating the idea that communes should get a free source of power. It's active as opposed to passive now, sure, but it's still power that cities do not get.
And regarding the power produced via cosmic mobs -- having experience in Celest, Gaudiguch, and Hallifax, I am pretty confident in telling you that, no, it is far from being a major source of city power, even discounting things like villages, domoths, and epic quests.
Accountability is necessary.
edit: but yeah talk about a derail. Sorry =s
You do realise that your arguments for there to be more fae in ethereal ultimately means that you're arguing that something that should compensate the removal of passive generation HAS to potentially benefit the cities as well. This entirely goes against your arguments that the organisations should be mechanically different.
You're complaining because of a suggestion that would offer a point of difference between communes and cities, because it's unfair that cities don't benefit from it.
Discussions relating to this compensation are actually on topic.
EDIT: The reason cosmic is in any way relevant, is that it just offers a target for what the compensation could offer.
EDIT2: You're welcome to disagree @Yarith, but even on this page there is discussion about the replacement for the passive power gain from Lerad