Why do only rangers get to quit in wilderness?

[Tamarin]

Dude I don't know what you're talking about with that.  Hand to hand, warriors pretty much always rule over rangers.  THAT part DEFINITELY needs no adjustment at all.  At ALL.  It's not like rangers don't fight, but they learn how to fight against critters.  Nasty critters, sometimes.

[jmordetsky]

As for the indie Merchant question: I've played an indie merchant (as well as desert-elf warriors) and never had problems with the 'sit to quit' game. I think you just have to be aware of the weather, and the time you have on hand to make your trips...or hire yourself a newbie ranger, if you don't feel like hiring the Byn. I firmly believe there are enough quit-safe locations in the desert, that this isn't really as much of a problem as people are making this out to be.

I hear you. I do. It probably isn't an epidemic. But I can definitely know we've had lost n00bs who just never log back in because they wander out somewhere and then can't quit. I've discovered enough idle characters on foot in charlton leather boots out on a dune to make this assumption. (Of course, I do also k1llz0r them.)

And the other part is just that the 1 or 2 times that it does happen....... it's *REALLY* annoying.

I know I'm not the first person to walk 3 ticks and then say,  "oh wait"

80/80 >weather

You are in the middle of a rediculous sandstorm.

80/80 >raise hood

And sometimes this means I need to raise my hood for rp purposes....and sometimes this means I'm going to be stuck 3 ticks from the entrance to Red Storm for 4 rl hours thinking "man this sucks" on an endless loop.

Now just to restate. I'm not for giving desert full quit to everyone. But, I would like to see three subguilds given the ability at a varying penalty. And when I say pentaly, I mean like 1/2 to 2/3 of your current hit points for doing so. This is not something that would be taken lightly.

Code Select Expand

80/80 80/80 80/80> quit

Spending time in wilds has caused you to suffer.

40/80 40/80 40/80>

Come back soon!
I think something that seems so minor would completely alleviate this cause of annoyance, allow the game to remain "harsh" and give people who have other things to do a chance to do them without having to sacrifice their characters.

It would make things more playable. Without a doubt.

As far as quit points go, they are great if you know where they are (which I do) but if you are stuck, or you are a n00b and need to log out these really don't apply because you still need to find or get to one.

[Xygax]

I personally don't ever make IC game mechanics decisions based on concern for newbies.  We accomodate newbies by improving policy, polish, and UI, not by "dumbing down" the game.  Newbies get lost, confused or injured by the brutal environment in all sorts of places, most of which -aren't- in fact the desert.

Also, and this is very, very imporant: if you find sandstorms "annoying" what in blazing Suk-krath's hellpits are you doing in Red Storm?  Seriously.  Stop it.  Red Storm isn't built for people who aren't cautious enough to observe the weather ahead of them before they walk into it.  You're bound to die from this sort of behavior (if not from boredom, then from something much, much more direct), and it weakens your argument significantly.  Now that I know that your core complaint is really, "the brutal weather around Red Storm inconveniences my dainty warrior," I'm finding it very hard to give your concerns merit.

Sorry.

 -- X

[Xygax]

Also, as has been stated many times, subguilds aren't meant to give you tools with which to round out the coded deficiencies in your character.  Your character has been given coded deficiencies on purpose, so that you are forced to make difficult choices, ICly.  This is called "conflict", and our game thrives on it.  We're not going to remove this sort of conflict because you'd like to have more freedom to go sight-seeing around Red Storm.

-- X

[jmordetsky]

I personally don't ever make IC game mechanics decisions based on concern for newbies.  We accomodate newbies by improving policy, polish, and UI, not by "dumbing down" the game.  Newbies get lost, confused or injured by the brutal environment in all sorts of places, most of which -aren't- in fact the desert.

Also, and this is very, very imporant: if you find sandstorms "annoying" what in blazing Suk-krath's hellpits are you doing in Red Storm?  Seriously.  Stop it.  Red Storm isn't built for people who aren't cautious enough to observe the weather ahead of them before they walk into it.  You're bound to die from this sort of behavior (if not from boredom, then from something much, much more direct), and it weakens your argument significantly.  Now that I know that your core complaint is really, "the brutal weather around Red Storm inconveniences my dainty warrior," I'm finding it very hard to give your concerns merit.

Sorry.

 -- X

I am joe's mild annoyance. You're trivializing my argument into one point. First off, the brutal weather around red storm doesn't inconvenience my "dainty warrior".  I don't play warriors, so lets lose the "joe wants a desert quitting warrior" attitude immediately, because he doesn't.

That said,  I love that red storm is dangerous, I actually like playing there ALOT regardless and infact, because of, the weather.

What I'm trying to find a solution for about is having no OC alternative to an OC mistake that OOCly inconveniences me for many RL hours.

To which your answer will be "then play a ranger".  

To which I've responded, ranger doesn't cover my character concepts. I want to play mage that is forced hide in redstorm (who was the character in question).

To which you answer will be "its supposed to be that way, pay attention to the weather and don't journey far.".  

To which I've responded, I find it unrealistic and mildly silly that we limit the player base with OOC playability issue of not being able to quit the game when they need to when it's reasonable to come up with a coded IC penalty that would impose the same deterent.

It has very little to do with the weather (which I personally embrace, I've had a lot of fun getting lost in storms) and a lot more to do with general understanding "why" we're so adament about forcing people to idle in the desert at any juncture, in any weather.

If I'm heading from Tuluk to blackwing and my office calls with a down server, why do I need idle as D-elf bait? I honestly don't see the positives to it. And as for the play "a ranger" argument you can't tell me your not limiting character concepts by enforcing that policy. It just really makes no sense to me.

[jmordetsky]

Also, as has been stated many times, subguilds aren't meant to give you tools with which to round out the coded deficiencies in your character.  Your character has been given coded deficiencies on purpose, so that you are forced to make difficult choices, ICly.  This is called "conflict", and our game thrives on it.  We're not going to remove this sort of conflict because you'd like to have more freedom to go sight-seeing around Red Storm.

-- X

IC conflict is good. IC conflict for IC reasons is good. Taking a non-ranger out into the desert and having the possibility that the environment will cause you to ICly suffer is good.

OCly suffering with having to keep zmud open and glancing at it because you can't quit out is retarded.

[Maybe42or54]

I guess guilds do somewhat define what profession you can have.

[Delirium]

Then the Ranger guild needs immediate reduction on their combat prowess, because they are far too good at melee to be just an outdoorsmen. It can not just be a one way street.

Uh, no.  

Rangers are best when they are fighting dirty and distanced, not up close and personal.  They can get very good at defending themselves during a melee fight, but they will never, ever be able to approach the sheer destructive, asskicking power a skilled warrior can wield.  It also takes a long, long time for a ranger to be able to defend themselves like a warrior can.

Trust me.  I know.

[Xygax]

I am joe's mild annoyance. You're trivializing my argument into one point. First off, the brutal weather around red storm doesn't inconvenience my "dainty warrior".  I don't play warriors, so lets lose the "joe wants a desert quitting warrior" attitude immediately, because he doesn't.

Yes, I'm sorry.  Please substitute "elementalist" for "warrior" in the above.

What I'm trying to find a solution for about is having no OC alternative to an OC mistake that OOCly inconveniences me for many RL hours.

I'm of the philosophy that it's okay that OOC mistakes often yield IC consequences.  I have often advocated, for example, playing through typos, unless the results they yield are entirely nonsensical.

To which I've responded, I find it unrealistic and mildly silly that we limit the player base with OOC playability issue of not being able to quit the game when they need to when it's reasonable to come up with a coded IC penalty that would impose the same deterrent.

It is not unrealistic that desert sandstorms are inconvenient.  I'm not sure why you believe this.  I concede that there is an OOC playability problem to be discussed here, but I am entirely opposed to "let anyone quit in the wilderness" as the solution.  Find a different one.

It has very little to do with the weather (which I personally embrace, I've had a lot of fun getting lost in storms) and a lot more to do with general understanding "why" we're so adamant about forcing people to idle in the desert at any juncture, in any weather.

No one is forcing you to play in the desert at all, much less idle there.  You are using this assumption as a straw man, and it is causing you to craft an entirely fallacious argument.  It is possible to live without strolling through the desert (even in Red Storm), and it is possible to stroll through the desert with a non-ranger character without getting caught in storms (even in Red Storm -- and even for a non-ranger).  That said, storms are bound to curtail your wanderings even if you're paying attention to what's going on around you, and even more-so bound to extend them if you don't take the hints.  For example, if you're wandering the desert, and you notice the wind pick up -- suddenly as you're pacing along, you notice sands whipping around your ankles, for example -- and you're not a ranger, you should turn back.  You should also know (and this is common enough knowledge that I am comfortable posting it), that there are regions of the world, even particularly small ones, where sandstorms linger forever and the winds/sands are always worse than the weather even a room away.  If you're paying attention, you can navigate around these (even if you're not a ranger, and even around Red Storm).

Numerous players have coexisted with this difficulty for a very long time -- the only reason this difficulty (getting lost in blinding sandstorms) was absent for a time (a year or two, I think) was due to a bug someone had negligently dropped into the movement code.  Prior to that, and for a year now after I fixed the bug, numerous players of both rangers and non-rangers alike have survived and even thrived in the desert (without being able to quit there).

If I'm heading from Tuluk to blackwing and my office calls with a down server, why do I need idle as D-elf bait? I honestly don't see the positives to it. And as for the play "a ranger" argument you can't tell me your not limiting character concepts by enforcing that policy. It just really makes no sense to me.

If you're the on-call man that night, don't hike from Tuluk to the desert outpost.  It really is that simple.  If an emergency does arise, just wish up (I've said this before) and if someone is around and feeling helpful, they'll probably purge you (safely removing you from the world).

-- X

[Xygax]

I guess guilds do somewhat define what profession you can have.

Certainly they define what professions you can excel at.  I don't encourage you to advertise your ranger as a fireball tossing Krathi, for example.  But, you might be able to get away with it, for a while.

-- X

[jmordetsky]

Well, we're still a little caught up on storms there but...whatever

The important points I'm pulling from that:

I concede that there is an OOC playability problem to be discussed here.

Atleast we agree on something.

If you're the on-call man that night, don't hike from Tuluk to the desert outpost.  It really is that simple.  If an emergency does arise, just wish up (I've said this before) and if someone is around and feeling helpful, they'll probably purge you (safely removing you from the world).

-- X

Again, I think this *is* the "playability" issue and I know I'm not the only one.

So, we''l have to agree to disagree and until such time as it changes, rangers it is, and rangers it will be. How dull.

[Angela Christine]

Not ALL sheltered rooms are meant to be quit-safe.  Often, though the area is empty when you're there (or appears so), something lives there which returns from time to time to eat hapless PCs living in its lair.  Please don't be upset if a room you've typod (use typo, not bug --  

Wouldn't idea be even better?

[Angela Christine]

Then the Ranger guild needs immediate reduction on their combat prowess, because they are far too good at melee to be just an outdoorsmen. It can not just be a one way street.

Edited to add: What I mean is that just because way down the road a warrior will be better than a Ranger at melee is simply not enough of a distinction between somebody who is a fighter and somebody who is not.

Warriors are waaaay better than Rangers when it comes to melee combat.  Rangers may be the second best combat characters, but it really is a distant second.

Try this: roll up a ranger and then join the Byn.   Even after 3 days play time in the Byn, with all that Byn sparring and decent gear, my Ranger was getting her ass handed to her by brand new Warriors that had just joined on a regular basis.  Sparring was a painful and embarassing excercise.  Mounted combat . . . usually the sarge orders everyone to dismount before combat, so you don't get to show off Trample even if you can get it to work.  Archery sucks at first, and it is unlikely to get you much IC respect, because the non-archers in the unit don't want to stand around "guarding" while the archers take their shots.

There is nothing like playing a ranger in the Byn to make you think rangers are under-powered, not over-powered.  That makes sense.  Warriors a perfectly adapted to be mercenaries, Rangers are not.  (Though a mercenary unit will find it useful to have a ranger or two for desert missions).


Angela Christine

[Yokunama]

I think of it like this:

When you quit, your character is still in the world. The character was just added into the population to the millions of vNPCs out there. This doesn't mean your character is non-existant in the world anymore, and that is why we have IC excuses for your characters absence, whenever someone inquires about them.

If you quit in the wilderness, you are probly going to be hunting, trying to survive off the enviornment, trading with tribals, and all that good stuff. If you quit within the cities, you are probly going to be enjoying the entertainment, sexing other vNPCs, getting into small arguments with others, training, selling your wares, finding a place to sleep, and so on. Thus, if your character can not fit and adapt to the enviornment, you should not be able to quit there, because your character would more than likely die. Thats not to say that your character would not die in the enviornment best suited for them (I blame this the storage of characters ).

My question is, what would the virtual warrior, merchant, thief, and so on (excluding the ranger) be doing out in the wilderness for days at a time?

[Maybe42or54]

Semi-joking

Maybe we can take away city quitting from rangers to show that they shouldn't have extended visits in the city?

[Anonymous]

If I was Mr. Spock, I would say this debate was "fascinating."


Curiously, in my ten+ years of playing Armageddon, I have found it much easier to survive in the wastes as a warrior than as a ranger. Both guilds can skin and fight. If you can skin and fight, you can eat. Now all you need is water. All your warrior needs to do is have someone else tell him where to find a source of water, find a way to get water on his own, or occasionally make a trip to civilization to get some water. Now that you have food and water you can live in the wastes until something kills you. This is where the advantage of the warrior far outshines the ranger. Try fighting off a pair of gith, a hungry halfling, or a mul raider with a ranger.

In fact, I bet if you did a rectrospective study reviewing ranger and warrior deaths that you would find that most of them are killed by losing a fight and not by starvation or dehydration. Everyone agrees that warriors win more fights than rangers. So, once and for all I have dispelled the myth that rangers are better than warriors at surviving in the desert.

So, if warriors are better at surviving in the wilderness than rangers, why can't they quit the game like rangers? Most people roleplay quitting as resting or sleeping.  Warrior can sleep in the wastes...in the sands, in a cave, under trees. Warriors can build a tent and rest inside it for IC days through a storm. In fact, any guild can rest and sleep in the wastes. Any guild can live for years in the waste so long as they can find food, water, and nothing kills them. The only thing you can't do is quit the game.


Concurrently, if you play a ranger and don't find food, water, or a fight you can win, you will die. I find it hard to explain an OOC function like quitting the game using IC reasoning. It just doesn't make much sense to me. When playing rangers, I have quit the game in the wastes only to log back into the game into a storm at night and immediately be attacked by something while sitting atop my mount. You don't get any advantage by logging out. When you log into the game, you are still hungry, thirsty, poisoned, tired, and wounded. If you are lost, you are still lost. If the weather was bad, it might be good now. However, if the weather was good, it might be bad now.


Ranger quit is just little perk that rangers have been getting for a long time and it sounds like they will continue to get it for the foreseeable future. That's just they way it is and doesn't make a tremendous amount of IC sense. So, don't worry too much about it.

-Williamson

[Xygax]

The trick to surviving most desert battles is organized retreat, not staying to fight.  At that, Rangers are better equipped.  Rangers who stick around to fight with gith and halflings are foolish, not the defining norm of their classes.

-- X

[amoeba]

So, once and for all I have dispelled the myth that rangers are better than warriors at surviving in the desert.

I think you have shown that warriors codedly -fight- better than rangers. No big secret there.  Still does not dispell the argument.

[Yokunama]

The trick to surviving most desert battles is organized retreat, not staying to fight.  At that, Rangers are better equipped.  Rangers who stick around to fight with gith and halflings are foolish, not the defining norm of their classes.

-- X

Agreed. Rangers are survivalist - Not well-trained and beefed-up fighters.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I'll tell you something about rangers and warriors. My two longest lived characters have been, first, a warrior, and secondly, a ranger.

Warriors are absolute gods at combat, as they should be. They can survive in the desert, and for a good amount of time. But if it comes down to life or death, when the hordes come and they can not run any more, and they can't kill them all, that is when it is time to head back to the city. My warrior, who lived about 50 days, once fought off eight gith at once. This was back when there were some very scary gith NPCs, and two of those uber gith were among the fighters. They all died, as I almost did, ending the fight at last with 3 hitpoints left.

Rangers are very good at combat. If you have a ranger who can not defeat a few gith, then you are playing your ranger incorrectly, or you are a newbie. In my particular case, I had a mulish ranger at around 40 days. Obviously, a mul is a scary fighter, but when you are facing 6-10 gortok, 2 halflings, and a tembo, even a mul is vulnerable. As a ranger, with a 2 day old warrior fighting beside me, and me rescuing him constantly, we were winning the fight. Of course, a magicker who happens upon you in such a dire predicament is the last thing you need, and of course it was our undoing (and please don't comment on the number of NPCs we were fighting ... I assure you most sincerely, that was just the way the cards fell in on us that day, we were not trying to find all of that).

Rangers, as I have pointed out, are good at combat, but I absolutely concede that they are not warriors. In any fight at close range, the warrior is the best off with animal or human. Therein lies your answer. Rangers are absolute monsters with bows. Additionally, rangers can learn to both sneak and hide in the wild, to the same level as an assassin in the city can. They can forage food when they can not find game.

So, you see, when the warrior faces so many foes or so dangerous of foes that he can no longer win, when it's time to run, when it's time to hide out, to sneak past your opposition, to find food when the game is too dangerous .... the ranger wins. And he wins, hands down.

The ranger shoots first, draws blades last. The ranger sneaks away from foes. The ranger hides amongst the rocks that his foes search for him in. The ranger needs no game to live off of the land.

Warriors are city or camp based character builds, they need base.

Rangers are built to live on nothing but skill.

And that is truth.

[Nao]

*insert williamsons post here*

You're assumign that just because other dangers than aggressive NPCs and PCs, dehydratuion and starvation aren't coded that they don't exist.

But you can die in a sandstorm, or get lost, or eat something poisonous, die from an infection because you didn't bother treating it in an appropriate way or whatever.

Actually, those things are represented by code, through ranger ability to get through a sandstorm better than anyone else and they can stick around out there for longer periods of time (quit).

I've played delves that were not rangers in anunknown area before, and it worked just fine. If you don't know the quit rooms, ask around where those caves are, really. They aren't that ahrd to find, either.
Most of my playtime here went off on rangers and I still use those quit rooms pretty often when I've got to stay outside for whatever reason, because even for a ranger it makes more sense to pick the easy way and quit in some sheltered place.

[spawnloser]

You're assumign that just because other dangers than aggressive NPCs and PCs, dehydratuion and starvation aren't coded that they don't exist.

Dehydration and starvation DO exist.

Editted to add: ...and by this, I mean they ARE coded.

[Nao]

You're assumign that just because other dangers than aggressive NPCs and PCs, dehydratuion and starvation aren't coded that they don't exist.

Dehydration and starvation DO exist.

Editted to add: ...and by this, I mean they ARE coded.

You're misunderstanding me there, the sentence is confusing now that I look at it, my bad, I'm german so I have a tendency for sentences that span across half your screen.

just because other dangers than -aggressive npcs and pcs, dehydration and starvation- , just because those other dangers than those I listed aren't coded you can't assume that they don't exist.

[jhunter]

Lol, give it up Nao. That sentence just isn't working for you.  :lol:

[spawnloser]

Heheh...okay, so just because some dangers aren't coded (examples of coded dangers being startvation, dehydration and aggro critters) doesn't mean they don't exist.  This is what you meant, Nao?