all PVP is surprise attacks. Not lame, but what do we do?

[Harmless]

I am just asking from the perspective of someone who's been at this game for years and I am starting to wonder if anything I thought I knew about PVP is right.

If the only time you're realistically going to face PVP is when someone is coming at you with lethal poisons like perraine with a backstab action, how are you going to realistically improve your odds of surviving and still playing through your character's storyline once the political turns of the game have decided that your character is a target?

We want this to feel like a game where we have some control over what happens to our character, but when it comes to being PKed I wonder if that's really a thing.

So, the point of this thread is, arm us with the knowledge that our character would have, ICly, having lived in this horrifying world where death can happen at any second, would know. For instance, people would probably share stories, like, 'Amos survived another attempt on his life. How did he pull it off?' 'He did /this/ and /that,/ you know, everyone works on that so that they aren't next to be a dead headless body in the street.'

So, what is it? Here are my thoughts below, having gone through >50 characters over about a decade of playing armageddon:


1.) spamwalk so nobody can backstab you, forget pausing at intersections to emote or talk or think, just keep going, unless a NPC templar/soldier or two is in the same room as you
2.) Walk around, weapons +/- shield out at all times even if it makes no sense
3.) don't bother with scan alone -- scan, and type >look shadow constantly, I mean constantly, at all times
4.) walk in groups -- witnesses are a bad thing for murderers
5.) maybe train and practice? But this doesn't seem to matter at all, if you train your character 100 hours, as long as they trained for 500 hours, you need to train another 400 hours -- effectively -- for it to matter
6.) maybe have a bodyguard, but then you can be thrown at with poison or shot at, and also training guarding is weird, and takes a long long time and a lot of repetitive RP
7.) hire assassins to kill everyone else who could possibly be a threat to you, to continue the cycle of constant backstabbing murder chains (this is a reality)
8.) don't sit down at bars, just stand with your weapon out, you know, like everyone has their drinks
9.) don't go to bars at all, just really, why would you be stationary for any given period of time
10.) act very strangely in apartments, you know, with the assumption that 2 knife-bearing creepos are invisibly inside with you despite you having a high degree of practice scanning for hidden people, looking explicitly around you for threats before entering (see #3), and so on. Then, never relax in an apartment, because seriously, who the fuck does that -- don't bother to pursue a family storyline in an apartment (why would you raise a family in a death-trap?) And don't bother to leave the keyboard and screen behind, no, this isn't that kind of game, you may as well be 360-noscoping in whatever pub-g game you like here, this is armageddon, or does it even matter if you're at keyboard? Well, carry a poisoned blade and shield at all times, then we can have a nice apartment RP scene.
11.) Don't quit out in an apartment, FTB your scenes with anyone else, then say it's now the 'next day', go to a tavern and quit out there.  (real practice IG)
12.) When in an apartment, wear your key on your wrist. It's a lot harder to steal something attached to someone's wrist or equipment than it is to steal it from their inventory.

the above are all for city PKs. I haven't been PKed in the deserts for a long time so I don't know how it goes lately but I hear arrows are still popular.

Any other ways we can not lose our storylines?


also, you may read into every single point I make above as a massive criticism of other people (ahem ahem, the PKing community) if you want, I don't care. I just am kind of tired of watching the status quo shift more and more towards an inane practice of PVP in my RPI and I am going to start a rant. Also if I were on the PK-delivering side I would probably use similar tactics. I don't really mean to criticize that -- I mean to say, 'this is the reality of the PK practice, so how do you as a player survive it?' Not everyone is do-or-die about their plots, some people are in it for the long game and actually want to survive and aren't just seeking to pile up bodies.

gee, I kinda wish I could play a role I didn't care about and could just play high-risk without worry! But that isn't my style..

finally, here are some ideas:

auto-draw. With a specific skill in a weapon, being attacked causes your character to try and automatically arm themselves before the first blow is landed or soon after the first blow is landed, depending on the degree of success with the skill. You're AFK? no problem, your character is not a fucking idiot so the first thing they will do if attacked is try and draw a weapon.

wimpy-flee. Yep, bring in this time-tested feature. When you're AFK, the enemy must go against an AI controlled you that is trying to just survive at a basic level. Maybe make it so the AI is smart enough to not run intentionally off a cliff, trying to flee s or e or n if it knows the west is a cliff-drop.

auto-quit option. If the game detects you went AFK for 20 mins, and that isn't what you usually do, then it logs you off with a quit ooc. Will help if you get disconnected and can't log back in due to a storm also.

virtualize the apartment setting a lot more. Have people check on rooms, have the doors act like doors do when you enter them, be able to codedly put a big, jingly, ringy bell that would tell you if the fucking door was unlatched and opened discreetly, rethink lockpicking in a few ways, especially how the game handles failed attempts. (ahem, just a delay of the inevitable)

and other stuff, which gets more into combat mechanics.

[BadSkeelz]

Thank you Harmless for outlining why Armageddon PVP is so shitty, if actual fighting is what you're after.

[perfecto]

12)  Always talk to everyone everywhere you go! be a mouthpiece, an audible scene.  When you're engaging, ppl (attackers) will be far less likely to strike you down mid-conversation.   (not true always, I just wish it was)  But if nothing else you'll make them feel stooopid for attacking you while you keep a conversation going.



I'm sorry for your loss of a loved character, we've all been there.

These notes you touched on however; might cause more death than help...

[Greve]

You correctly identified the fact that PvP almost invariably takes the form of inescapable ganks. Peraine, backstab, 5v1, templar execution, or the time-honored apartment fandango. This is because if you try to kill someone and fail, there's a 90% chance that your days are numbered, unless that someone was a total nobody--and even then, you might just have given them a lifelong goal of ending your ass. Anyone who's relevant enough to give you a reason to kill them better be dead when you try or your character has a guaranteed expiration date.

In a game like this, which is effectively a tiny village where everyone knows everyone, you can't usually survive having someone around whose life's mission is to kill you, unless your character is a templar with protective spells and HG guards 24/7 or something. If you attempt to murder someone and fail, it's a complete certainty that their sole focus for the rest of time is to kill you back--not that that's particularly strange or anything, but given the fact that anonymity and laying low is next to impossible in this game, it presents a problem: you come at Amos, you best not miss because Amos will find you. It's really hard to make long-term enemies unless you're both looking for that very thing for the sake of RP, which is rare. Maybe having a second city-state again would help.

Part of the issue is that conventional combat is close to useless for the purpose of murder. If you walk up to a dude with your sword and attack him the normal way, odds of landing a kill are pretty much nil. Take away the usual PKing strategies and you might end up with a game that barely has PvP because it's just too easy flee or to stay around the legions of NPC soldiers milling about every settlement. If you want someone dead, you pretty much have to do it in one of those cheesy ways. The fact that you codedly operate at 100% capacity until fully incapacitated means that merely hurting someone accomplishes nothing.

At the end of the day, I think the frequency of PKing could be reduced if the game had more of a storyline. PKing often happens because there's no other way for players to feel relevant and powerful. When you've played the same character for months and nothing big has really happened the whole time, your mind begins to see every little controversy as an opportunity to make something happen, and there are very few things you can do to someone that they can't just ignore. Taking their stuff is kind of whatever, every veteran player knows how to effortlessly make more money than they could possibly need. Ruining someone's reputation is nearly impossible in a game where most players know eachother OOC. Maiming is highly frowned upon and will quickly earn you a reputation as a griefer that noone wants to RP with. So people end up PKing. It's the only conflict action that you know will work if carried out succesfully. Stealing someone's couch just doesn't have the same kind of "fuck you" factor.

I don't think PvP is a bad thing. The game needs to have some of it, otherwise the whole premise becomes an illusion. Zalanthas should be unsafe, and character lives should be finite--but there are definitely things that routinely get in the way of good PvP or turn it into bad PvP. The main one is that if you can't kill someone before they can type 'flee,' or at least prevent the command from resolving via bash or locked door or whatever, you probably can't kill them, and that kind of death is pretty unsatisfying to most people.

What I miss most of all is conflict that doesn't end in death; but that seems to be a pipe dream. If you cut someone, they'll be scared of the various ways you could instakill them and will endeavor to do that to you just to protect themselves. Having enemies is too dangerous. It's a shame that there's so little room for it. Over the years I've come to learn that if you instigate conflict with someone, even if it's fairly minor at first, you better be prepared for when they attempt to murder you, because they usually will. Often they're starved for things to do and are delighted at the opportunity, so they accidentally escalate the conflict to milk it for all it's worth. Happens time after time because there's not a whole lot else going on. Armageddon's story has really ground to a halt.

[Riev]

If you attempt to murder someone and fail, it's a complete certainty that their sole focus for the rest of time is to kill you back--not that that's particularly strange or anything, but given the fact that anonymity and laying low is next to impossible in this game, it presents a problem: you come at Amos, you best not miss because Amos will find you.

I think its also pertinent to mention that its not just Amos who will find you. Any friends he has will likely be elated at the idea of having an "enemy" to chase, or someone to "go after". Not only did you fail the kill, likely pissing off your own boss or person who paid you, but now you have 1 + X number of people coming after you, who will stop at nothing because its their 'quest'.

To fail in PvP is to say "I don't care about the rest of my PCs life". We all want to play in a game where that isn't true. A game where you can attempt to kill someone, they got the upper hand and you had to run away, but its okay. You'll bring two friends next time, and wait for things to cool down.

Except that person knows someone who is mudsexing the local AoD Militia, who complains to a bored Templar who wants to 'root out malcontents" and suddenly the fucking Ministry of the Mind is scoping out your hideout, and the Trade Ministry has assassins holding knives to 'rinthi fences and anyone who deal with them, because Sally SucksAtCombat didn't finish the job.

[deskoft]

Do we have any examples of games that do this any better in terms of actual mechanics we can implement? I'm super interested in this kind of stuff.

[titansfan]

I agree with the general "there's nothing better to do" reasoning. I've ran into plenty of people IG who go straight for the pk. I even know a few players who all they do is hide/have some evasion and never leave that safety because either a) they've pk'd alot and now everyone wants them dead or b) they're a nasty, horrible 3k option that so many want to put the feather in their cap of. Pk seems to be an almost defining concept of plots and the game as a whole at the moment.

Makes me mucho mucho sad.

[Greve]

Do we have any examples of games that do this any better in terms of actual mechanics we can implement? I'm super interested in this kind of stuff.

There's been a number of muds built on the RPI Codebase which stems from the original Shadows of Isildur (which in turn stems from Harshlands, I think) where there are none of the instagib mechanics that Arm has. No backstab, no miracle insta-paralysis poisons, no 120 stun damage club swings to the head, etc. Instead fleeing takes time and is proportionally harder the more people are attacking you. It also has wounds code and bleeding, so you aren't just totally saved the moment you get out of combat, and recovery from injury takes more than five minutes so you actually care if someone hurt you. These games still had plenty of PvP, it just didn't always lead to death; and when it did, it was death in battle, not "hum di dum, weather's nice toda--MANTISHEAD!"

Better ranged combat code would be nice, too. Holding aim when someone moves, for instance, so your target can't just step south and disappear form sight in the cardinal directions grid. It just always felt like those games matched up more closely with what I think combat in such a setting would really be like, instead of Armageddon's combat which is crazily polarized between 'I kill you with one instant command' and 'I have to hit you sixteen times with a longsword for you to die because I didn't roll insane strength.' Anime assassins who kill with a single stab should not be such a commonplace thing, and conventional battle should not be such a rarity. It's a setting shaped by armies and warlords, but the actual gameplay ends up feeling more like text-based Skyrim.

[Riev]

Codedly, the RPI system was kind of alright for regular combat. Elves and archery make a lot of things unplayable.

Arm-related, though, I think we need to focus more on the consequences of a failure. With room for people going against the grain, a failed assassination will result in:

• The assassin being killed by the person who bankrolled them in indie OR The assassin being killed by their boss to save face from the person who bankrolled it
• The person attacked summoning every available force to combat this plague of 'some guy with a knife'
• Templars and AoD PCs being summoned to root out this threat to civilization
• The assassin will have their entire description and mdesc Way'd to every person capable of killing a scrab, with a 10,000 bounty
• An arena event will occur where someone, usually the assassin, will be killed in combat after being found by someone's pet magicker

I mean... or... just peraine one-hit kill the guy because holy shit the nuclear response.

And the response is valid, don't get me wrong, but its way too cumbersome and commonplace. You were able to type "flee", and now the whole city of PCs wants me dead and people are demanding Virtual Resources to chase me down. Its ridiculous.

[Akariel]

Please try and keep the discussion here relevant and respectful to all parties. I have deleted a post that was toeing the line.

Something to consider is definitely less lethal methods of retribution.

[Delirium]

It's partly the result of a systemic issue where code is valued over roleplay.

People who value story-focused gameplay get picked off and picked on by those who value and abuse coded strength and especially by those who enjoy engineering conflict for the sake of it. Coded strength and story-based roleplay can coexist, but the simple fact of the matter is when an abusive PC starts throwing their weight around, they either a) complain when a realistic world response happens, or b) get away with it with little to no repercussion. In scenario B, most PCs who enjoy story-focused gameplay will either play less or vacate the premises and play elsewhere.

Instead of finding ways to include others and pursue goals, portions of the playerbase seem to wait for something interesting to happen, and when that something interesting is "I got stabbed" ... the rest follows. Or they shit-stir for the sake of shit-stirring, force conflict that is just tiresome and annoying, and wonder why nobody wants to play along.

Work on building stories and bringing the gameworld to life and the rest happens naturally, including conflict that escalates believably. Be willing to give another player a scene and let stories evolve. But...

There is also the fact that this game was built on a hack and slash framework but is now an RPI, so coded realities occasionally still cause burps where roleplay and code are supposed to meet and support each other. That has improved dramatically over the years, but could likely still use some attention. The strength stat has a ridiculous range in PCs, and narrowing that range to more closely match original Dark Sun stats would likely do wonders for abuses there.

There is also a general lack of overarching story and goal. Tuluk is an awkward white elephant looming to the north. When left to their own devices, most players either do not feel empowered to, are unable to, or do not have the time/position/ability to start truly world-encompassing plots, leaving them spinning their wheels with smaller stuff. That smaller stuff can certainly be interesting, but it shouldn't be on player shoulders to keep the larger narrative afloat.

I could go on. There is no one simple cause & effect or solution. Encouraging story-focused gameplay and teaching players how to consider the gameworld, how to create and be involved in plots, and how to play believable characters and plots is one step, but it's an uphill battle when you have OOC mentors teaching you that to survive you have to do x, y, and z code-focused thing.

It's an uphill battle when really the only sense of progression a lot of players get is to Get Gud and kill characters who annoy theirs. It's an uphill battle when petty schoolroom drama takes precedence over slow-burn plots because it's easier and accessible, but too often devolves into ridiculousness and ultimately drives players away.

There is amazing roleplay to be found in this game, but it does require that you have patience and be willing to inhabit the world. Not just look at it as a collection of skills and coded survival strategies. You have to be willing to lose.

[LindseyBalboa]

I'm sorry someone PK'd you. I don't see anything really constructive in the original post, though. Literally none of the ideas presented have anything to do with 'every PK is a perraine backstab,' so it seems pretty sarcastic, but assuming it's not: it's a PK game, and when it's do or die when it comes to killing, it follows that people will try to do it quickly and quietly.

Make fleeing a one shot try, or make it hard to run away, and then people don't need to try to one-shot as often. But it's a PK game. People will die. People will kill one another. There's perma-death. I've seen a hell of a lot more spam fleeing than I've seen people using deadly poisons in-game.

[tapas]

It's the usual circle of horseshit.

One player post points out how player killing abjectly retards any sort of story focused roleplay. Then the next handful of posts will wax on and on about how the game is supposed to be about pk while flying overhead of the past post's observations. And then staff will proclaim loudly that there isn't a problem.

But for those story driven players; the only real solution is to always inhabit a meta perspective where anyone (that you don't know oocly) will ratfuck you out of your character via the most efficient means at their disposal.

Is this bad roleplay? Is it bad for the game? Of fucking course it is. But hey, you'll at least be able to enjoy your character without getting ratfucked.

[Harmless]

thanks to those who had thoughtful replies to my rant.

for those who think I died

Code Select Expand



You have been playing for 73 days and 10 hours.



If nobody discusses these issues then they fester, player feelings are hurt and issues are not brought up. If reading this thread helps someone who enjoy the game more (ahem, longer) then this thread has succeeded imo. I am interested in telling stories, I AM willing to lose, and I have been PKed before, yes, several times, and yes it was with perraine or heramide backstabs, but now is not one of those times, it is me commenting on a trend I know to be real. When I died I took it and moved on without a peep on the GDB. After I could confidently say there was a sustained pattern of things ending in a way that didn't satisfy me, I decided to start a post.

The fact that perraine poison was recently nerfed for its rotting code is kinda proof that staff sees the balance the same way I do and has already taken actions to stem some of the tide, but this thread is meant to help players like me, who are not good at minmaxing the code, don't suicide when we land a bad strength roll, and who want to still have a shot at surviving long enough to tell a compelling story.

[slipshod]

He says after a skimming of the thread:

I remember a time when we had a Templar or two (and maybe an active House Tor) who would open the Arena up for duels in Allanak.  If people had a simmering grudge they could get their fight to the death sanctioned and have it out on the Arena floor.  Maybe some sort of culture of dueling could be an answer to the question in the OP.

[HeeBeeGB]

He says after a skimming of the thread:

I remember a time when we had a Templar or two (and maybe an active House Tor) who would open the Arena up for duels in Allanak.  If people had a simmering grudge they could get their fight to the death sanctioned and have it out on the Arena floor.  Maybe some sort of culture of dueling could be an answer to the question in the OP.

I dig it. Or even a duel of dishonor. The loser gets banished to the Labyrinth, regardless of station. It fits the mercurial sort of darkness of Allanak.

[slipshod]

It doesn't have to be just an Allanak thing.  There's a fighting pit in Luirs, and every wilderness room outside the settlements is a poor man's duel ground.  The coded infrastructure is there; what we'd need is the culture.... being called out... public shaming for refusing, etc.

[SmashedTregil]

People who argue that PK is almost always a surprise and those who argue that there is too much PK are kind of arguing opposite points.


The requirement for PKs to be sudden, brutal, quick, or require certain maneuvering (ie luring into locked apartments) means that PKs are rarer and more complicated. They require either overwhelming force (multiple people), unusual materials like poisons (buying them off others), or locked apartments (trickery, deceit, betrayal).  All of this involves roleplay, involving of other people, or significant expenditures.

This makes PKing 'more' rarer, because it's so expensive and convoluted. If you make PKs possible without all that, then they will become easier and more common place. Which would only encourage using PKing as the one and only solution to all of your problems.

Remember Godfather? Professional Mafiosi, for whom murder is their stock and trade. They either use exactly the same tactics we do in Zalanthas to assure certain victory, or ... or they are sacrificing their own lives for the glory of their family.

Arena, duels, etc. While nice, is very anti Zalanthan in theme. When you're eeking out the living, enduring insults and debasements from those in higher position then you, starving, and periodically struggling with the dilemma of whether, or not you should partake of cannibalism. It is strange to assume that you will put your life on the line when someone says, "You too jozhalshit to go outside the gates and fight it out?"

[Bebop]

To the surprise of no one, I feel like PK is broken in this game due to reasons that are heavily due to lack of social reinforcement but also code.  I know and see the staff are taking steps to try and fix some issues we players have brought up, but those solution attempts are also creating other survivability issues and even as a long time vet (or especially because of being a long time vet?)  I find the grind so taxing and reward non-existent that at present I'm experiencing total burnout after less than a year and a half of being back.   I am definitely a social player, but even when I focus on code I just CAN'T out grind a player that is code based and has more play times.  My RP experience has pretty consistently been ruined since I returned to this game by code god and PK heavy play with little respect for game lore.  The reward for being an RPer just hasn't been there for me.

[AdamBlue]

Everybody is constantly screaming and shitting themselves and killing eachother every single moment for little actual reason, and as a player and as a character I find it annoying and boring. Everyone has such a murderboner that they'd rather not think of inventive solutions to their problems.

[Nile]

What happened? Why wasn't this a problem previously? Is it purely to do with the code/class changes or is there a bit of a culture shift occurring as well with the playerbase? Any ideas?

[Riev]

What happened? Why wasn't this a problem previously? Is it purely to do with the code/class changes or is there a bit of a culture shift occurring as well with the playerbase? Any ideas?

It has always been a problem, but talking about code and deaths has been loosened significantly over the years.

I'd argue that the average age of the playerbase has skewed upwards, which comes with it less time to play as more responsibilities roll into life. Its no longer easy to just no-life a new PC, we all have a few hours a week to dedicate to this hobby. Then someone who can nolife turaals all day that we've never heard of, gets picked up by a Templar, given top-tier armor and weapons, and they become an elite 1-hit assassin.

Its always been this way, but dying was accepted. Lately, its less accepted because we have this great divide between "its an RP game" and "but its still a MUD".

In the defense of twinks (of which I am one), I've met very few that twinked just to get one over on another player. Most of them do it because they feel they have to be 1-hit wonders. If you assassinate a popular person, noble or not, you've got an entire city coming after you.

[ScramblesForPurchase]

In regards to RP I kind of have a feeling the slew of changes to both classes and game world mechanics has more people dabbling/testing/experimenting to re-learn how things are and establish a new "normal" from a functional perspective. I recall a lot of players scored pretty high on the explorer side of things in that Bartle test post.

As for PK I think PK has always kind of been like this. Backstab apartment peraine etc. It might be more prevalent now that some things that used to be super dangerous like full branched full mage guilds are no longer, so you don't get those omg moments with a bunch of fireworks quite so often.

Then of course there is the 'what is the alternative' issue. I've seen at least one alternative to murder and quite frankly would have preferred if assassins had been chasing me all the time. That being absolute and total social suicide/isolation or 'reputation ruining' as its called, which for me just leads to apathy because of seriously reduced opportunity to role play at all, since everyone hates you because X Y Z. In those cases I usually end up dying to a scrab or something stupid out of boredom.

That all being said I have seen some restraint in PK lately in a few situations that played out well. So not all hope is lost.

[Armaddict]

It has always been a problem, but talking about code and deaths has been loosened significantly over the years.

I don't particularly agree with this.  Depending on how far back you go, violence without advantage seemed far more prevalent to me.  Alley fights with no poison where you were likely to get away.  Raids where you really did have to be in a particularly bad position to get caught.  There were a lot more instances of combat with other people without death...and I say without death even though I had far less knowledge of code.

The thing is...so did most other people.  Poisons were there, but the deadly ones were much more rare, because of a much lower emphasis on longevity and a far more hostile environment.  There was a lot less overreaction and justice-seeking, i.e. Shooting an arrow at someone outside the gates did not result in byn units and templars coming to secure the desert and make it safe.  Death in early periods of characters was easier due to more random baddies in unpredictable locations and less demand from the playerbase that every death be meaningful.

(Edit: As an addition pertaining to dogpiling and justice-seeking...overall, my general impression is that there is a starvation for conflict when I was playing antagonists in the last few years.  People seemed to really -want- bad guys to hunt down, but it made for banding together to make that low risk, whereas in my first 6-8 years of the game, I was struggling, trying, so hard to stay out of the way of conflict just to try and survive longer.  People wouldn't band together much, but it just made a lot more constant, low-level conflict that could always explode.  Inter-house intrigue, north vs south, raiders, criminals, personal grudges, overarching villains and sorcerers...half the time, I got swept up into risk and near death without even understanding what was going on, it turned into pure fight and flight.)

It wasn't a lawless game, it wasn't just a game of griefers, but there was a lot more of an expectation that character loss was just part of it.

I feel that some of those points contribute to why things are as they are.  Some of those are just my exposure to older states of the game (our experiences might just be wildly different, entirely possible).  But particularly the fact that most of us know the game pretty well, and have easy access to longevity and a general idea of 'how good' we are...of course the ambush is more common.

Armageddon Special Forces is like 3/4 of the playerbase now. XD

[JohnMichaelHenry]

There was a lot less overreaction and justice-seeking, i.e. Shooting an arrow at someone outside the gates did not result in byn units and templars coming to secure the desert and make it safe. 
[/quote]

This really depends on who you are shooting at. Templars and byn aren't going to give a shit if the person you shot at is some nobody. Someone in this thread touched on it earlier. If you wanna be a raider and attack 'important' people, be prepared for the shitstorm that follows.