Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-34747967-20181220113014

Hallo everyone, I want to discuss and make a suggestion about the current state of banners and a possible addition to it.

At the moment, banners are nearly useless, only if you want to protect certain areas from enemy spawns and orc bomb protection.

In Multiplayer however are they necessary to protect your builds / land. They are a choice of ALL or NOTHING, if you are not in the group of people allowed in the Banner GUI, you cant do anything, if you are, you can do everything. So most banner protections are set to whitelist. That results in areas on server, if they dont get cleaned up by admins, that can be completely unaccessable to other players, even if the owning player(s) went offline for years.

My suggestion now is not to change the gui and its function completely, it is more about adding it and the question, if that is even possible.

And the answer are Rings. Yeah I know, suggestion about Ring Forging are tricky, but please hear me out.

Banners have the other protection mode, which is barely used and it is set to a certain amount of alignment you need. If players would more use that, it might partly make my suggestion unnecessary. But my suggestion is, if technically possible, to add a certain item in the banner protection whitelist by default.

That item would be a named one and for my example here, it would be rings. Currently, we have three rings, which are completely useless after travelling to middle earth with the Ring Portal.

Example:

If you reach sth like +1500 alignment with Gondor, you can now buy a special scroll from the commander. With that scroll, you can combine a silver ring on an anvil, resulting in the "Silver Ring of Gondor". With that ring, you have access to all Gondor Banners, which stand on bronze or silver Blocks.

The current Rings have a natural ranking system, because their ingredients get rarer. The ranking would be:

1. Mithril Ring: highest amount of alignment needed -> access to Gold / Silver / Bronze Faction Banner protected Areas

2. Gold Ring: very high amount of alignment needed -> access to Gold / Silver / Bronze Faction Banner protected Areas

3. Silver Ring: high amount of alignment needed -> access to Silver / Bronze Faction Banner protected Areas

(4. Bronze Ring: if implemented, a certain amount of alignment needed -> access Bronze Faction Banner protected Areas)

Those that would be the power of those rings. It would give the option, to hold older faction buildings of faction which lost its owner due to leaving the server active for the faction which banners were used. The possible high amount needed might counter the possibility of griefers, because I think it is less likely, that high alignment players bully their other faction members.

But the rings with power come with a downside:

1. A holder of a Mithril Ring is always shown on the map to other Mithril Ring Holders

2. A holder of a Gold Ring is always shown on the map to other Gold Ring Holders and Mithril Ring Holders

3. A holder of a Silver Ring is always shown on the map to other Silver, Gold or Mithril Ring Holders

(4. A holder of a possible Bronze Ring is always shown on the map to all other Ring Holders)

That would somehow counter possible griefers, because they can be easier tracked by other players and dont necessary need support of admins/mods... Maybe the upcoming pledges could be tied to that, so you need to pledge for a faction to make those rings.

But if the suggestion would end here, it would be more or less the same if every banner is that to faction protection with certain ranks of alignment needed.

What happens in the case a ring get lost? If destroyed or delete from lying around, you have to make a new one.

What happens if an enemy player gets the ring? Now it gets interesting. It would add a lot of competition, if the enemy could enter the protected areas with the looted ring. But he will be visible to all other Ring Holders of the Faction he got the ring from and most likely he cant use the ft points in the enemy territory and if he walks in there, he will be shown on the map, making him vulnerable to assaults and ambushes.

The big question would be, if every player could use every ring, if he gets his hands on one. That is tough, maybe it would be just that or other requirements are necessary, something like having a certain amount of positive alignment of an enemy faction, a certain negative amount of alignment with the faction with the lost ring or he has to be pledged to an enemy. Something in that kind of directions.

Another important point would be, would the enemy ring holder see the other ring holder or not. First would make the Faction even more vulnerable, the later would make the hunt for rings very tough.

But there might be a general answer, which can solve the problem and is quite easy:

The One Ring.

There is that special ring, which might only exist once per time. Maybe he must be forged by a Mordor Player with an absurd high amount of positive Mordor alignment. Or he will first spawn in Gollums inventory (I know, at the start of the Mod, Bilbo should have the Ring, but Gollum is already in the mod, Bilbo not).

That would make the hunt for Gollum more important.

But what is the Power of the One Ring? It would give access to every banner! And you would see the map location of every Ring Holder of any Faction! But the Ring is treacherous. You cant disable your map location at all! Every other player would see your map location. Maybe you are even special marked like having a frame around your Icon.

But what happens if you die in lava? Then maybe the Ring most be reforged by a Mordor Player or it will respawn in Gollums Inventory, setting his Fish Counter to zero, so that he would leave however tamed him at the moment and let him respawn somewhere in the misty mountains to start the hunt once again.

What about, if the Holder of the One Ring is offline (for too long). Then the treacherous Ring will leave him (after a certain server and log off time), only to be found by Gollum again.

Maybe the One Ring cant even be removed out of the players inventory, to add another burden.

If you have read until here, thank you very much for your attention. In fact, it is quite a rough idea, all details are up for debate, what requirements would be exaclty needed, are there certain limits like only a certain amount of rings etc. 