Change Deed Guard Behavior Vote

[Sarcaticous 338]

I put in a suggestion to change the behavior to spirit templars at http://wurmonline.uservoice.com/forums/12046-wurmonline/filters/new

It's Alyeska's idea for inactivating them while no mayors or citizens are logged on. It's probably going to be the easiest 'fix' without having to screw with pathing.

If you're really sincere about wanting something done then you need to do something other than post on this forum. Remember you only have so many votes so it might be best to pool everyone's votes for what you think works best. Don't dilute your voting power.

It would be nice to vote to fix tower guards too but if you don't, meh, no big deal.

[Makarus 458]

Yes. This is a beginning post though.

Let's fix guards 100%, this will help as well.

/>http://wurmonline.uservoice.com/forums/12046-wurmonline/suggestions/3287326-tower-guards-cannot-be-called-to-creatures-on-deed

I propose we use this thread to gather ideas for fixing tower guard, and spirit templar behavior. any idea related... please post here.

Tower Guards cannot be called to creatures on deed if not citizen of deed.

Currently Tower Guards can be called on people's pets, getting them killed without a fight, nor defense. This happens on deed. Can happen through dirt walls. Major griefing potential unless fixed.

[puncher 323]

Ok not enough info for a major change.. (2) If change is needed how do we deal with different guard towers that are not on a deed. (3) if attacking a deed with guard tower on it bring enough people to kill them or can guard towers be brought down by catapults.. NEED more info..

[Sarcaticous 338]

Ok not enough info for a major change.. (2) If change is needed how do we deal with different guard towers that are not on a deed. (3) if attacking a deed with guard tower on it bring enough people to kill them or can guard towers be brought down by catapults.. NEED more info..

[Shrimpiie 3,665]

Nah, I'm against the idea of making it so guards only help people who are part of a deed. It really helps when you are out and about and encounter something dangerous and need to dispose of it quickly. There is also no downside to guards helping people that aren't part of the deed, and you get the corpse of whatever animal the Templar killed. So no thank you

[Neskryan 24]

Not really a good idea no offense, having to have a deed to build a guard tower, you could just hire a spirit templar and that should take care of most creatures, keep your animals out of sight if you have to, people on the epic cluster would have to drop a deed to expand their kingdom most likely and the population is scarce enough, there would be about 1-2 guard towers on elevation if guard towers were restricted to deeds :/

[Xandra 353]

Hi,

dunno if the suggestions/ polls actually would work as intended.

Maybe let's clearly define the problems first? I'd say:

1. The ability to use both tower guards/ spirit templars to grief a deed that keeps aggressive (red outline), untamed pets. Keeping such has been made obsolete by the dreaded taming/ charming nerfs (btw., dominating might not have been nerfed ...), but is still a legit possibility. People still might want to use bears to drag their carts, hell horses for riding, and champ crocs to protect the flowers in their garden. For sure not all of these can be kept tame all the time.
   Now, any guards/ templars can be used to kill those pets (target/ "help"), by any malevolent trespasser. Or, in case of templars set to kill, they will do it all alone.
   .
   
2. The ability to just drop a deed in an area with good spawns, with one or two templars, nothing else - a meat mine like this one here, or that one. Come by any other day, and collect meat, hides and animal parts with no more effort of your own. And laugh of the people whose game you have destroyed.
   A most easy way to make some coin, a most easy way to grief the whole population of a large area. The prices for cooked meat and leather already reflect the effectivity of such exploits, but nothing is done about, obviously.
   .
   
3. The fact that abandoned deeds often work like those "meat mines", without intention, and with no benefit at all, for anybody. The templar/s will stay until the day it disbands (tested), and anybody else in the area will have a hard time skilling it's FS. There's a lot of deeds thrown, and abandoned again in a few days, all over the place. And all of these have the default setting of "Yes, a templar to grief them all."
   

There might be more problems I haven't noticed. Maybe the one that, due to the ease of getting a ghost that protects you, many people don't skill their fighting abilities anymore and then, when off-deed, are getting beaten up badly by any stray cave bug ...

I might illustrate #1 of this with an example, where it hurts me myself. We are taking care of the Inner-Sea side of the Kinoss-Bay-Canal, with the KinCan deeds. The deed I'm living on is Port KinCan, the entry deed of the canal.

There's an inn, there's docks, there's especially designed carts and horses that the trespassers might need. And there's my house, and since I'm a Fo priest, I have some Champ Crocs as pets in my gardens.

And since the canal entry should be clearly visible from far, we have some hell horses marking it, for your convenience.

And there's a troll spawn nearby, and a spider spawn, and there must be a croc spawn close, too. No real fun for the people that are using the services of Port KinCan, right? If they'd at least "release" their corpses, I could bury them then ...

But we cannot hire a ghost, or make a tower. Sooner or later it would be used to kill the crocs in my gardens or the hell horses lighting the canal entry, when I'm not nearby, by some jerk. And this way there's no ghost nor a tower, because sooner or later it would be used to grief us. It's just too easy. So, as much as we regret, Port KinCan cannot be the safe place it should be.

An idea:

Calling for "help" or "guards!" might teleport the NPC's to your side, but then they'd only attack what's not behind a fence/ gate. Or, better, they'd only respond if you have taken damage already.

Another idea (I'd love to see this!):

Spirit templars usually would behave like tower guards, i.e. only attack if called. Using the above mentioned limitation. For sure, they'd still enforce KoS. You could still buy "raging Spirit Templars" that would behave as today, but for a price - 5S/ month upkeep and a good hiring sum, for sure.

Tower guards would behave like above.

Additionally:

Any critter spawning on a deed/ walking on a deed should have 1 primary goal: leaving the deed. They should get frightened even in the perimeter, and forget their plans as soon as they enter. We don't need loopholes of killing trolls easily using NPC's (!) in this sandbox!

If you cannot be bothered with acquiring the skill to fight 'em, well, then stay on your safe haven - where's the problem?

For sure, any wall bashing (if necessary at all) then should only occur if there's someone on line _in_ the deed, and should be mentioned in the logs. Colored.

Hope this is worth a discussion. If we want to change anything, we should be able to make sure what we want to have changed, how, and why. Discuss!

Have fun!

[Wraithglow 787]

I don't like the idea of "switching off" spirit templars when nobody is online. Focus on the pathing - it wouldn't really be "screwing" with pathing since the AI was previously set so aggro mobs would avoid walking on deeds. I would prefer it was reverted to that and we had to go back to dragging animals over corners to get them to come on-deed - this way you dont get auto-slaughter deeds and you get to stay alive too.

I want my templar to be able to defend my neighbours if they need to run from something.

[ReaverKane 363]

I'm against the tower guards not attacking when mayor is offline, for various reasons:

This would cause a major issue in PVP. Since the code is the same for PVP and PVE, deactivating in a PVE environment would cause it to be deactivated in PVE.

Trolls will still bash walls when mayor is offline.

Many people use their guards to hunt for them, and thus supply meat and other stuff for their use, or sell.

I for one don't use them, since i have aggressive animals on deed (used to be lions and bears, now i'm left with only hell horses) and that would make them useless.

But this leads me to Makar's post on tower guards (which by the way are the only ones that can be used to grief aggro pets since templars will kill with or without owner orders. Unless set to not attack aggros, which means they will not attack even if you call for help.

On the "meat mines" for leather... Only aggro mob that gives leather (or hides) are crocs, and now hell horses, so its a 2 out of a dozen other possibilities. So it would take some luck, specially since the most common thing is spiders. Plus neutral creatures (like deer and unicorn) give more meat than other creatures (since they're always fat), so any active hunter would have an advantage to the "meat mines".

On that regard, i do believe that the lowering of meat and leather prices is not due to the meat mines (which are an OLD issue) but due to the massive unicorn spawn a few months back. I know i have hundreds of unicorn horns, got a ton of leather, and thousands of cooked meat from that. and i never hunted far away from my deed, only in the area around my deeds, never further than a hundred tiles or so. That and the fact that turning a hide to leather was risky, you'd only get one shot, and if it failed you'd waste all 12kg of hide, now you get 3-4 chances per hide, and if you fail you don't lose hide, which of course makes leather that much more abundant lowering its price.

I remember when i moved to exo, roughly a year ago, i was surprised because i had never seen such abundant wildlife before, when inde was still called freedom. I remember that instead of examining ground and tokes to see if there was a deed with guards, i'd look for the "wall of corpses" outlining guarded deeds, to the point that i almost got killed by a croc when walking a alt to WKM's place because there was a village with such outline, but from players hunting, and i was counting on a inexistant guard to defend me xp. So your meat mine issue is far too old (at least a year old) to account for recent changes in prices.

[Garis 210]

The leather issue arose when the changes to timers and creation went in this spring, and you suddenly could make 9kg of leather for 9kg of hide, instead of 3kg for 9kg. It's just so much easier to make leather now.

3x more leather, corresponding drop in prices.

Meat mines suck. Templars ignoring aggressive mobs when no citizens are logged in sounds like a great idea to me.

Guards from off-deed towers should be constrained by the same rules that govern other non-citizens. If you request help from tower guards but aren't permitted to attack the creature yourself due to village settings, the guards shouldn't help. If you are allowed to attack non-citizens on the deed, the guards should be as well.

I'm also possibly in favor of additionally constraining the guards by the templar settings (if and only if there is at least one templar on the deed), so that if the templar has been specifically instructed to ignore aggro mobs, guards will ignore them too [EDIT: specifically, while on deed tiles. Guards would operate as usual for all perimeter and off-deed tiles]. It should be possible, then, to create a deed where non-citizens could fight aggressive creatures, but guards and templars would not help them.

My suggestions don't speak at all to the suggestions for altering pathing behaviors. I have a large deed, and fight constantly to defend it from creatures that wander on to it. I think this is fun and exciting, and I get many benefits from this constant fight. Creatures avoiding my deed would make the place too safe, in my opinion, and without justification such as the presence of walls.

That's my 2i on this.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Garis

[Pashka 707]

Everyone should remember that when mobs are killed that others spawn. Otherwise there would be no animals unless they were specifically bred. We'd have long since hunted them all out of existence. I understand it is tough when it is the particular type that you wish to kill but that spawn is going to eventually respawn in another spot. It isn't the only one on the server.

Right now I have someone on my deed that is not a part of the deed. I have the guards set to kill aggro because they are here. Normally I have it off for the fs that I gain on my own deed. Now you want to change it so that because they are on when noone else is that they get no protection? That is silly.

[Cartrip 132]

Guards from off-deed towers should be constrained by the same rules that govern other non-citizens. If you request help from tower guards but aren't permitted to attack the creature yourself due to village settings, the guards shouldn't help. If you are allowed to attack non-citizens on the deed, the guards should be as well.

[Ronnie 64]

This wouldnt fix anything. Players that place meat mill deeds would only leave the character online getting it to lvl4 path of love so it doesnt starve.

Wouldnt fix anything. Just piss ppl off more that you cant Force players to not idle at their deed.

Get real guys... Stop trying to make wurm into a Nature park Tycoon online FFS

[KunAlt 844]

Really a big -1.

We have our deed close to TD, the spawn town in Cele, and i know a ton of newcomers specially those settled nort of us relying on the protection our templars provide, time to time the area get pestered with spiders scorpions or hellhounds, and our 3 templars give to starting people with low fs a safe place to retreat. Rigth now me and a couple of the other citizens can kill up to spiders pretty easy, and wen we gank, we can take down even the hell hounds and scorpions without exesesive damage, so we can get ride of the templars, but our queen has made the choose to keep it for the community service.

Salu2.

[BobMcKnob 46]

It's Alyeska's idea for inactivating them while no mayors or citizens are logged on. It's probably going to be the easiest 'fix' without having to screw with pathing.

Never going to happen. Why? PvP. There is no code split, and don't expect to see one.

[Ayes 3,715]

This would be a bad change to mainly benifit the few who keep aggressives as pets and people who actively train their FS to higher levels. I have built a number of guard towers to the benfit of myself and other players in the area who either *need* their help in fighting these aggros or don't want to deal with them on their daily chores in the area. These guard towers take a good deal of time and materials to make and the reward should remain that they function as they currently do (except for getting stuck inside caves/mines). Newbie players in the area use them actively to be able to build their meager shacks with some chance of refuge from this aggro animal assault.

Spirit Templars provide the same benifit automatically on deed tiles, except when people use them purely for KoS (which is little more than a legal griefing tactic on Freedom Isles servers and should be changed, another thread for that). To nerf the usefulness of these 2 types of guards for the benifit of the smaller minority of aggro keepers and high FS training to the detriment of the much larger majority of the playerbase consisting of low-med FS players and newbie players, dosen't take a whole lot of reflection to see if this is a good idea and whose interests this *nerf* would benifit.

I remember when Deliverance was started and the aggros were *adjusted* so that when they chased you they would then not even step upon a deeded tile unless you went and attacked them *numerous* times to *lure* them onto the deed so that the Spirit Templars would then attack these aggros. It was really a pain to get them to finally enter to be attacked and I would not like to see this be reimplimented in this manner. I clearly remember building my deed there with my newbie alt and the problems he had with all the aggros in the area that *refused* to enter the deed on their own, or even be easily lured onto it for the Spirit Templar to kill, so that he could continue work on the perimiter or enter the mine nearby. Bad ideas.

=Ayes=

Edited October 24, 2012 by Ayes

[Mith 318]

I think the best fix for this would be to leave TGs as they are, but fix the transparency of dirt walls. That way no one can call the TGs on your agressive animals ondeed. or see where they are for that matter.

[Shrimpiie 3,665]

Spirit Templars provide the same benifit automatically on deed tiles, except when people use them purely for KoS (which is little more than a legal griefing tactic on Freedom Isles servers and should be changed, another thread for that)...

=Ayes=

I disagree, it really isn't a griefing tactic because there are people who either just don't need to go onto someones deed because he/she has been extremely rude and harrassing to that player, or they are known as a griefer or thief themselves. These people just don't need to even go onto some deeds unless the mayor has given the consent. People pay a lot of money to upkeep deeds, they should have the right to choose who can get onto them

[ago 470]

For every spider a deed guard kills another animal spawns on the server. So even if the deeds drown in corpses the amount of animals on the servers stay the same.

Over time there will be a higher density in areas where no deed guards can kill them. If you're anxious to kill creatures then go search these areas.

[joedobo 1,187]

If deed guards only defend when a player is online then I want the Rolf to go on the record and put it in writing that mobs will never bash deed fences.

Devs need to change it so no mob will path within 5 tiles of a deed. This should included every type of mob, even dragons. All my user voice votes are used on more important things.

[ReaverKane 363]

Everyone should remember that when mobs are killed that others spawn. Otherwise there would be no animals unless they were specifically bred. We'd have long since hunted them all out of existence. I understand it is tough when it is the particular type that you wish to kill but that spawn is going to eventually respawn in another spot. It isn't the only one on the server.

Right now I have someone on my deed that is not a part of the deed. I have the guards set to kill aggro because they are here. Normally I have it off for the fs that I gain on my own deed. Now you want to change it so that because they are on when noone else is that they get no protection? That is silly.

Actually, i believe there's a cool down on this...

I say this out of past experiences, i've had a few big deer and unicorn spawns on my area, and me being a leatherworker, i had to jump to the chance of getting more hides.

So i went with a cart hunting deer like crazy in a area relatively close to the spawn. I kept killing and new deers kept popping up. Until like 10-15 minutes later (maybe more, it was a long time ago, so not sure) there were no new deer in the area. So having made deer extinct in that area, i roamed a bit around, killed a couple more, and then i couldn't find any more, i went back home. I returned the next day, and there were a bunch of unicorns like there had been before i started hunting them the day before.

So my guess is that there's a cooldown on spawners to prevent people from grinding them too much.

Your point is still valid though, i've never seen a shortage of beasts in exo. Only place i really felt a shortage of animals was in Golden Valley, but with such a small server and some players boasting hundreds of bred animals in their enclosure, it was kinda expected.

Again, i see that no one adressed the implications these changes would have in PvP.

And seriously, i see no need for these changes, they look more like the established high FS hunters "whinning" about having competition from other players who simply hired a guard to do the work of the hunters. I'm fine with that, its not like P2Win is a new concept. And untill i log on and don't see a bunch of spiders or other mobs around, i won't ever complain about meat mines.

[Alyeska 2,621]

It's Alyeska's idea for inactivating them while no mayors or citizens are logged on. It's probably going to be the easiest 'fix' without having to screw with pathing.

no.. my idea was to have animals avoid deeds altogether unless lured onto them. The inactive templars is a branchoff idea to that someone else made, with its respective issues; nobody would be protected but the citizens. With agros that avoid deeds but follow if lured, everyone would still get the protection from said templar without animals dying when no one is around.

[Xandra 353]

Hi,

For every spider a deed guard kills another animal spawns on the server. So even if the deeds drown in corpses the amount of animals on the servers stay the same.

Over time there will be a higher density in areas where no deed guards can kill them. If you're anxious to kill creatures then go search these areas.

This is correct. If you want to get your FS up, grab your pickaxe & a lot of cotton, and open up all the old mines now closed by cave ins. You'll be surprised by how many starving venerable critters you'll find, and you'll have a lot of fun.

;-)))

[Torgrim 403]

Maybe it has been said, but... For PvP, what's the use of templars if they don't work when you are offline? Someone has to guard your deed... It would make ppl have to stay logged in 24/7 to be able to defend themselves from attackers.

Edited October 29, 2012 by Torgrim