Greater Exorcism

[Raffles]

Banishes ghosts further away. Costs more AP. Child-skill of Exorcism.

Questions, comments, objections?

[Etherdrifter]

Spirits already suffer enough as it is, I'd rather see counters to the existing exorcism options (pumpkins etc) before exorcism got a buff.

[Katie Calhoun]

How does one have a spirit move on in an outsider town? The one at the bar has been here for several months already and looks like it's staying several more. We are not shamans that can do things to spirits but can only toss them out 6 whole whopping squares.

[jaqs]

Spirits already suffer enough as it is, I'd rather see counters to the existing exorcism options (pumpkins etc) before exorcism got a buff.

Don't you think not being able to hit spirits with normal weapons is enough of an advantage?

But I guess if you were a really powerful spirit... really powerful... then you might be able to resist at least pumpkins.

[Dani]

Spirits already suffer enough as it is, I'd rather see counters to the existing exorcism options (pumpkins etc) before exorcism got a buff.

Don't you think not being able to hit spirits with normal weapons is enough of an advantage?

But I guess if you were a really powerful spirit... really powerful... then you might be able to resist at least pumpkins.

It would be cool if that were like an unlockable skill after getting all the others. Or even just getting all the possible spirit skills.

[Iceman]

Spirits already suffer enough as it is, I'd rather see counters to the existing exorcism options (pumpkins etc) before exorcism got a buff.

Spirits are parasites. Until you can have beneficial spirits, I see no reason to claim unfair treatment, and certainly not to make it even more difficult to get rid of XP farmers and professional irritators.

[Neil Tathers]

Every bar experience I have had has been ruined by the persistence of spirits.

[Katie Calhoun]

I really have had no big problems with spirits at the Hanged Misfit until now. They do come and go which is the nature of the game but this one...that shall remain nameless .....is being rather bothersome. I am lucky to have a couple of shamans visiting the last few weeks which makes it a bit easier but most of my ap is now used to get med kits and healing. Not saying that's a bad thing but I would rather be doing something else with my time.

[andrewbuff]

I really have had no big problems with spirits at the Hanged Misfit until now. They do come and go which is the nature of the game but this one...that shall remain nameless .....is being rather bothersome. I am lucky to have a couple of shamans visiting the last few weeks which makes it a bit easier but most of my ap is now used to get med kits and healing. Not saying that's a bad thing but I would rather be doing something else with my time.

halloween IS coming. use it to your advangtage, spread word of a 'haunted bar' attraction. charge something to get it, hand out jack o lanterns. get drunk. sounds like a fun halloween party.

[Katie Calhoun]

hahaha...yeah. That's a great idea.

[Etherdrifter]

Spirits already suffer enough as it is, I'd rather see counters to the existing exorcism options (pumpkins etc) before exorcism got a buff.

Spirits are parasites. Until you can have beneficial spirits, I see no reason to claim unfair treatment, and certainly not to make it even more difficult to get rid of XP farmers and professional irritators.

The same could be said about pkers and exorcists.  Both require a negative interaction with another player to progress, it is not beneficial to their host in any way or form as I am sure you would agree.  I also put to you that a hometown pker is a far larger "parasite" than a spirit could ever be.  They can manage it at lower levels (3 skills compared with 4) and require more ap to recover from (12ap minimum for the victim (or 25 if they are not a parasite) and at least 40ap from their executioner).  Let us compare this to the 2ap (average) required to find a healing herb and the 1ap to use it.  Based on a spirit wailing their hearts out in a crowded room they cause roughly 12.5 damage per player.  Each player requires 2ap to fix up (on top of herb costs).  Assuming 6 ap to get to and from the med hut once per day this gives us 6 + 8 * (num of players to be healed) + (4 (or 1!) for the exorcism) ap "lost" per day.

Assuming worst case scenario 10ap + 8* (num of players) > 52 (Best case scenario for pker loss).

Ergo 6 or more players must be on a tile for spirits to be more damaging to ap than a pker.
Now let us look at experience generated.  A pker gains their victims health + a bonus at the end.  The same is gained by the pker that hunts them down (not usually the 'victim' in the best case scenario).  The 'victim' generally gains nothing and loses out, the 2 pkers gain experience.  In the case of spirits though a 'victim' can gain experience greater than or equal to the health they lost.  Again though it may not be the victim that did the healing.  The spirit gains exp equal to damage delt.  The huge difference is the 'victim' is not forced to pay an ap price to continue.

Overall I would say spirits are, by the definition that they are beneficial to their host community while sustaining themselves, are at worse symbiotic and that pkers are wholly parasitic in their nature (as they damage their host community while sustaining themselves).

I won't even go into exorcists, those numbers just make me shudder.

[Dani]

I think it's the wailing that pisses people off. I know it pisses me off, and I'm RPing for a spirit hut setup. Pking at least can be quiet, like Blackbeard; spirit attacks always disrupt everybody on that square.

I'd also like to see beneficial spirits implemented before there are any changes one way or the other to the current balance.

[Raffles]

The difference is, yours is more complex. This is largely a copy/paste job to code. There's lot's of stuff I'd like to suggest, but I work on a principle of "Easy implimentation = Increased likelyhood".

[Killian]

Ether, that argument doesn't make much sense. PKers, at least, you can get rid of for days. Ghosts, on the other hand, are a persistent nuisance. As for shamans, you're forgetting that spirits tend to inflict physical harm, which costs more collective AP to remedy, while the dynamic between shamans and spirits means that the only downside for spirits would be physical relocation--completely trivial on the spirit's part, and hardly as annoying as looking at streams of "WOOOOOO I'M A SCARY GHOST WOOOOOO YEAH SPOOKY". Yes, that was a long sentence.

Easy coding is good on the developers, and I also hear Simon enjoys a good machine-talk challenge every now and then. Instead of extending exorcism, a wailing dampener of some sort could serve as an alternative, ie, rather than being barraged by a wall of repetitive text, the listener would be met by a summary of the results. Or perhaps there could be a mechanism that prevents or stifles the ability to wail, like that other suggestion.

[jaqs]

, a wailing dampener of some sort could serve as an alternative,

Earmuffs?