I am ready for this idea to be protested against but I'd love to hear what the general consensus is of the players, old and new.
My suggestion, simply is that whether you recall, teleport, gate or druid gate.. You leave a small mark upon the ground. Perhaps fading runes, dispersing energies, or a patch of charred earth. Even if it remains for a short duration (perhaps depending on the spell).
A very spontaneous idea, at first thought it doesnt seem as if it will hinder any classes? Am I wrong? What are your thoughts?
All of those escape methods are so easy to execute, it seems like a way of adding a risk to using them by exposing the fact that you didnt simply out run or out manuever them but you did indeed use other means. Takes away or potentially takes away that feeling of "oh damn, I must suck at chasing because they just totally disappeared." or if you dont see or find this "mark" it means they likely just out ran you or they recalled or teleported from a off road or secret location and there is potentially evidence for their sudden disappearance.
So that new players know what the hell happened. It makes clear that they didn't run but are at their temple/safe spot. It's a disadvantage for the classes that use it, but I like it. And it's somewhat easy to do.
I suggest a different color for each spell.
Scattered glowing green leaves for druid gate.
A jumble mess of glowing blue runes for teleport.
A hum of white nose for word of recall.
An yellow afterglow for portal.
Crackling with static charge air for Qrace.
The white afterglow of a white portal for Healer gate.
I believe that this Idea would help in certain situations. As in when chasing characters with these abilities you would walk past the 'remnants of a portal' know your prey has vanished from the area instead of passing through it. Would this hinder those seeking to escape? Only by verifying that they did not 'walk away'. Its a good suggestion really, although I might have added a bit of mystery. Such as, must have keen sight to see the remnants of a druid gate, must have detect magic to see the residual smoke of teleportation, must have been in engaged in battle with the healer to spot where his blood trail vanishes. Overall, I can not see any issues with it.
Would it leave behind a similar mark upon the ground where they landed afterwards? I like the idea overall, and if you're in an area where it's too large to actually cover all exits, you're not necessarily going to see the mark on the ground either way. Elium for instance has so many similarly named rooms that depending on what the aggressor is thinking, they may never even think about things like that and just shoot out in a specific direction based off where they thought the person had left through. Or when you're chasing and they decide to dart down a side path, the player may never think to check for it either considering they figure it's pretty cut and dry that you left through normal means. I've chased people clear across the game in the past, and there are people who are ridiculously fast and outrun Forest Gump, so adding the feature wouldn't really hinder the person running. If anything it would probably hinder the Aggressor if they do see these marks since they'll be left wondering all of the possibilities the person fled to from their Temple, or which forest to run to first, or be looking for that persons corpse if they landed in the middle of Desolation with 30hp.
I see how this could help players that aren't as good at chasing as some of the best PKers.
I also see how this could help the best PKers further distance the gap in chasing/running than lesser skilled PKers.
Some players can close the gap across the world in little over the time recall lag (after combat) takes to pass. Knowing 100% their prey recalled would help those players more than unskilled chasers in my opinion.
I have to agree, I'm not as big a fan of this. I've always used word/teleport as a means to extend (or start) the gap while being chased. Leading a chaser to some branching areas and crossing area lines only to recall and leave a glowing mark would diminish the tactic greatly.
I like the idea, think it's great. But I think it would be more detrimental than beneficial.
Leading a chaser to some branching areas and crossing area lines only to recall and leave a glowing mark would diminish the tactic greatly.
This is a great point. I suggest we take recall out of the table and leave only spells that don't allow the chaser to know the destination. All except recall, I think.
Leading a chaser to some branching areas and crossing area lines only to recall and leave a glowing mark would diminish the tactic greatly.
You can still do that, and it wouldn't diminish the tactic, but you'd need to be mindful of the evidence you're leaving behind, and if anything it would allow the player to be more creative and strategic of where to use said spell.
Ps, most vets that are heavily pk focused are syndicate anyway, and even if they're not, they can often gage what happened and how you disappeared. I still think it'd assist moderate and new players more than vets.
I understand where you're coming from, but being mindful of the evidence left behind which would prevent you from recalling at the entrance to a new area, be it at the junction of one or several is the diminishing of the tactic.
Take exiting Val Miran to the Haon Dor for example. If you recalled at any point there to get a jump on the lag (in Val Miran or just past the gate), you'd leave a glowing trail instead of using that time hoping your opponent wastes time checking the Sunken Ship, Tombs, Bathhouse or Halfling Hamlet or wondering if you just recalled. Instead, this would force you to pick one of those quickly checked directions then recalling, or run the risk of them being closer than you expect (or an ill timed "where") and seeing which direction you're going, which would further negate the area recall confusion.
I like to think I'm pretty quick, but there've been times when I felt every command counted and that extra time made all the difference.
As I said, I like the idea, but not as it's currently suggested.
If you left a rune for every recall sent, eg: recalling a pet, then that makes it less of a detriment. Keep a L5 pet with you and recall it for that purpose. New level of tactics, there. Same goes for if you could lay down false trail using a decoy rune. In fact, that would be wonderful. Your opponent sees the rune, thinks you've recalled and heads to your temple, leaving you free to keep running to Favorite Hidey Hole B.
If you've got time to summon a charmie, buy a merc or charm something just to recall it as a decoy and the chaser doesn't witness any of that then that effort should be rewarded as a decoy, unless the chaser saw you were running away and had a charmie with you.. Stumbles across your rune, he has to analyze the evidence. Does this belong to player A? Is it a decoy? Or did it belong to another player?
Take exiting Val Miran to the Haon Dor for example. If you recalled at any point there to get a jump on the lag (in Val Miran or just past the gate), you'd leave a glowing trail instead of using that time hoping your opponent wastes time checking the Sunken Ship, Tombs, Bathhouse or Halfling Hamlet or wondering if you just recalled. Instead, this would force you to pick one of those quickly checked directions then recalling, or run the risk of them being closer than you expect (or an ill timed "where") and seeing which direction you're going, which would further negate the area recall confusion.
It's partly so that moderates and new players aren't so dumbfounded in these scenarios. Even though now that tactic works, is smart and is pretty solid, it leaves the chaser frustrated and generally without explanation of how they lost their target so easily or having any chance of learning. If they happen to stumble across the rune, then they'll know say "Oooh, OK I wasn't slow at chasing, he just recalled/teleported"
I just wanted to throw this idea out to see what everyone thought, and to see if it could be fleshed out. I had not really considered charmies or anything similar and whether or not it'd matter if they also left a rune.
3 hours ago, mya said:
Scattered glowing green leaves for druid gate.
A jumble mess of glowing blue runes for teleport.
A hum of white nose for word of recall.
An yellow afterglow for portal.
Crackling with static charge air for Qrace.
The white afterglow of a white portal for Healer gate.
I do really like these ideas though. Perhaps each had different durations. Recall could have a 1 or two hour duration if people were so worried about it. Things like gate and portal could have longer lasting marks.
I suggest we take recall out of the table and leave only spells that don't allow the chaser to know the destination. All except recall, I think.
I'm still interested in putting this idea forward once again with Mya's suggestion that we take off word of recall from the table. Or perhaps just lessening the duration of word of recalls mark upon the ground. I propose these marks only last 1-2 hours before they dissipate.
Scattered glowing green leaves for druid gate.
A jumble mess of glowing blue runes for teleport.
An yellow afterglow for portal.
Crackling with static charge air for Qrace.
The white afterglow of a white portal for Healer gate.
All you'd have to do is move a few rooms into the area to hide your mark. Since a mark is limited to a specific room, they'd be actually pretty tough to find. In fact, people might waste time trying to find such a mark.
It isn't like you get pinged when they recall.
I really like this idea and I believe it has the potential to help/hurt both sides, increasing the tactics available overall. Simple to implement as well.
I'd like to see it on all recall/gate/teleport type skills, including things like vanish and qskills.
It would add an element of new tactics to consider and would punish (mildly) those who flee one room and in a panic hit gate, portal etc, rather than collecting their thoughts, gaining some distance if they can, think of the area they are in and its layout where an ideal place would be to teleport away.
Even if you do know they ported away if you discover their mark, unless you're in syndicate you probably wont be able to chase\find them anyway, with the exception of recall. It just offers potential to discover a explanation on the sudden disappearance which can help causal or new players. Hardly offering vets any big advantage.
I like the idea for vanish or qrace. Maybe for vanish a 0 hour description in the room of smoke dispersing.
Going a bit further now, but wouldn't it be interesting if the ( indicating a closed door would glow that translucent colour if the door had been phased through recently, either with ethereal passage or pass door?
I don't like the idea of making classes designed to be more survivable less survivable, in general. If this were a specific class or race skill (ranger tracker?) then maybe, but I mean clerics and healers (portal/gate) are supposed to be hard to kill. That's like their thing.
I feel like to make this work we'd have to balance it somehow-- maybe recall lag (the most important one, I think) declines as you get closer to your temple. Maybe full current lag is 8 areas or more, and 4 areas and less is half lag. Have this perk be based on a roll based on prof so it works better when you master it (bonus for casting over using potion/stave).
I just don't see the need to "punish" people for recalling like its some bad tactic.
However, I'd also like to be able to buy forged version of these marks and drop them so people think I recalled when I didn't. ;)