Concerning game trend: Not harsh enough?

[musashi]

So ... ahem ... my point being that the game can be plenty harsh already, it's just that the "struggle for food and water" isn't really part of that unless you decide to play a human/merchant/linguist who never enters the cities and tries to make it like a ranger ... then you would probably be struggling for at least food.

[FantasyWriter]

[Indies can make a ton of cash faster than an clanned characters are capable.

People keep saying this. Maybe we should clarify it to be "northern indies"?

You've never mined obsidian with a mount and a tent, have you?

[Salt Merchant]

You've never mined obsidian with a mount and a tent, have you?

I've had a character that mined plenty. What I don't understand is where people get "thousands of sid per day" from. My experience has been it might take three or four sessions with a glasshacker to end up with one to three large chunks and a couple of small ones before a deposit is exhausted. So maybe a hundred 'sid from a day's work. Then pay forty five for water and whatever for food and you're left with less than half of that. Then wait for the deposit to reappear. It can take ten days worth (= 15 hours of play) to save enough 'sid to buy a pair of studded pants from Salarr. And that's if there are no competing miners.

And at the same time, the new character is hanging his butt out for elves or raiders or the occasional drawn-back tarantula to have a good bite.


Hardly a fountain of 'sid.

[Gunnerblaster]

You've never mined obsidian with a mount and a tent, have you?

Yeah, I've had quite a few characters try to make a living off of mining obsidian. You have the potential to either score big, score medium or score crappy when it comes to it and, like mentioned above, you may think your close enough to the city to be safe but, I've also have a few characters who've fallen victim to that same belief.

Mining obsidian is good because of the instant gratification you get for turning in those bits of rock in at the end of the day, but it's definitely not a big money maker.

[jcljules]

My second character wanted to be a trader. He was class merchant. For start up capital I spam mined obsidian for several days. I made five thousand coins. I didn't even have a tent. Its definitely too easy, especially since I was a newbie at the time who barely knew anything about the code or game world.

Not that the coin did me any good, seeing as I was friendless and lame.

[musashi]

You're still lame 

[My 2 sids]

Harshness should be measured by over-all average PCs, not spamming.   

[Rhyden]

There's plenty of harsh. If you're not in the Byn, in a city, in a tribe, Kurac, the rinth, or Under Tuluk, and you're not feeling any harshness factor, maybe you're a kindly sweet old character living in Red Storm who gives people free bread?

The game is harsh by design.

[ibusoe]

If you aren't experiencing harshness in the game's current environment, I suspect how your playing your own character is more likely the cause then anything else.  The harshness is out there, waiting.  If you're playing a character who takes no risks, you certainly can't bitch about having a safe time.  

Yeah, exactly.  As I've stated elsewhere, my complaint is not that "the game is too easy."  My complaint is that people make things too easy on themselves, which is essentially what you're stating.

While I'm a fan of MUD sexing, social climbing and tavern sitting, people tend to focus on these activities to the exclusion of realism.

It's been said before, but most PCs should be exactly, or fairly close to, what the game documentation demands. PCs aren't there to be extremely different, but they do have more opportunities.

Really, if you play with the expectation that your PC will grow to like certain people and hate others, the conflict and "harshness" is all set out for you. It's just up to you to grab it by the horns. You don't have to go out of your way to create problems out of thin air - the tension continually exists.

Yeah, this is exactly right, and closely related to what I'm trying to say.  As I see it, the whole --point-- of Armageddon is that the world is so tough that the lives of average people are not at all ordinary and are in fact quite intense.  We as players are meant to be playing your average Joe, with the occasional exception of your odd House member or mul here or there thrown in for variety.

[Salt Merchant]

My second character wanted to be a trader. He was class merchant. For start up capital I spam mined obsidian for several days. I made five thousand coins. I didn't even have a tent.

Possibly once upon a time you could do this. But if you did, the system has been tweaked since. There's no way you could make 5000 coins in "several days", for example; the mining office simply won't buy that much obsidian in that period of time.

[My 2 sids]

Can we have a point of reference here?

I think there needs to be a little perspective given if some player is logging on for 10 hours of straight (rl) obsidian mining.

[Pale Horse]

My second character wanted to be a trader. He was class merchant. For start up capital I spam mined obsidian for several days. I made five thousand coins. I didn't even have a tent.

Possibly once upon a time you could do this. But if you did, the system has been tweaked since. There's no way you could make 5000 coins in "several days", for example; the mining office simply won't buy that much obsidian in that period of time.

IG days, or RL days?  Totally possible with RL days.

[Pale Horse]

We as players are meant to be playing your average Joe, with the occasional exception of your odd House member or mul here or there thrown in for variety.

Mmmhmmm...I would have to disagree with this.

If this were so, why have clans?  Why have tribes?  We may start out as 'Average Joe', but we're certainly not expected to remain as such.  You're average Amos Zalanthan never even dreams about the amount of coin even just an 'average' PC makes, for example.

Average Zalanthan may be different and harsh for an Average Earthling, but in the end, this is still a game, as much as we laud "Realism" and "sticking to the docs."  All good things and, in my opinion, should be applied..but we could get into endless arguments about what the docs actually mean, or what real "Realism" actually is...and we've done so.  Numerous times.  In uncountable threads.

[Salt Merchant]

IG days, or RL days?  Totally possible with RL days.

I'd say if someone is sinking seventy hours of their life into scratching for coin, let them have their measly few thousand.

[jcljules]

IG days, or RL days?  Totally possible with RL days.

I'd say if someone is sinking seventy hours of their life into scratching for coin, let them have their measly few thousand.

I meant a few hours every real life day over the period of less than a week. Like I'd log on Monday through Friday to mine for a few hours.

[Olgaris]

Insert here a comment in which I pretend to be a more experienced player and give a depressing but informative anecdote about that one time I tried to prolong conflict and not kill the dumb fucker and they turned around and went revenge-kung-fu-hero on my ass and burned me out on sparing people again.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what to do about that problem, though. I think staff could probably do more to promote the prolonged-conflict behavior they want to see. Leaving it up to the playerbase seems to eventually lead to all of us wallowing in ennui over the issue.

I haven't read past this, so this may well be answered already, but... How?

In all honesty, the players that hold a hegemony on the GDB can probably do a LOT more to influence change in attitudes than the staff can. We're not going to ban PK, and short of that it's a shift in attitude that you're looking for it seems, and we can't do that.

[Salt Merchant]

the players that hold a hegemony on the GDB can probably do a LOT more to influence change in attitudes than the staff can.

This is an interesting statement. Who are the players that hold the hegemony? The ones that post most often? Or is there a perceptible group that puts a group smack down on any dissenters?

(I pick door number two).

[Yam]

I'm in the hegemony, Salt Merchant.

Your reign of new ideas (and terror) is over. Expect a representative from the Indepentent General Discussion Hegemony to contact you shortly.

[FantasyWriter]

And we will sacrifice you to Ginka.

[Gimfalisette]

I think staff could probably do more to promote the prolonged-conflict behavior they want to see. Leaving it up to the playerbase seems to eventually lead to all of us wallowing in ennui over the issue.

I haven't read past this, so this may well be answered already, but... How?

In all honesty, the players that hold a hegemony on the GDB can probably do a LOT more to influence change in attitudes than the staff can. We're not going to ban PK, and short of that it's a shift in attitude that you're looking for it seems, and we can't do that.

Stuff I think staff could do:

-- When players write in to clan staff about plot stuff, make concrete suggestions as to how to achieve particular goals without killing. I have seen this done on occasion, but not often. I don't know if it's a policy to do that or not, but if there is a general staff desire for conflict to be long-term, then it would seem to make sense.

-- If staff notice that someone is PKing a lot, and possibly going to put a note on their account about it, then an email conversation with the player should be had as a matter of course. I don't know if this is done or not, but I suspect it's not done in a coordinated or policy-driven way.

-- If there is a particular clan that is supposed to be known for raiding or brutality or whatever, then the staff of that clan might work specifically with those players in a how-to manner...how to raid without always killing, how to torture and make that a scene where the victim feels they can trust the RP of the other players, etc.

-- Work on general measures to increase trust between players. Sometimes the GDB is too flamey and awful, and to be honest, I think it decreases trust between players. Moderation could be done in a way that feels more coordinated and fair.

-- Code in solutions that the players have suggested for more non-lethal options when it comes to detainment, torture, and punishment. Yes, we will always have players who refuse to "lose" in a conflict, but I don't really think they are the majority in the playerbase; however, we have a lot of players who would love to be brutal and mean and leave conflict open-ended, but there are just too few coded ways to do this.

That's it off the top of my head for the moment.

[Ocotillo]

Call me a little boy, but every time I hear the word "hegemony" I still flash back to Ender's Game and mutter to myself about how Peter wasn't really that bad.

[a strange shadow]

I flash back to this game, from my Skotos days in the far distant past:

http://hegemony.skotos.net/

[Medena]

Everytime I see the word I flash back to sociology textbooks and classes.

[Gunnerblaster]

Everytime I see the word...

Nothing happens. A blank slate comes up.

[Cutthroat]

When I see hegemony, I think of a man giving his ex-wife a hedge maze.

* Cutthroat  continues to hit himself in the head with a hammer before going to sleep.