ANNOUNCE NEWS #929
Date: 10/10/2007 at 19:27
From: Morgfyre, the Legion
To : Everyone
Subj: Guards, Discretionary Powers, and Envoy Changes (Oh my!)

Bard Guards are unique among the guilds, as they are special songs that
are imbedded into the room where they are summoned, and will remain in
that room until dismissed. The Guard-Songs come in two flavours: Lesser
and Greater.

+ Lesser Songs will knock city enemies who enter their location out of
the skies or trees, and dig them up if they are burrowed.
+ Greater Songs will give a brief stun when a city enemy enters their
location.

Bard guilds should speak to their Divine Patron for details about
purchasing these guards for their city or commune. Neither guard-song
attacks beyond this effect.


The Bard discretionary power can be used in the city/commune and in any
villages or planes controlled by that nation. It is an inspiring song
that boosts the maximum health, mana, and ego of all citizens within the
local area for the duration.

It was previously the case that all guard types were using cutting
damage. That has changed as follows:

+ Elementals will entangle on 20% chance, and will attack faster when
infused.
+ Guardian and Wiccan guards now attack with magical damage.
+ Moondancer and Shadowdancer guards also attack with cold damage.
+ Celestine guards also attack with fire damage.
+ Nihilist guards also attack with poison damage.
+ Warrior guards now use blunt and cutting damage.
+ They also have a 10% chance to do x2 damage.

Below are the Envoy changes for September:

+ Astrology Constellation cannot use two of the same astrological sign.
+ Healing Deepheal cures far fewer wounds than before.
+ Night Choke is only castable at ground elevation.
+ Firewalls do not give toads the burning effect (they still damage)
+ Necroscream WrathfulCanticle afflicts on a higher %.
+ Glamours Maze delays movement, and won't take the victim's entourage.
+ Telekinesis Trip can be used while the victim is frozen.
+ There is a new Enchantment: the palm sigil.
+ Commodities required are 2 silver 1 platinum.
+ The palm sigil blocks the Acquisitio effect in a room.
+ There was a bugfix to mana loss that allows a person to fall to 0 mana
when suffering mana-damaging attacks.

There are some Monk and Warrior envoy changes forthcoming, but Roark
will announce those when they are done.


Enjoy!


Penned by My hand on the 14th of Dioni, in the year 188 CE.

Wow! Guards are crazy now... Interesting. And congrats to the Bards for finally getting some guards!

And this...


Very interesting. Not really sure why they're necessary. Hmm. I would still have to flame it.

Wouldn't have to flame it in a place like a manse where only you go-- you're not likely to go nabbing your own sigils unexpectedly. Would also allow someone to drop a palm sigil and then a monolith instead of saying "Acquisitio off!" to everyone, or use a place to drop items for others to use without acquisitio getting all of them (for example, someone putting 50 cakes at the Pool for people-- previously, one person might get 40 of them via acquisitio).

Neat.

I like the changes.

Guards are supposed to be difficult, they are guards after all. One person shouldn't be able to solo them -- and now they can't.

With these changes, I would like to see them made a little more expensive. 25 guards grouped together will be incredibly hard, now, so there should be a high cost to balance it.

@Shamarah, I don't see how guard upgrades kill pk - guards have always been easy to kill, and how often have you ever gone guard raiding? You can kill people all over the place without having to go through guards. I think you're being a little melodramatic here.

Glory be to palm sigils! *safeguards his enchanting room*

Yeah, probably, I'm just a bit miffed at the constant changes to nerf conflict in general.

Yeah, it is depressing. And the lesser bard song really makes the Dark Nest OP.

However, I like the bard discretionary effect! More discretionary effects should be like that.

I agree with the Shamrock.

So, um, there goes village raiding. Mines are hard enough to get into, and those just became the least defensible villages.

Does the stun stack? Cus 10 bard stunners with 20 marshals would be suicide

For most of the world, a one second stun, a statue, and 20 guards is suicidal enough. It's not like little people can tumble out fast enough to save their hides anymore.

EDIT: Or just take the guards off standguard permanent and put guard songs, statues, and infused elementals through the five room range. Where're you going to go?

Agreed. May as well nullify the mining quest. Give Rockholm, Southgard and Angkrag their equal share of miners, so that metal production goes up. No one wants to wade through a billion souped up guards, with an experience penalty for dying in enemy territory as well.

I imagine the experience penalty might go away eventually. But if you look at the bright side it takes away 1 man guard bashing. LOL@Thoros.

I got nerfed again (see flaming toad changes)

There's three more to come

I don't understand why the whole flaming toad things was changed. It literally is the same thing as an icewall? You have to set up the room first. It's worse in the fact that toads can put the fire out by walking to water and toads still regenerate health. Also since I'm going to assume I'm the only person who actually lights toads on fire, I'm going to compare the wand of Ice with the wand of Fire. Both have the same outdoor restrictions. The only difference is that this change nerfs one wand, while keeping the other wand as an I win for toads when for the most part, the two wands have been auctioned at the same price. The only exception was the last auction. If you use a wand of ice a toad isn't going anywhere. So is a nerf to icewalls going to come next? Are there gonna be cracks that toads can hop through? Lighting toads on fire isn't even unrealistic. It's a bit sadistic at best. I mean if we're gonna nerf one artifact because a single person uses it, why not nerf it's equivalent when it's people obviously think of it as more valuable.

Nice guard changes though. I'm not quite sure what to think of them. I like how bards got guards. Guard bashing seems like it might be as hard as supermobs now depending on the number. Plus I don't know how many hits the average guard can take since they've become uncrittable. I'm imagining something in the range of 7 or so.

Increase village revolts please There's no fighting ever for the communes. yeah cities can fight all they want. Seren has to run into free discretionary+unbreakable meld+choke if they want to fight. Glom runs into unbreakable meld+free discretionary+zerg which is just as hard to fight against.

Analyze the Seren guard setup and connected power costs first please before making such claims. A quick sumup would be that for the spotty security we have right now we already lose 4-5k power. If we wanted to cover at least the Treetop entrances in Prime Serenwilde decently we'd lose more power than we'd gain. It's very much not feasible to put such large amounts of guards in more than a few select places.



Raiding Ethereal sucks in general. A big turnoff is the monolith issue which really is a design issue since communes can't have enchanters. Just raid Magnagora, you can have an allied demesne going there too. It's spit easy raiding Nil or earth compared to ethereal.

Yay...better than nothing in regards to Choke at least. :/

Lets see what I have anything to say about...

+ Astrology Constellation cannot use two of the same astrological sign.
- Stops double aeon but also stops double sun use.

+ Night Choke is only castable at ground elevation.
- Stops calling choke in trees and dropping it I guess

+ There is a new Enchantment: the palm sigil.
- Yay something for shop stockrooms!
+ Commodities required are 2 silver 1 platinum.
- Eww costly

+ There was a bugfix to mana loss that allows a person to fall to 0 mana
when suffering mana-damaging attacks.
- I can see where thats a problem

On the topic of guards... They need to be toned down now. Guards cant be crit on, have better damage by changing type (in theory), have chance to hit twice, and we added bard stuff. Bard discretionary is nice, though their guards... either knock out of air and such or stun... ewwww.

With the way guards have been improved, they cant be handled well by even a decent group. Return crits on guards to try to help prevent 30 guards meaning you cant raid at all? Conflict has been getting watered down I fear. We upgrade guards, get constructs to help deter raids, and on top of it all weremove most conflict quests or their effects? Raids and conflict is what Lusty is about, or was at least, is 10 raiders against 5 defenders fun? Not really... unless its balanced somehow.. is 5 raiders against 10 defenders fun? Loads! Defenders are on their home turf, yet the raiders can still do something and if they play their card right actually defeat people!

We need something to encourage PK, whether its a system, a way to manage some effect or something.

Now I know conflict is VERY hard to manage as all conflict quests should have some deciding limits:
- It shouldnt cripple any one guild or organization entirely
- There should be a noticable effect from the quest
- It shouldnt be extremely easy but shouldnt be easily stopped

In summary:
-Change guards a bit
-Lets get some conflict boilin
-Not bad in the envoy report

guards should now be expensive to maintain, I agree with the rest who came up with this idea.

Also I think that the bard songs will just be the same as elementals, infusing it in the area only.

Guards are expensive to maintain. Have you ever seen how many entrances one of the Forests has? Trying to put guards at each of them would be insanity even at the current costs. It's not really going to happen.

It's slightly different in villages where there's only one entrance, but they're expensive enough for orgs, even now.

I think that's the whole point; I know guards are expensive and we'd have to spread them out even more than they are now. That means no more 20-30 guards in a room, we would have to decrease it in most cases to around 10. Given their recent upgrades, 10 guards could still deter 1-man guard bashing, but it is not as impenetrable as the 20-30 guards with the same upgrades. Guards are more powerful, they should have to be spread more thinly to make up for it.

Forests don't need guards at every entrance - really, if someone wants to get into the forest, they're going to. It's really not that hard. That's why you have scent/scan/mindsense and flow; let them get into the forest all they want to, then go kill them.