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Bottleneck at Ethereal Serenwilde
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The '+' sign shows where the archway is located. So many times Ethereal Serenwilde gets raided, I am sure we can agree on that fact, which is fine. However, because of its layout, it adds to the raiders more than it does the defenders. 9 times out of 10, the raiders either stay next to the archway or they move one room north. Because Ethereal Serenwilde has two rooms that do not fan out from the archway, the layout is in favor of the attackers. Let me give a comparison. Here is Ethereal Glomdoring:
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The '+' sign indicates where the archway is. In Ethereal Glomdoring it does not have two rooms that are secluded right next to the archway. Immediately when one goes south, there are multiple avenues of attack and defense.
Let's look back at Ethereal Serenwilde:
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My proposed solution is this:
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[ ] [ ] [S] [2] [S] [ ]
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The '+' sign indicates where the archway is located in Ethereal Serenwilde. The two 'S' markers indicate a solution. If room '2' next to the archway opens up into the two 'S' rooms, then it will fan out so defenders can have multiple avenues of approach to engage the raiders. It would look like this, the solution:
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Silver crystals form in the ethereal haze of the storm glass amulet, twisting and writhing like trapped smoke, until distinct words that only you can read solidify in the cup of the chalice, "Your strength is potent and you are wise, Torgaddon, but remember to use your might to shield the weaker ones of the Serenwilde. They will need people like you to keep them safe. I watch with pride, My child."
Comments
There are some severe layout problems with each side, but neither would be mitigated by your suggested change. On the EthGlom side, you have the avatars basically creating kill rooms near the entrance that are easily triggered by any sort of forced movement (e.g. embedded rad), which makes the plane far simpler to defend and far harder to assault. On the EthSeren side, there is the oft-used ability to pathtwist behind your avatars forcing any escape to go through an avatar killroom with little to no recompense other than to bix or teleport out.
Fixing these issues is far simpler and likely far more effective in the end than changing the entire layout of a plane. However, that's probably something envoys can weigh in more on.
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You're not supposed to be able to force-movement onto Avatars, so that defense option isn't really available. Raiders are more likely to come further into Ethereal Glomdoring (often just south of the Ravenwood) than they are to move into Ethereal Serenwilde... because Ethereal Serenwilde's Avatars have that chokepoint, as you indicated. You have to move past them in order to get further in, trying to do that with a group is asking for trouble. It's better to stay near the entrance.
Ethereal Glomdoring's defense isn't the Avatars, but the fact that the Daughters like to clump near the Avatars... so a good springtrap chain into them can be the end of a raid, if they're all alive. On the other hand, if they've been pruned recently, it has no real effect whatsoever.
Ethglom Daughters clump up near the entrance naturally more often than Ethwilde Ladies because of the way mob random pathing works (ie. not really random) - over the same amount of time (the longer the period you compare, the more pronounced the difference) Daughters will clump at the entrance far more often than Ladies will. Daughters and Ladies are both icky as hell to fight when you're solo against more than a handful of them, so the easier they clump, the harder a time raiders will have. In that regard, Ethglom has an advantage.
However, that said, Daughters spawn at the very south of the area. It takes them a long time to naturally walk over to the entrance. It's still better than Ladies, but it'll still take weeks for any significant amount of clumping to even start to happen. One or two Daughters are hardly a threat - they're just free gifts for raiders. They are usually killed long before they have had enough time to start clumping in any significant numbers at the Ethglom entrance anyway. Most of the time, they just hang around near the Avatars for a few days, maybe make a few rooms' worth of progress northish over a few days before someone kills them.
On the flip side, it's less risky to kill Daughter than to kill Ladies - if that's the objective of the raid, and assuming they've had abovementioned weeks to walk over to the entrance, of course. The nearer the Daughters are to the entrance, the less deep you have to go to start hitting them, and the nearer you are to the escape room when things go south (or north, as case may be - hurr). And on the other hand, when the objective is to raid for PK rather than to kill Daughters, unless you're raiding for the first time in so long that the Daughters are all clumped at the north, they are usually not even a factor. Daughters creating "kill rooms" at the entrance is... rare. The chances for defenders to make use of it in the way described hardly comes around.
Ethwilde avatars being at junctions in Serenwilde means that they zone off the north part of the area. You literally can't get to the north part of Ethwilde unless you walk past an avatar. Granted, it's easy to do so using trees, but for PK purposes, the area of operations, the battlefield, is definitely more limited. Like Shedrin says, of course, fights rarely go more than a handful of rooms past the archway, anyway, due to the way combat works. The tug-of-war of area control is advantageous to defenders because of a variety of tools, like the inability of raiders to meld and the usage of discretionary powers - this applies equally to both sides. In that sense, Serenwilde's avatar-positions are just as much of a moot point as Glomdoring's avatar-positions, beyond the occasional giggles when someone makes a mistake and walks into an avatar by mistake. Afterall, pathtwist is not difficult to counter... at least, for now. With report 1591, that's going to go away, so Serenwilde avatar-positions are going to start becoming more of an issue in the future.
I think the extra room that Ethwilde has does make a difference for raiding difficulty. In particular, it has an effect on the amount of safe, fortifying rooms a raiding party has. Ethwilde is easier to raid than Ethglom because raiders can sit in that neutral room that is always breakable (assuming they can get past the archway room - if they can't that's a failed raid already, anyway). Raiders in ethglom don't have that choice - the room directly south of the archway is unbreakable. They are forced to sit at the archway - easier escapes, sure, but also means that defenders can rush straight into their room with the orgbix. Serenwilde defenders don't have that choice - when they use their orgbix, they move into a room with potential spring traps and walls, and where the raiders can rad and yank and beckon. Glom defenders don't have to worry about that. They just jump straight into the enemy room via the orgbix.
That's actually a pretty significant advantage, though it's only really seen when the defending side has a melder. Without a defending melder forcing ethglom raiders to stand at the archway, that extra room makes no difference.
EthGlom Avatars create kill rooms (well, A Kill Room) near the entrance to the avatar area, that isn't protected by smob protection, and must be traveled through to get to either the avatars themselves or the much more likely target of the crow aspects. Bonus points for brume to prevent flying or climbing over the killbox, and distort to stop burrow.
You cant force people onto the avatars as far as I was aware.
Also you can bypass the avatars on etherseren in the trees or in the air. Sure someone can geyser you into them if your unlucky but well that'd require them really focusing on doing that at the cost of everything else.
I'm not really sure its that big a deal either way.
Like Seren can create an unbreakable meld between two avatars and their nexus which covers both exits of their nexus. Glomdoring can create an unbreakable meld that covers one of its nexus exits. (Everyone seems to forget that glom actually does have two nexus exists though, think everyones used to a 2d map)
The seren archway is closer to the nexus so its easier to retreat to guards as well I guess but their portal to the aspects is easier to reach for raiders but well either way its not hard getting into either aspect nest.
Overall its more just a case of there isnt really anywhere else to fight or have fun hopefully the conflict report will solve that and give us more places to play with or something like that.
EDIT: So yeah, this is kind of a problem, but it's not a bad one or a first order one.
EDIT: as far as org territories go, I actually like Celestia the best for fighting =x
I don't think defenders rush from Glom's orgbix ever, at least not that I've seen. There's a few reasons for this, largely being that raiders usually have the numbers advantage on purpose and rushing plays into their hand. So sure, that disparity may exist, but in actual application, I don't think it comes into play. I think this disparity would have an actual impact if the raiders could meld. Since they can't, it's meh.
I don't think there's an actual problem here. I can see why you might think multi exit rooms are easier to for defenders to deal with, but in reality there's not a significant difference. I think there's a slight benefit for the attacked in reorganizing if split up, but that's pretty marginal IMHO.
People fight on Ethereal because ripple/flux/distort are fun ruiners. Liveforest is obnoxious but not as bad as constant stuns and forced movement you can't resist. I imagine you'd see more variety in raids if
1) Cosmic/elemental planes didn't require whistles and ships to raid (distort shutting down rift access).
2) Elemental discretionary wasn't totally ridiculous to deal with. Literally impossible even for high tier combatants to reasonably coordinate.
3) Cosmic discretionaries are easier to stay grouped in but the stun frequency is bonkers.
4) Maybe it's just me but the constant spam from dictionaries gives me anxiety. As long as I've played, reading the matrix was second nature, but it still stresses me out if I have to do it for a prolonged period. Discretionary spam is so heavy (to me) that I physically enjoy raiding less after a few minutes of unrelenting spam.
Thats one part of it. Plus elemental defenses are freakin insane. There is 0 chance of keeping a group together when you get thrown about randomly every few seconds.
Ethereal gets raided the most because its the easiest to get to, doesnt require a cubix/ship and its got discretionaries that dont make it impossible to keep a group together.
Also Cont and Vortex you physically cant reach without a cubix or a ship.
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EDIT: Presumably Glom has somewhat less.
Like gloms got the smallest active population in the game from the activity logs so not as many folks bringing in power directly via coning/quests etc, not as many folks drawing either but well its netting about 6-7k power a day and even with 0 villages/domoths/etc it still sits at a positive 1ishk or so.
and here's what Torgaddon wants Etherseren to look like:
and here's current EtherGlom for reference
The major difference from this change would be to make the room north of the archway more of a defensive hardpoint for Serenwilde's melders. Instead of having two rooms that the attackers can easily break, there's just the one directly at the archway. Normally that wouldn't matter any, but that room happens to contain the entrance to the Hart monolith. Which raiders seem to love to group up in, kill the Hart avatars and use as their main base of operations. Whereas Glomdoring's avatar area is down by the Ravenwood, half way through the plane.
E: If I had my way with EtherSeren, I'd do it something like this:
Avatars on the Xs, Monolith entrance at the M.
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Raiders don't group on the aspect entry because its the entry. They do it because the fighting area is too close to the nexus and the monolith is just kind of the sweet spot to fight.
If you fight on the archway your bottled in and can't tumble out easily. Well you can but you tumble into meld/pits/tower etc. Combat pretty much favours having a nice clean escape route to get out of kills and stuff, even if its just one room. Makes a big difference. Also you need somewhere to gust enemy tumblers.
If you fight by the nexus, first its too easy for enemies to tumble out and not die, secondly because the two exits are on either side it means the raiders can't kill box the escape route, the defenders can just leave the other way and meld up there. Gloms map has a little issue to favour raiders in that raiders once they are in and set up have a kill box room that you can't get out of without going through. Both of gloms exits run through the same room.
If you fight on the monolith then its at least three tumbles for an escaping defender to get away. If you fight basically anywhere else other that out in the far wings its just two tumbles and well two tumbles is somewhat easy to get off.
It seems like a lot of work for a minor thing but if your looking to shift the seren stuff around I'd be keen to see the avatars pushed back up into the far north so that they don't lock off half the area. The shift it so that the avatars and the nexus are not so spread to cover the area so well. Make it so theres more open area to fight in.
EDIT: By open area I mean like more places where its at least 5-7 rooms away from a safe area. Serens really well built for defenders to run to a safe spot with minimal tumbles.
I'd like to see one for both of them yea.
If the Avatars got pegged back, the monolith could be relocated from the entrance and Etherseren would be far more open to fight in.
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