High karma characters cheating!

[Abused Player]

Deleted due to WAY too much IC information. Please remember the rules of the GDB and do not post here when you are angry and give out information that should not be shared.



Edited by Mekeda

[Abused Player]

I manage to knockout a magicker in an extremely quick battle with my 4 hour old character.  I loot him/her while unconscious and kill him/her later.  This player is now obviously furious OOC so he/she instant messages a templar friend and has him go wait by the gates for it to open.  When it does, I'm immediately questioned and confiscated of the exact belongings I looted.  The templar's lame excuse was that the soldiers saw me causing a disturbance when in fact I was no where near them when the fight ensued.  The fight happened 8-10 rooms away!

I can deal with IC brutality but when friends cheat through OOC communication then that's just flat-out wrong and ruins the game.[/i]

[Armaddict]

Don't whine because you got caught.  You don't know what happened.  You're just as angry as you accused your victim to be, to the point that you're posting it on the GDB.

Way to go, bud.  Create a new character.

[Forest Junkie]

Agreed with Armaddict on this here.

For instance, how do you know the room you were in did not have vnpc(virtual guards) in there? Don't -ever- come to the conclusion that you are alone, because, if the desc says so, you ain't =P

I learned that the hard way bud; it sucks, it blows, but hell, its Arm. Have fun. =P

[John]

If you think this has happened e-mail the mud account and they'll look into it.

You might want to include a log when you do

Having said that, there are dozens of possible explanations other then the magicker IM'd the Templar

[DrunkenSalarr]

I would just like to take a moment to quote the Introduction Overview:

...complaints of unfairness on the part of other characters will not be given an audience. If you think another character was mean to you, you're most likely right.

[God]

However, there's a big difference if it's an OOC unfairness/cheating, DrunkenSalarr. You realize that, right?

I'd ask the staff to check it out if you're so sure, but still, seems like the templar can do what he wants. If he admits that his friend used IM to tell him about you, would that be twinkishness?

Yes, and it should be punished. Even if he uses the excuse of VNPC soldiers for getting the info.

[Armaddict]

Nevertheless, whining to the board does nothing.  Especially not with all the details.

Not to mention, he's obviously still angry.  With that in mind, I can make the assumption that he jumped to conclusions.


I've learned from experience...don't email or post while you're still mad.  It gets you in trouble.

[Athenspatch]

Sorry you lost your character.  Those filthy templars have no mothers and they're in with Toktolnes.  He's a defiler!  If you killed one of those spooky elementalists, well then I want to shake your hand.  Good job. The world's a better place without them!

[Anarchy]

Im pretty sure it says somewhere all skills are not unknown to templars - so, it might very well of been IC for the templar to get you. How do you know that templar wasn't watching that magicker when you killed it.

[Bestatte]

What makes you think he went to a templar's IM, anyway? You do realize that you don't have to be a mindbender to whip out a REALLY fast "Help the blue-eyed fat man is killing me outside the gate!" with the Way, don't you?

You can even do it standing up. And WTF was your 4-hour old character doing 10 rooms outside the gate smacking around a magicker anyway? How IC was that? The whole thing reeks of sour grapes to me.

Don't answer these questions here in this thread. Answer them to yourself after you've had a few days to chill out.

[:-\]

You can even do it standing up. And WTF was your 4-hour old character doing 10 rooms outside the gate smacking around a magicker anyway? How IC was that?

How IC was it not?

There's no IC or OOC rule that says every character has to remain inside the gates, training until s/he is so many days/hours old, before s/he can uber-dash out into the wilds to do what s/he wishes.

No real points to make on the original post, just that little bit kind of got me.

[Armaddict]

No, as in, what the fuck were you doing attacking a magicker?  That guy can do strange and mysterious shit -you- sure as hell don't understand, so who the hell knows what he could to do to you?  He's outside the gates?  That's not a chance to kill him!  That's a chance to get as fucking far away from it as possible.

[Tamarin]

What makes you think he went to a templar's IM, anyway? You do realize that you don't have to be a mindbender to whip out a REALLY fast "Help the blue-eyed fat man is killing me outside the gate!" with the Way, don't you?

Yeah.  I think you can even contact/psi while engaged in combat.

[Anarchy]

Lone traveller + Desert = Death.
Magicker + Desert = Death
Fuzzy frendly little rabbit + Desert = Death.

Magickers are deadly, people should be scared of them

Travelling alone is deadly, people should be scared to do it.

The desert is deadly, people should be scared of it.

There are deadly animals that do eat you, people should be scare of them

[Armaddict]

You can.  I've actually done what Bestatte was describing...during combat.

[Sanvean]

I've spent some time grepping through logs and talking to people to find out what happened, and your assumptions are incorrect. A few specific points follow:

1) Your character did not die. Your character was fined by a templar who saw you continuing to hide a bag in your inventory and refusing to hand it over.

2) Sleeping to heal in a place where the guards on the walls can see you is not a good idea. One of the guards notified the templar, so if you want to bitch, you can complain about the staff. The events, in looking at them, seem reasonable to me.

3) The person you killed might be able to gripe themselves a bit. In pkilling, I urge all players to make sure that they play it out, so a) the staff knows the kill is justified and b) as a courtesy it's nice to at least throw in a few emotes so the person feels that the death scene was played out.  Pkills are fine IF THEY ARE ROLEPLAYED OUT AND IC. Without emotes, thinks, etc, it's very hard for the staff to know whether it was IC or was just a player trying to gain another notch for his or her belt. I will refrain from saying which category this kill looks like it falls into.

4) Posting on the board with IC information is a bad idea. Taking a deep breath and thinking before you post to ask yourself whether a) it's too much IC information and b) whether it's a flame or not is a good idea. If someone feels genuinely illtreated, you should feel free to email the mud account, where Nessalin or I will go through the logs and find out what happened. On numerous occasions we have resurrected people because the death was either OOCly coordinated, or motivated by OOC considerations. This inevitably leads to charges of favoritism, but I can honestly say that I have not seen a resurrection in recent years that was a case of favoritism. I digress, but to return to the point, it's a lot better to email the account and have us look into it (which you did not do) than to hop on the boards and start merrily flaming.

If you want to discuss this further, feel free to email me.

[Quirk]

I manage to knockout a magicker in an extremely quick battle with my 4 hour old character.  I loot him/her while unconscious and kill him/her later.

It's not like case studies are badly needed, most of us could come up with similar happenings we've seen - but this is an excellent example of why newbie magickers could really use a bit of help on the defensive side. There are players who're not going to realistically RP the fear their character ought to have for a magicker and will just attack, kill, loot (even emotelessly it appears, in this case). I'm all for magickers being hunted down and killed like the vermin they are, but 4-hour-old newbie characters being able to take down umpteen-day magickers alone and then doing it just feels all wrong to me, and I'm not sure just urging the playerbase to RP the right way is going to solve anything. Yes, very old magickers can utterly annihilate their foes, especially if prepared, but as very old magickers are also very rare people don't run into them often and hence many don't exercise the caution they ought to.

Quirk

[Crashloft]

REGARDLESS..............It's a crock of kank dung that anyone would OOC'ILY IM another player and screw things up IC.  Thats just plain kank shiat.  

Sneaking up behind and knocking out a established majicker isn't that hard.  It's totally IC.  

I know neither of these players, but it sounds like a crock to me.  

By the way, how do you know that the person who plays the Magicker OOC'ILY contacted the player of the Templar?  Who's to say it wasn't a real vitrual (immortal)NPC?

[Quirk]

REGARDLESS..............It's a crock of kank dung that anyone would OOC'ILY IM another player and screw things up IC.  Thats just plain kank shiat.  

Sneaking up behind and knocking out a established majicker isn't that hard.  It's totally IC.

Sanvean already commented that the complaint of OOC information being used was untrustworthy.

The poor RP of attacking a magicker solo has already been discussed at length in other threads. A couple of choice quotes from Tlaloc:

I would personally like to see less people trying to attempt to kill a mage solo. This, to me, seems like something that would be alittle Out of Character for anyone to do. This is like trying to go hunt an Elephant or a Tiger alone - typically, you don't do it. People will take loads of buddies with them to go kill Silt Horrors, Tarantulas, Carru...but when they see a mage alone in the wilderness, they just go for it and kill.

and...

In my opinion, if you are not afraid of a magicker, you are either 1) playing a freak of some kind, or 2) not roleplaying well and following the documentation as it is laid out.

If you want to browse through the discussion covering this, it's at http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5274. Although code-wise knocking a mage over the back of the head is easy, for the vast majority of characters it certainly will not be even vaguely IC.

Quirk

[Sanvean]

It's a crock of kank dung that anyone would OOC'ILY IM another player and screw things up IC.

Again: this is not what happened.

[Faglore]

It's a crock of kank dung that anyone would OOC'ILY IM another player and screw things up IC.

Again: this is not what happened.

Are you sure Sanvean? How do you know for certain.. unless you can gain access to aim logs.

The truth is, sorry to say, alot of people cheat, alot of people in power cheat, alot of people in very high places of power cheat. Sure it's everyone's instinct to make fun of the person who is complaining, but how the hell do you know who is right or wrong. The way I would deal with a cheater is to log the events, then send a detailed e-mail to the mud. Or, I would get a well-lubricated turkey baster, and beat up their father in the shower, then dress him in some sort of pretty dress and throw him on the street.

[Tlaloc]

I think its fairly safe to say that, yes, Sanvean is sure. She has access to several things, including runlogs of the mud, flat out asking various immortals (and PCs) involved, and more than a handful of other nifty neat tricks up her (and the rest of the staffs) sleeves.

The way you would deal with a cheater is the right way to deal with one. Log the events, and email them to the mud. After years of doing this, the staff has gotten rather good at tracking down cheaters, and righting the wrongs. I am confident that what Sanvean posted originally is an accurate representation of the events.

REGARDLESS..............It's a crock of kank dung that anyone would OOC'ILY IM another player and screw things up IC. Thats just plain kank shiat.

This statement is 100% correct, and when it happens the staff finds out and the people that do it are banned.

[Ueda]

Faglore did you even read Sanvean's post?

(Changing subject)Theres been alot of talk on how magikers should be more powerfull or more uber. I totally disagree with this, but I do see peoples point, so I am going to make a proposal, that I think will satisfy mages who are sick of getting killed by one fighting class, cause they are some slack-ass roleplayers, who think OOC Hey, it's just a mage and I'm away from the crim-code so I can do what I want.

Proposal - People that are killed by these fighting classes (Sadly you have to die for my proposal)  should email the Staff with a log and let the staff decide if it was OOC'ly of the warrior to kill you, or if there character was just UBERLY & or CRAZY enough to go out of his way to rid zalanthas of those mages that hold aweful and unknown powers. So let the Staff decide that yes it was OOC'ly or that, hey the warrior had UBER NUTZ or was just plainly NUTZ. Cause thats those are the ONLY people I could see attacking a mage.

So if the Staff decided that it was indeed OOC'ly for there Char' to do that. They should be stripped of all there fighting classes, because I agree with what people said, that its unfair to die to some twink like that, and I would like to see as little of that as possible.

[Bestatte]

Player logs are a very lousy method of determining "what happened." Anyone can write one up with notepad and make it look legit, even though it's completely fabricated.

The game already does a fine job catching twinks, by using various methods already described by Tlaloc, including game-logs that the system creates.

What I'd MUCH rather see is something I've already "idead" in the game:

Whenever anyone gets crim-flagged, have the actual line of text that caused the crim-flag to enable be added to the player's file, including date and time of occurrence. Include the actual "charge" being imposed on the criminal. When they're pardoned or the time wears off so they never get stuck in jail, have that datestamped under that line of text.

If a Templar PC visits the jail and sees someone in there, he could access *only* the charge and datestamp, showing what the guy's in for, and when it happened.

This would surely be a huge help to Templars and Soldiers, plus it's an added little bit of "proof" for the IMMs in case anyone pulls anything questionable.