Spells: Glyph Endurance

[Repinuj]

I suggest changing Glyphs to work a bit more like Wards. In that, so they can regenerate after being brought down to 0 HP, as long as there's remaining duration.

Something like getting it to 0 HP stops its effect, but it'll regenerate after an hour or two. Maybe at 20 percent health an hour, or 50 percent per two, until full. Potentially also decrease the remaining duration by 150 minutes as well, or maybe double that, or double if using Greater Glyph Erasure. But don't zero-out all the duration.

Recasting an inactive glyph would obviously heal it, and add to the remaining duration, as normal.

Currently, anyone with Greater Glyph Erasure can grief factions by nullifying any number of glyph casts, with potentially days or weeks of duration, for 1 AP per glyph. Similarly, anyone with enough bash, or Destructive Blow, can do so for a handful of AP.

After the change, they could still take down glyphs to cause false alarms, but couldn't waste defenders' effort of maybe dozens of AP and hundreds of MP. It would also allow enough effort in building up glyphs to reinforce Emergency Bunkers if a stronghold is taken down.

[Klapaucius]

Seems problematic as-written. If someone casts a long-ass protection glyph outside your stronghold, you're going to have to dispel it every ~4 hours up until the timer expires, which given certain class' ability to spam glyphs could be a long time. And they can just come back anytime and pump the duration, so this state of affairs is to continue indefinitely.

Is it really griefing to dispel publically accessible glyphs? Are we specifically talking about protection glyphs inside faction strongholds, since you don't have to actually break the ward to dispel the glyph?

[Mousus6]

Feels to me like the awkwardness with glyphs is the gap between the 1-2 login per day player and the people who keep checking back (where whilst I'm in the latter bucket I feel the former should 100% be supported)

If someone can recast a glyph each time it times out the dispeller removes 1 glyph cast which is presumably the intended cost on each side (ignoring the bit where you need to sleep checking in every few hours to recast isn't too annoying). The awkwardness is that the once per day player has stacked up 24 hours worth of the glyph and that is still the same cost to destroy whilst being a much heavier investment on their part. Could be nice to have a mechanic that puts the two a little closer together which could be this endurance idea or could be a passive glyph refreshing toggle but the latter would probably be much buggier to implement given the auto refreshing statuses problem.

Klapaucius has a good point about offensive glyphing though so probably you would either want to allow people in the tile to actively deface/dispel an inactive ward to knock duration off it (specifically in the tile so a protection glyph inside a stronghold could only be defaced by someone breaking the ward and standing in reach of a pet wall) or only regenerate in the presence of the caster (or someone else with the ability to cast it if you want it a bit more broad).

[Repinuj]

There are faction upgrades that specifically prevent or penalize non-faction glyphs on the SH tile. If it becomes an issue, the renown cost of those could be lowered until a balance is found. I believe those work on outside glyphs, too.

If those aren't enough to prevent that type of griefing, a mechanic could be introduced to make it even harder. Maybe extra duration removed per non-faction glyph destroyed or dispelled on your SH tile. Again, should be fairly easy to adjust the amount of duration removed per glyph destruction/dispel to find a balance. If it becomes necessary.

The idea to allow dispelling of an inactive glyph is good. Appropriate, even. As long as it's not one dispel gets rid of all the duration built up over any number of glyph casts.

I agree you shouldn't be able to dispel an inactive glyph through an active ward. But, then again, I think you shouldn't be able to dispel or destroy an active protection glyph though an active ward, either. And you can do that currently. That's another issue, though. That might even be a bug, now that I think about it.

Outside glyphs are particularly interesting, given the new Breath. The likelihood of offensive glyph abuse is even less likely now, I think. Given the stronghold is likely to just sail away. Glyphs won't prevent ship movement, as I understand it.

And honestly, even without all that the faction on the tile would have the advantage. The non-faction caster would have to travel there, and probably hide nearby. That would let the faction hunt them down, arguably adding another aspect of factional combat.

It would take more effort for the griefer. They'd need more casters compared to the target faction's dispellers. And at that point, they can more effectively grief the target faction by raiding and capping them.

Also, the obvious classes that could spam glyphs would need lots of mana. So, Corruptor and maybe Advocate. This advantage is nothing more than what they already have when setting or removing font traps, for instance. Nothing really intrinsic to glyphs.

[erikune]

I'm not really sure what the point of this suggestion is. You want a second ward to bash thru to get into a stronghold? You want a faction to effectively set up multiple strongholds with lengthy glyphs?

I feel like the main benefit for having an extended glyph is being able to spend your AP and MP on something else, not encouraging people to sit in their stronghold and just keep doing the same thing more. This suggesting seems like it just encourages people to camp in place and spend even more time funneling MP and AP into throwing up glyphs, which sounds like an unfun playstyle and probably counter to the intent of the game.

[Repinuj]

The intent is as stated in the opening post; prevent griefing where someone can just pop by, and undo dozens of casts over however many days with a handful of AP casting Greater Glyph Erasure, or a few more AP with Destructive Blow.

The ability to get through the glyphs is necessary for raiding, but some folks don't touch the ward. They just take out the glyphs, and leave. Or hide nearby if they're maxed, and keep doing it, multiple times a day. The effort to do so is too low for the effort of putting up the glyphs. As Mousou said.

Hence why the suggestion isn't to just keep adding HP with additional glyph casts, as that would impact actual raids.

If you weren't supposed to be able to put up glyphs outside, then why are they allowed outside? They could be coded so they can only be cast inside strongholds.

And what's encouraging people to sit in their strongholds is the higher likelihood of survival until their next play session. That's as intended.

And while I agree glyphs are useful for using up MP, I'll add it's using up MP for something productive. It doesn't feel good to spend a long time building up glyph defenses, only for someone to walk by, pop 'em with a couple AP, not touch the ward, and leave. Just wasting MP unproductively can be done by not using it.

EDIT:

Also, I'd like to point out that it's glyphs being broken so easily that keeps the casters in the SH. If you want to keep it glyphed in the face of a griefer, you have to stick around to constantly recast. With greater glyph endurance, it would allow a caster to build up the duration, then leave for a few days.

And it appears you're supposed to be able to build up the duration. Otherwise, casting it would just reset the time, not add to it.

[Klapaucius]

But... you have to break the ward to destroy glyphs, aside from protection.

I can see the argument for having protection unavailable until you destroy the ward, but I'm really not seeing how this translates to a problem.

If you're glyphing public spaces, including your porch, then my view is that it's a good thing that the balance is toward the attacker/dispeller.

[Repinuj]

Balance will be to the attacker anyway, since they decide when to attack. I even mentioned they could do more duration damage than just one glyph cast's worth. I just don't think they should be able to completely take out 50 glyph casts with one triggered GGE, or a handful of hits with Destructive Blow.

And, again, they're not attackers. Because they just cheaply ruin lots of effort glyphing, then don't bother to attack. Just go on their way with a couple less AP, or hide nearby to do it again a couple hours later.

If glyphs aren't supposed to be usable outside, then why can you cast them outside? If you're supposed to have to re-cast them every couple hours, why does the duration stack, rather than being refreshed? The fact the duration stacks implies you're supposed to be able to build up a duration, and have it last.

Just my view of it. Obviously, some folks do the griefing, so a part of the playerbase is all for the current situation.

[Carmilla]

Man we should make people immortal too since anybody can grief people by attacking them to kill them.

[Repinuj]

While I can appreciate sarcasm, the suggestion isn't to make glyphs indestructible. Just to make the effort of destroying them more commensurate with the effort spent casting the glyph. Without affecting the effort of getting through them for raids.

If you could sneak-attack kill any character for 1 AP, or a handful of AP, regardless of if they had accumulated hundreds of HP, dozens of soak, and high dodge, that would be a problem, too.

If someone casts a glyph a dozen times, you shouldn't be able to get rid of it completely as easily as if they cast it once.