Wormholes

Jeremy Saunders

I would like to see wormholes getting used more so I am looking at making some changes to them. Of course, we are in the middle of classleads, so this is a little out of order. Here are a couple things I am thinking.

Shoot them down or add more thoughts.

1. Remove frequency checks.

2. Make cancelling take slightly longer.

3. Have tremors report in a wider range.

4. Attune yourself to certain wormholes so you know when they are being attacked.

Let me know.

Jules

This is definitely relevant to my interests as someone who would almost definitely buy a worm warp artifact if there were a good number of wormholes and Imperianites found it worth their while to implement a crowdmap on Mudlet - which tends to make for a far more beautiful and accurate map in general, and enhances the utility of the worm warp artifact for all players (due to the completeness and accuracy that a crowdmap tends to generate), and also means lots of those artifacts sold to users who would never consider buying it otherwise.  

I'd most recently posted the following in the "Improving Imperian" thread:

"I just thought of this because of a topic in the other game about wormholes.  Here, I've learned that any normal wormhole would end up destroyed.  What about having a few key wormholes that were indestructable (obviously not in/right next to cities, or really, anywhere too strategically advantageous)?  Would it still end up too griefy?  My thought is that it would allow for a travel network with the wormwarp artifact, but maybe that's just not viable here". 

Jeremy Saunders

Hrm. So maybe a way to reinforce certain wormholes?

Jules

Something like that.  Would probably have to be careful with reinforcement if it was for wormholes players get to put in.  I sort of had in mind admin choosing a few unobjectionable spots for what would essentially be a a basic travel network supplemented with player made wormholes as those were available (and as they were updated on the crowdmap).  

One problem in general is probably that wormholes in Imperian are specific to Magick (right?), and even if admin creates a basic travel network of wormholes for everyone, it's probably Magick that will tend to be able to make the most out of that network (by supplementing it with their own wormholes).  Or maybe that's not a problem, not sure.  

I'm definitely out of my depth on this, but the gist of it is that if there is any way to have a network of wormholes that can be crowdmapped in Mudlet, the worm warp artifact becomes a very integral part of any artie whore's travel stash.  

Khizan

I honestly think this ship has sailed. 

Wormholes were awesome back in the day in Achaea because they were easier and faster than walking since almost nobody had a mapper and an autowalker.

This is not the case anymore. "path find demon's pass;path go" is much easier than taking a wormhole path, and when eq times are factored in it's not even really THAT much faster. That's especially true when you consider that the Aspect gaze room is so easy to get and so widely available to everybody. I just don't see wormholes being used extensively when they're going to be more work than pathfinding and save maybe 5 seconds travel time.  The only wormholes that would actually be useful would be the wormholes that are used to skip things like the Crevonix/Vorrak doors or other questgates.

This is especially true because Imperian has the problem of the AM circle having no investment in a wormhole network. Wormholes were so awesome in Achaea largely because every side had access to the same shared wormhole network and so every side had an investment in keeping the network up and running. Dawnstrider, Shadowsnake, Naga, or Serpentlord, every side had an investment in keeping the network running and in adding new nodes to it.

As it is now, however, not only does the AM circle have no investment whatsoever in allowing the existence of a wormhole network, the Magick and Demonic circles don't even use the same wormholes; assassin and renegade wormholes are mutually exclusive. A Renegade can't jump through a demonic wormhole and vice versa for the Saboteurs. This means that the two sides that use wormholes are going to actively be in competition with each other for important sites, and AM would just go cancel nodes to provoke fights. 

You are coming at this a decade too late; the time to make these changes was 10 years ago, before the coming of the autowalker and trivially achievable aspect gaze.

With that said, if you want to change wormholes, these are the things that I think would be necessary to make them worthwhile. I don't think these change would lead to an Achaea-esque wormhole network, mind you; this is just what I would consider the functional minimum.

• Give AM a wormhole profession. This is a must. If you give Magick and Demonic a cool toy that AM can't use, AM is going to break it. 
  
  This is problematic because the only profession that's set up for it any 'realistic' way would be monks. Predators already have crazy awesome travel skills, Devotioners have pilgrimage, Outriders have track, and Wardancers and Wardens would do what? Use their totally not-magick weapon to rip open a hole in space-time?
  
  Monks are the only class that fits for wormholes. Telepathy is a feasible way of opening them and they have no pre-existing travel skills. The problem with this is that nobody actually plays monks. Septus and I are the only two who use the profession with any regularity and both of us would rather rip a wormhole network down than build one up; fighting magick is always better than cooperating with them.
  
  
• Make it so that wormholes are no longer mutually exclusive and any side can use any wormhole. For security purposes, maybe make it so that only a Renegade can warp into a wormhole that has a terminus in a magick city, etc, etc. This would ensure that world-to-world(as opposed to city-to-world) wormholes would be advantageous to all involved parties. 
  
  This would possibly encourage city-based hubs, though, since routing a network through a city would be a simple way to deny access to people outside of the circle. This may be self-solving, though; routing a network through your city is a great way to encourage people to destroy it.
  
  
• If you do not make it somehow impossible for a Magicker to warp into Antioch, Septus and I are going to destroy bashing wormholes and re-splice them so that both ends of the wormhole come out directly into Antioch guards. 
  
  I have not discussed this with Septus yet, but I am 100% sure that he would be down with this plan, because they would cry forever and the tears would be glorious. In fact, this plan would be so hilarious that I am also 100% sure that he is going to yell at me for mentioning it here before we have a chance to do it.
  
  Septus and I would totally help create a functional bashing wormhole network and we would never ever do anything to sabotage it, I swear.
  
  

Eoghan

Khizan said:

• Make it so that wormholes are no longer mutually exclusive and any side can use any wormhole. For security purposes, maybe make it so that only a Renegade can warp into a wormhole that has a terminus in a magick city, etc, etc. This would ensure that world-to-world(as opposed to city-to-world) wormholes would be advantageous to all involved parties. 
  
  This would possibly encourage city-based hubs, though, since routing a network through a city would be a simple way to deny access to people outside of the circle. This may be self-solving, though; routing a network through your city is a great way to encourage people to destroy it.
  

This is what Jeremy means when he says he is considering removing the affinity/frequency from wormholes.

Jules

In modern Achaea, the wormholes are "weighted" in the crowdmap so that you use them when it makes sense to (and it mostly seems to work pretty well).  It's also integrated with wings if you have them (and could probably be integrated with other abilities like the aspect thing).  So a lot of times you'll use wings, walk a few steps, hit a wormhole, and walk a few steps, for example.  It's kind of amazing.  But yeah, people like Khizan are going to know all the pitfalls that either can or can't be properly addressed.  

Jeremy Saunders

One of the big problems is the fact that AM does not use them. In addition to the problem that they are pretty magick. I'm not sure how we could address that very well.

Iniar

One problem you'll run into, Jules, is the quite real possibility of a sure lack of people who will support a crowdmap.

Kabaal

Giving AM a wormhole class seems to be the first step if you want to keep the static wormholes in as they are. No frequency is also a good idea. The RP can be made to fit the very necessary mechanical changes.

Random spitballing ahead

Wormholes just feel clunky. They really need a facelift to make them faster and more dynamic. Something like a directional movement ability that left behind a wormhole for a bit that you could walk through, or the ability to move from area to area with some randomness (like Moradeim Warp to another area) that did the same. Left behind wormholes could show up in the room, be cancelled instantly, and the limited range means the functionality can be improved in other places. Splicing could be turned into some sort of portal/focus moradeim/kind of mechanic, but I don't even know if it would be necessary.

It could all be explained as THINGS HAPPEN and the woobwoob of spacetime is more unstable, meaning monks can start screwing with reality thanks to their mindthoughts. The instability breaks down the static networks and prevents lengthier wormholes, but Assassigades adapt and voila.

And Tremors would be cool as a spidey web type thing that alerted you with a jingle when someone walked in front of a nearby wormhole >.>

TL;DR GOTTA GO FAST

Jules

Iniar said:

One problem you'll run into, Jules, is the quite real possibility of a sure lack of people who will support a crowdmap.

Yeah, very possibly.  They have to feel it's worth their while.  Honestly, I'd pay someone to get something rolling, and see if it took off or not.  

Ahkan

Contrary to the negative nancy, the wormhole ship has not sailed. Anything that can assist you in navigating the game quickly is very important in a myriad of scenarios. Things will get more interesting when someone (AM) spams sanctuary on an area bottleneck and you can just worm warp your way in behind them. Many people (including myself) would willingly pay for the convenience to avoid walking 40+ rooms just because some locations are not near anything. At the end of the day, with the surplus of iron elite credits, tokens, anything you throw into the widl to provide some substantial benefit is going to get gobbled up.

Keeping frequency checks will be important when/if all sides have wormholes. It gives you a lot of latitude for interesting for systems like relics, shrines, and city defense. when you can search for 1 type of frequency with worm sources and detect things with worm tremors. It will make those skills more valuable (and rpy). You can work with non-city areas all being 'neutral' and anything inside cities being frequency tuned. Honestly, I'd throw a shard research tree to address some wormhole and defense mechanics and allow you to start applying your affinity/frequency to your towns. There's a lot of room here from new skills (profession and engineering based) to some shard, relic, sect stuff.

Monk makes the most sense, but you have to be aware that 2 of AM's classes (and a large portion of their player base) have access to super wormholes in the form of deliverance/convocation/pilgrimage. It's just food for thought. Just to throw this into the mix, monk is also the absolute WORST class to put a wormhole on because of telepathy. Metagame a wormhole in Stavenn. Worm warp in. Mind radiance people. Worm warp out. That's a bad recipe for terrible behavior.

Just to play devil's advocate, avoiding a system because 1/3 of the conflict doesn't have it is a bad design. By that logic, malignists deserve telepathy because they can't force people to tumble, radiance, mind crush, mind blackout, mind terrify at range. Food for thought.

Anywho, wormholes are a tricky subject because a lot of people are Dr. Who fans and incapable of separating what you think you know about physics (not a lot) and what actually happens in game (See: When the Saboteurs were Time Lords). If you wanted, you can deus ex machina in some engineering in wormholes and call it a day.

Iniar

Wormholes into Townes from Cities would hugely open them up, that is an interesting idea.

Khizan

Ahkan said:

 monk is also the absolute WORST class to put a wormhole on because of telepathy. Metagame a wormhole in Stavenn. Worm warp in. Mind radiance people. Worm warp out. That's a bad recipe for terrible behavior.

This kind of thing is why wormholes inside cities need to have a circle check of some kind. With the steps taken to make it harder to raid cities, opening up a wormhole system that fills city defenses full of holes would be a massive step backwards and not just because of radiance. There's also things like "every single class with a ranged attack and a wormstick", "prism devour", etc, etc.

Wormholes outside of cities do not need a frequency check, though. The wormhole system would not be improved by having three smaller/crappier networks instead of one larger one.

Kabaal

Just as a note, I get a ton of use out of current wormholes. I didn't really say that, because my thought is always MAKE IT BETTER, but wormholes are definitely useful even in their current incarnation. The right wormholes are incredibly good at cutting down travel time (if you have your own mapper to put them in), and they still compete even with superdash when it comes to moving places. The worst wormholes are the city to towne ones, since I can dash to most in ~2s and the extra time walking to the wormhole then the EQ is worse.

Dicene

Those city-to-towne wormholes were more useful back when you hit trenches 1.2 million times making that journey. Now that most people have removed trenches, that's no longer the case.

Menoch

There were fun times had last year with wormholes. Mostly in small scale tactical use though, current mechanics make anyone who played 5 years ago know to worm source around when they see a dstab in combat spam during raid/raid defense.

The one thing I see here as a problem is you are picking the two (if not the three, with AM's lust for telepathy holes) most underutilized professions in the game. This won't make people play sabs/renegades(/monks). This will make people trans Spatium and splice off hours then switch back to normal loadout.

What about a hard capped limit of non spatium professions being able to assist in cancellation and splicing of wormholes initiated by a spatium user. This way you aren't in a numbers race, or at least not severely, and let the formula(e?) maintain a minor RNG dependency so there are no predefined times.

So let's say Kryss is Saboteur, Iluv is Saboteur, Menoch is Summoner. Iluv and Kryss can splice a wormhole, but with one person, Menoch, (with the appropriate skill in... survival? perception?) who doesn't have the ability helping, the timer shortens by 1-3 minutes, or some such thing. I don't know off the top of my head what other changes would need to be made to make wormholes more usuable/feasible/cared about, but I figure if we're spitballing I might as well toss out an idea I had on the subject a while back.

Ahkan

Or....another idea. I'm sort of writing this as I go because this just came to me talking on Bellatores.

One thing that never made sense to me were obelisks.  They don't fit the game at all. As such, power call seems pretty dumb too. I also hate anything channeling (and so should you). Also spoon feeding AM wormholes is silly. Since we're not going to use ships (thank god) why don't we sort of bridge the gap and use wormholes/rifts and build around the concept?

Wormholes will:
Allow for movement between A and B and still have 'frequency' associated with them.

Allow for movement between the mainland and the islands (where the obelisks are)

Serve as a support network for PVE, PVP, shrine system, and be a sink for shards and PVP objective themselves. (AKA: battling over the caanae hub)

I'll even explain away the theory for you. When the dogs died they just oozed diachaim like the sissy losers that they were. They bleed all over the place. You can argue that this god-blood (super powerful energy source) is able to effect space time. Go from there. Magick and Demonic are using business as usual, AM is allowed to use it because it's the essence of the fallen gods (which they used anyways) so there's no disconnect in ideology. You can also explore the nature of shards, obelisks, gods, entities to your heart's content.

Next, we'll please the crowd and the business aspect(ca-ching). Make the wormhole skill (RIFTWALKING) into a new MINI skill (clocking in at 116c). Now you have to buy in to the skill to use it. Example of what this skill would look like

Ok, I like rifts better than wormholes. It's just a simple noun change. Pls support. (I did this in my thesis and everyone thought it was cool)

RiftWalking offers the following abilities:(oh my god, I love this name. Shout out to RIFTS, bro)

Detection            Detection of wormholes, rifts.

Glance   See what's on the other side of a rift/wormhole.

Riftwalk   The ability to walk through Rifts on the mainland
LesserRifts   Ability to create lesser rifts that extend only on the mainland

Greater Detection  Detect wormholes between mainland/islands
Continents? (Idk) Ability to walk between the mainland and the islands

Greaterrifts   The ability to create greater rifts between the mainland and similar islands.
Confluence   The ability to place more than one rift in a room (unlocked by city research)
something
something

Yes, I said city research. To keep shards viable, you could build a new research tree (or two) relating to rifts (wormholes) that will unlock utility, offense, defense:

-Defense examples:

Increases forming the time of opening a non-frequency rift in an opposing affinity by 25%
Implosion: Using 5 red shards and after a brief channel, you will instantly close all rifts in a city/towne area of any rift that does not sync with affinity

-Offense examples:

Immunity to surges (oh god plz, old enchantment)
Increase the number of rifts able to be bound to a confluence at your generator (leads to panda train to islands) allows for a hub inside cities without 90 rooms

Utility:

Minor buffs like :increase surges, decreased surges
Allow for shrines to link to one another through rifts

Because I'm a jerk (and jerks make great antagonists), I would also allow Urzog and his minions to form horde wormholes and allow them to periodically form horde rifts to cities and have mini-raid, boss-fight events that would destabilize existing wormholes/rifts networks.

Well, balls.  Wysrias reminded me that 'rift walking' happens in the riftwars saga so it happens in MKO. Boohiss. I totally forgot that was a thing

Kabaal

@Menoch Once you have two splicers (which includes people with a vorpal knife now), it's not really a problem. The splicing times are fairly short now (4-5m, maybe?), and while they could definitely be shorter, it won't change the value of the wormhole networks or the classes that have them. I'd just like a failsafe option for when there are no other splicers around.r

E: I'd probably be okay with sacrificing static wormholes for Ahkan's idea to make it a generally available skill with more interesting mechanics. And I'd sacrifice statics entirely for a wormhole-step-into-next-room ability.

Menoch

Hell I was trying to apply what I said to OP. I don't have much to say except that they can be useful in current form, and that making a skill (as Ahkan's post addresses), that is accessible to the least played classes in game isn't super appealing for those exact reasons.

New skillset and tying in with existing storyline loopholes is pretty much always a solid plan though.

Jeremy Saunders

Interesting idea. I need to spend a couple days shooting holes in it.

Ahkan

God this is just like grad school

Kabaal

Just reiterating that I really would give up every stable wormhole 4EVA for worm-hop-to-next-room, and less derpy interactions when multiple Spatium users try to Worm Attach to a room would be peachy keen, as well.