CITY SIGILS - Announce 2329

Areka

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2329
Date: 10/24/2014 at 19:47
From: Razmael, the Synthesist
To : Everyone
Subj: City sigils

This addition comes from report 1713 from the last liaison round.

The security ministry now has access to a new command section: CITY SIGILS. This allows them to set
up sigil layouts, similar to how guard layouts work, and easily replace missing sigils.

These sigils are drawn from the quartermaster, and the Trade ministry can manipulate monolith, cube,
flame and key sigils just any regular comm. That means they can sell them and buy them from the
city's commodity shop, as well as consign them to the quartermaster for Security's use.

Command overview:
CITY SIGILS VIEW
View the sigil layout for current room.

CITY SIGILS SET [room]
Sets the supplied sigil as being needed in the room. If no room number is supplied, your current
room is assumed.

CITY SIGILS UNSET [room]
Does the opposite of set.

CITY SIGILS LIST
List which rooms have a sigil layout.

CITY SIGILS LIST MISSING
List which rooms have a sigil layout, but are missing sigils according to that layout.

CITY SIGILS LIST UNASSIGNED
List which rooms have no sigil layout.

CITY SIGILS REPLACE
Instantly replace all missing sigils if your quartermaster has the stock.

Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Haernos, in the year 432 MA.


Having dabbled with Enchanting, this makes me really happy, let alone the lot of you who do all of the actual stocking/replacing! Woo!

Areka

Is there a way it could be updated to allow for certain numbers of sigils? Some it's best to double up on - 2 monos, etc, due to mushrooming.

Trager

I think this is one form of automation that I can say I'm really not a fan of. Just takes more away from human error, and the ability to punish an org or person for said error. Now it seems pretty dummy proof.

Kerryn

Trager said:

I think this is one form of automation that I can say I'm really not a fan of. Just takes more away from human error, and the ability to punish an org or person for said error. Now it seems pretty dummy proof.

I think you're wrong. We still have to stay aware as to when they are mushroomed or disappear. (Not sure if they decay) We don't receive a message when monoliths are destroyed anyways, so someone could easily destroy them all and we wouldn't know if we weren't watching. Thus, still open to humor error. However, now... enchanters aren't tied to their enchanting rooms for hours enchanting all of them and wandering the city dropping all of the monoliths and cube sigils. Which gives security and enchanter more room to do fun things then this annoying task.

Trager

CITY SIGILS REPLACE.

There, now every room has been resigiled. That is not room for human error, that's not having to coordinate when under attack. That's an easy hide button to literally nix any and all attempts at a invade/raid.

Trager

Not to mention, Enchanting has already made leaps and bounds in terms of user-friendliness. How much more do they need?

Kerryn

They can easily just mushroom the sigils again. If they choose too and continue raiding. Raiding shouldn't be easy. Using that command doesn't remove the invaders from the room. Not to mention if the quartermaster has the -stock- I don't see a city willingly spamming this, burning commodities while invaders sit in the room and mushroom them repeatedly.

Trager

I'm not sure how to even argue this with you anymore, @Kerryn. Let me give it a shot:

- Raiding has never been easy. Enorian has always been susceptible because of a terrrrrrrible layout and lax guard movements/assignments. I have seen spots in Enorian devoid of proper protections more times then I can count, and unfortunately for Enorian, Spinesreach got into the habit of punishing that err. (As they rightly should.)

- The price of one monolith is 1 gold and 1 silver. This is literally nothing in terms of cost, especially taking into account the NPC villages that nearly always have these commodities for sale. If I have 500 of each sigil in my quartermaster, and you are trying to raid? Well, lets pit my city wealth versus your personal wealth and see who lasts longer.

- This no longer is even something you can reward citizens/councilors for. It took me less then five minutes to map out Duiran's entire area, and now I have a neat little list of what has protection and what doesn't. CITY SIGILS REPLACE will tell you if nothing needs to be replaced now, completely taking out the human(player) aspect of protecting your city.

- All in all I think this further debilitates the conflict/strife of Aetolia. Can't be assed to EYE sigil or TOUCH BELL upon return to haven? It is okay, we'll nix that. Can't go through and enlist citizens to check monolith and cube statuses? It's fine, we got you too. I cringe, oh I cringe.

Trager

I want to add, that I am in no way trying to bash the administration on their work. Anyone that has heard me rant and rave knows I am madly in love with the majority of them. (Except maybe @Oleis, he scares me a little.)

Just a steady flow of changes that I think take away from a majority of conflict have been taking place that I'm still on the fence about.

Oleis

I can definitely see where you're coming from @Trager. I just think we have a bit of an ideological difference. I've always thought that cities should be a (relatively) safe place. On a spectrum of griefy to fun, even the most responsible raiding is significantly more exciting for the raiders than the defenders. I say that as someone who has raided and defended quite a lot.

However, you're not wrong about this change's detracting from conflict. I just think the solution is for us to keep pushing in our development of better non-raiding conflict rather than withholding helpful city changes to indirectly enable raiding, if that makes sense.

Moirean

It's not just conflict that's been removed - it's taking away a tangible thing that citizens can do to help out. I, personally, felt special when I learned enchanting and was able to become a go-to enchanter for the city for sigils, and I know multiple citizens really liked being able to help out by sweeping the city for monoliths. Like, I don't even really care if we have monos down or not, but it made people feel special and involved to be able to run around and assist like that.

I was joking earlier that I am becoming Moibot, CL2000, programmed with #HROAGH protocol. But. It's kinda true. So much seems to be automated these days and it kinda feels like that takes away windows for ability and skill and enthusiasm to shine.

I don't think the solution is reverting this change - end of the day, it's a QoL upgrade and if admin don't want us raiding, then this change is a helpful way to reach that goal - and yes, it does help stamp out raiding, as killing monoliths when guards and fighters are around is not an easy task and being able to counter it with a button push at range is definitely helping the defenders.

I think, as Oleis said, alternative conflict mechanics is a good idea, but also please consider alternative INVOLVEMENT mechanics. Give us cities some engaging, background busywork we can toss at people - go sway villages to our influence or run caravans to earn comms or recruit scholars or whatever. Lusternia, for all its flaws, does this really well (maybe too well, it can kinda get overwhelming), and Aetolia feels a bit lacking in ways that people can just go out and grind a bit to feel like they are tangibly helping their city/guild/order. Sad as it is, mono sweeps was actually one of the big things you could do here in Aet in that vein.

Oleis

That's really helpful feedback. Thank you. I think we agree that taking away the mandatory diligence is a net positive for cities, but we could stand to do a lot more for non-combat involvement. We've had a few non-starter ideas in that vein, and I know we're working on a few non-city-related ideas like that. Something to work on.

To address the raiding point one more time, I do think that I'll ensure the sigils can't be reapplied if the city worker is graced. I know it doesn't provide any great deal of counterplay, but it at least does prevent someone reapplying sigils during a raid without risk.

Trager

Thank you much, @Oleis, for your thoughts behind these changes. Like I said, I love the activity of it all, of the developers. It's pretty damn reassuring to see your own fears/feedback taken into account on a serious level.

Ishin

People don't get graced when they die anymore, so I'm not entirely sure how that will work out??

Oleis

Ishin said:

People don't get graced when they die anymore, so I'm not entirely sure how that will work out??

.... Sometimes I shame myself a little.

Ishin

Maybe we could do a thing where you can only replace the sigils like once an hour or something? Or every half hour?

It's okay, @Oleis. It was a hard adjustment for me too, tbh.

Oleis

Ishin said:

Maybe we could do a thing where you can only replace the sigils like once an hour or something? Or every half hour?

It's okay, @Oleis. It was a hard adjustment for me too, tbh.

Yes. That seems pretty reasonable, though I'm likely to make the cooldown a good bit higher.

Trager

Oleis said:

Ishin said:

Maybe we could do a thing where you can only replace the sigils like once an hour or something? Or every half hour?

It's okay, @Oleis. It was a hard adjustment for me too, tbh.

Yes. That seems pretty reasonable, though I'm likely to make the cooldown a good bit higher.

So much like, so much agree. Need more vote weight.

Aishia

Shoot to be honest it might create MORE huge gaps in security sometimes, too. I mean if cities have to wait until all the sigils decay to replace them all easily, or the dates on certain sigils are different and only a bit get replaced at time, then holes will open all but naturally unless patched manually. >_>

Jensen

You still have to find all the rooms, which for some cities is a pain. On top of that, nobody raids anymore sigils or no sigils. If you think our small push on Enorian was a raid you need to remember how raids cleared cities of guards before they got updated. I don't think we'll be seeing much in the way of raiding anymore, and instead the best you can hope for is niche assassination attempts.

On a personal note, I'm fine with sigils. It's a huuuuuge pain in the ass to deal with as MoS and there's very little way of figuring out how well you did.


Anywho point being, if you're going to take the raiding approach to why this is a bad idea, you're too late. Raiding is already dead.

Ishin

If guards weren't so brokenly OP, we'd raid more. Trufax.