Get rid of Visitor Debuff

[Mario_Demorez]

Just make villages with visitor gates 10x easier to raid.

[wonder-ass]

Just make villages with visitor gates 10x easier to raid.

protecting something like cf would be a huge pain in the ass if it was stupid easy to raid.

[VDZ]

so no more trade cities

Already debunked. Trade cities have been a thing before visitor debuff was implemented and wouldn't stop being a thing if it disappeared again.

No they haven't. To my knowledge, Venetia in world 8 was the first public trading city, and it was built after Visitor was implemented.

no visitor buff = no trading

Bullshit. Trading persisted before it and will continue persisting after it.

Trading before the visitor debuff consisted of contacting somebody outside the game to organize a trade, then using charter stone teleportation bullshit with alts to actually perform the trade. (Side note: this would no longer be feasible under current mechanics.) It was such a horrible system that it stopped me from trading unless it was absolutely necessary.

Nobodies going to be stupid enough to wander into those huge trading hubs causing shit. That is a death sentence unless they have an army, and you better believe the owners of said trade hubs have armies/allies of their own.

And what about smaller trading posts? Should they just get fucked?


Anyways, I think we should go back to the original problem, which seems to be combat outposts with gates on all sides providing people a massive advantage if they take shelter there during combat. Visitor debuff is not the cause of the problem; it is merely a symptom. Would removing Visitor make combat outposts not advantageous? No, just removing Visitor would only remove some of the advantage of combat outposts (which is only due to a specific part of Visitor, I'll get to that later) and you would still be screwed if you had to chase somebody into a combat outpost. Then what is the cause for combat outposts existing now where they previously didn't?

• I think the primary cause for this would be the increased ease of palisade construction. Prior to world 8, a palisade on initial construction could have only one gate, period. Adding more gates would require using a battering ram, which took not just resources but also significant time, or having a palibasher present during construction of any palisade. Adding more than one gate to a palisade was a non-trivial process and therefore reserved to places you actually want to put effort into, not random outposts. (Having to wait 12 (I think?) hours after placing the cornerpost to start construction also made it more of a hassle to put up palisades in general.)
• The most obvious counter to this - palibashing - was removed. Palisades are now cheap-to-construct impenetrable fortresses.
• Pclaims have been made trivial. Prior to world 8, you could have only one pclaim per character; to get more than one claim you had to have one extra Yeomanry alt per claim. Nowadays anyone can put a pclaim anywhere with ease, and charging it/keeping it charged is easier than ever before.

Now, there is one, non-essential, thing about Visitor that does cause issues: the power of eviction. Eviction changes the home field advantage from just advantageous to completely overwhelming; because of eviction somebody with Visitor can do nothing against an enemy in combat. I've always found eviction clunky and questioned its necessity. Isn't it just enough to forbid the visitor from committing crimes against others, and allow people without Visitor commit crimes against visitors with no repercussions? That should be sufficient to get troll alts off your land (and if they're non-alt trolls and too powerful for you to handle, then I'd argue that would be a deserved advantage for them) while negating most of the impact on combat Visitor has right now (it doesn't end combat relations, they just can't start new combat relations (including having allies join the fight) and can't loot the enemy after combat - though if necessary an exception could be made for that as well).

Anyways, I think it's at least pretty safe to say that entirely removing Visitor doesn't fix nearly as many problems as it would cause.

Public venues are worth too much to consider the complete removal of this mechanic, but..

Alternative suggestion would be adding new types of gates; merchant or visitor or what have you. These cost more materials than regular gates, as well as dreams (or other hearth magic esque items, to give a reason why neener-neener can't do anything past this line)

... this is a change we ourselves have proposed, and we are considering implementing it for the reset. If anyone has strong arguments against it, feel free to share.

'Make stuff more expensive' has never worked as a real solution to buildable/craftable stuff being abused. Yes, it will make it happen less often. But that's because the richest players will just keep doing it while the less rich players can't afford to do it. And it also goes in the other direction - legitimate use of the structures will also become that much more expensive, making it harder for people to build legitimate public places (and again restricting the option to the richer players). Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that Rock Crystals as building requirement are a joke and it would need to be more expensive than that, but if even 'only' multiple rock crystals were required I would definitely be unable to build a small trading post like I did back in world 9.

[Nek]

No they haven't. To my knowledge, Venetia in world 8 was the first public trading city, and it was built after Visitor was implemented.

Trading before the visitor debuff consisted of contacting somebody outside the game to organize a trade, then using charter stone teleportation bullshit with alts to actually perform the trade. (Side note: this would no longer be feasible under current mechanics.) It was such a horrible system that it stopped me from trading unless it was absolutely necessary.

And what about smaller trading posts? Should they just get fucked?

All of these don't need to be addressed now due to the proposed Merchant/Visitor Gate idea. What matters is trade cities & smaller trading posts can continue to operate exactly as they have been now with this gate while abolishing the visitor debuff from regular gates completely.
The only real question is how to make it so that these new gates don't completely overwrite old gates. If people can just substitute all of their regular gates for these then nothing will change. I agree with what you say on 'cost' to build not really being a deterrent or a proper solution, that is why I propose a hard limit on how many of these gates can exist on a single claim. Now I said that limit should be directly assigned to the Village claim, which I still stand by until a better solution is brought up. The limit should be extremely low, even 1 wouldn't be out of the question IMO based on the nature of the debuff. The only place that should realistically have these gates is a main gate to a city / trade hub.

I've thought this shit over enough times now to be able to safely say that this merchant gate idea is literally the best of all worlds and I unironically think that anybody who disagrees with it is just sour as fuck over the fact that attackers won't be helpless if they opt to chase you through a regular gate which again was never what the debuff was designed to do. It was created to encourage trade and allow friends into areas of your base and to put your mind at ease while doing so, not to be a super defense in all situations that any gate is involved in.
If anybody thinks I'm wrong about this then I'm all ears, there are no downsides IMO. Visitor debuff would do what it was supposed to do as in it wouldn't be any different than it is now in the areas it should be used for.

Combat outposts aren't even a problem IMO, not without visitor debuff and yes, I'm obviously well aware that one person probably isn't going to risk getting locked in a palisade with a bunch of enemy fighter characters but I guarantee they won't be as brash with opening the gates knowing that there is a chance for fuck ups and the enemy could theoretically swarm in. You've gotta remember that the reason people don't give a fuck about fighting near their gateways too is that if they get knocked out/killed just behind their gate, there's nothing the enemy can do to follow up. The enemy can't risk running in and landing the killing blow if they're knocked out because somebody else could just evict them and then it's over for them and they can't run in and grab the enemies body / steal shit from them because visitor just straight up doesn't allow that.
Even if you disagree and think combat outposts as a whole are a problem though, the fact is they are a much much much more difficult problem to solve than the Visitor debuff one and I'd honestly classify it as a different issue altogether.

[wonder-ass]

well someone could cause trouble in said big markets with a crappy ish rage alt to beat up some hermits and die and he could do it repeatedly.

[Nek]

well someone could cause trouble in said big markets with a crappy ish rage alt to beat up some hermits and die and he could do it repeatedly.

I probably should just edit the OP at this point but I'm now fully onboard with the Visitor Gate idea that's been discussed meaning markets will be, quite literally, just as safe as they currently are. In fact nothing would change at all in that scenario.
The key point is to make a hard limit of 1 gate per village claim so that every regular gate doesn't just get subsituted with Visitor gates.

[Granger]

well someone could cause trouble in said big markets with a crappy ish rage alt to beat up some hermits and die and he could do it repeatedly.

I probably should just edit the OP at this point but I'm now fully onboard with the Visitor Gate idea that's been discussed meaning markets will be, quite literally, just as safe as they currently are. In fact nothing would change at all in that scenario.
The key point is to make a hard limit of 1 gate per village claim so that every regular gate doesn't just get subsituted with Visitor gates.

I see one downside with the '1 gate' rule, mainly that the amount of characters to close that market is lower (as they only would need to dominate one location).

But yes, I think we should try how that plays out. That rule could always be relaxed a bit in case it gives too much problems.

[Granger]

But yes, I think we should try how that plays out. That rule could always be relaxed a bit in case it gives too much problems.

Fixed that for me.

Removing visitor from normal gates would result in exploit-o-mania as mineholes could no longer be secured.
Back to the drawing board.

[Jackwolf]

Valid argument. Proposed counter point for minehole protection?

Hard prospect to do, but potentially have a claim cover at least 1 level above and below it? Have mineholes then inflict visitor debuff as well?

[Nek]

[s]
Removing visitor from normal gates would result in exploit-o-mania as mineholes could no longer be secured.

Valid argument. Proposed counter point for minehole protection?

Wait what?
I'm not sure what you mean by them no longer being secure. Having a pali around them with a regular gate that is actually locked is them being as secure as they should be. They don't deserve any special treatment as far as security is concerned.
Unless I'm misunderstand what you're getting at here.