Is armageddon safe and cozy?

[HavokBlue]

Raiders are, from what I've picked up, supposed to be a 'common' occurrence for the vNPC populace. It just kind've hits hard when you finally hear of a bit of raider activity and then every do good'er and their mother wants to go out raider hunting, all of a sudden.

At times, I think people can be a bit too justice-bound for this game.

The mentality that most of my characters have had is; "if it doesn't directly affect me; it's not my problem".

I feel like if I was a Templar, I would want there to be threats beyond the city walls, because that reinforces the whole "We're protecting you, stay inside!" thing.

But players get bored, and bored players don't let you have nice things, so they hire a gemmer to murder you the first time you raid their Bynner buddy and take his 2000 sid special-order OOCspeshul bow.

[Dakota]

A certain clan turned a certain area into a total kill zone within the last year. The area was dangerous, highly patrolled and bodies stacked up for a few months.

I think theirs a group of players who want more broad conflict / more raiders or raiding groups and then theirs a group of players who think such things don't bring anything to the game. I disagree with the fact they don't add anything, but then again my experience in arm is limited to two years...

That being said some of my most fun have been being raided, raiding and playing antagonist that try to promote conflict across a few groups and or PCs (as opposed to meaningless and senseless fights that don't bring anything to the game).

But keep in mind, if you want to stir the pot and rile things up, make sure you have an RP purpose that makes sense.. And be prepared to run into obstacles that will likely get you killed.

Even the best gunslingers get gunned down one way or another.

[Morrolan]

Yeah, I like playing raided people who keep their calm, give what they can, and keep what they truly need to get to civilization.

"Here are all my expensive things in a nice pile. Now, I am going to keep this waterskin, my hat, and my cheap backup weapon. Because without those things, I am going to see how many of you I can take with me."

People who live in a truly dangerous world would probably be a bit calmer about the whole "raid" thing. I know I used to have a grebber back in 2005 who, when raided, simply nodded calmly, stayed polite, and passed over a couple of expensive (for him) items. He did not look at the guy, did not posture, and looked at it as a tax. He never even told anyone.

[Gunnerblaster]

Conflict is good for business; be it a rampaging horde of Staff-controlled Mantis or a PC-organized raiding crew.

Instead of trying to be the one to end the problem; why not try contemplating how you can most benefit from it?

Example: Group of raiders are making travel dangerous.
Option A.) Hunt them down and kill them. They are possibly better trained, more prepared, and more likely to kill me.
Option B.) Contact their leader behind the scenes, if possible, and attempt a little 'business dealing'. You pretend to escort people for a price, the raider group doesn't bother you when escorting, and they get a cut of the fees for playing nice.

[BleakOne]

I've tried to be a good victim when I've been raided. I was never killed despite having several characters held up. Usually the price was quite small, considering.

[Feco]

I've tried to be a good victim when I've been raided. I was never killed despite having several characters held up. Usually the price was quite small, considering.

As a raider, interaction trumps coded trophies.

[BleakOne]

I've tried to be a good victim when I've been raided. I was never killed despite having several characters held up. Usually the price was quite small, considering.

As a raider, interaction trumps coded trophies.

Once I even managed to get employment out of it. 

[Kebron]

I'm jealous now, I only ever got raided by the:

"an arrow flies in from the west and hits you in the neck"


or the

3 characters ride in, with no emote chop chop death splash...

There was this one defiler that was absolutely crazy though. I was never sure if it was an NPC or a PC. He caught me on my first character sleeping in the desert. Woke me up long enough to make a scary magickal emote, and then knocked me out again. Only to have himself sapped by my mullish friend that was collecting plants the next room over I guess he didn't notice...

Ran into him 3 more times... can't remember if we killed him I know we killed one that tried to raid us but I don't think it was the same one.

definately ran into him several more times though and it became one of those "does this guy ever give up?" kind of things.

[Khorm]

raiders are amazing. i really do think it's a shame that the red fangs got shut down. my red fang was probably my most fun character in the entire world, and I think probably 60% of his time was devoted to raiding the shit out of everyone on the planet. he raided a ridiculous amount of people, and there were maybe.. four pks that resulted from that. maybe one or two of them were an accidental result of "bash guythatjustspamwalkedaway". he of course died to something absolutely dumb and magick, but that's pretty much the name of the game when you're playing an antagonist. i don't think that successfully causing conflict needs to result in deaths to be effective.

conflict is essential to a game like this, and it had better not have become "safe and cozy". conflict creates a ripple effect that gets people involved and on board in ways that aren't going to happen when you're sitting around some tavern with a thumb up your ass waiting for dawn or whatever. i really do believe that a few more people need to sack up and put some shit on the line and get things moving. i have a feeling that if this happened we wouldn't be having debates in threads about whether or not you can create significant plots without staff assistance.

[Case]

I would say a significant reason for the perceived lack of conflict (I personally see tons) is that most players are entirely reactive or think that conflict means PKing or fucking people up for no real reason.

[A Large Bag]

At the same time too, I think people can be too hesitant to push social conflicts further now days. I see lots of badmouthing people, for the most part...that's about as far as a majority of conflict goes these days. High school bickering for conflict gets kinda old and silly after a while in a world that's supposed to be harsh and dangerous.

Also, people need to stop putting RL morals into the game. What might be considered an "over the top" or "no good" reason for killing someone in RL would likely not cause most Zalanthans to bat an eye about it. I also remember when even non-templar nobles in Allanak used to be as scary as templars and you could end up killed quite often for merely rubbing them the wrong way on accident. I once had a pc kicked out and banned from Allanak by a templar  because they farted in the presence of a noble and offended them. I believe they had thought to throw him in the arena but then the player decided to cut him a break.


Admittedly, I even find myself looking for ways not to kill someone if I can help it when I probably shouldn't be.

[Kastion]

Most of my conflict has come from getting so pissed off at someone that I would rather die then be around them anymore so its me kill them or them kill me usually. Havent seen alot of raiding or anything and I have played characters that would be in those types of conflicts. There are magickers running around though.

[Fredd]

I've tried to be a good victim when I've been raided. I was never killed despite having several characters held up. Usually the price was quite small, considering.

As a raider, interaction trumps coded trophies.

Agreed. my only raider I had, I loved. I would rob people usualy for a few coins or, more commonly, water. Because we couldn't afford water.

But it was the same, if we came upon someone. Ride up, smile, wave. And tell them we wanted a donation.

I think I killed 4-5 people total. One guy was just mouthing off to us, locked outside of allanak for the night. Just talking crap about how he knew we were raiders, and he was telling the templars. So we killed him.

The others were runners. Way we saw it. If you ran from us being nice enough to ask. Then we no longer had to be nice.

Now I want to play a raider again...

[Clearsighted]

It seems like there is always the same, solo-emoting ten year veteran defiler lurking around the sands.

[Gunnerblaster]

I miss some of the 'shakers' that I met and/or experienced rumors of when I was just getting into this game.

The Plainsman, for one. The Salarri Expansion division was pretty awesome, too.

[Delirium]

I think people are simply getting smarter about playing the game, but also, the desert has gotten a bit safer in regards to inescapable NPC threats - near the cities, anyway. Once you get beyond the well beaten trails, it becomes a lot more dangerous. I think this is perfectly okay and reasonable.

Raider clans have been staff-supported and pop up here and there, but tend to get wiped out through player initiative. We have only ourselves to blame.

I don't mind the long-lived PCs, they add some stability to an otherwise rapid turnover of faces and lives.

[Fredd]

Raider clans have been staff-supported and pop up here and there, but tend to get wiped out through player initiative. We have only ourselves to blame.

This, a hundred times this.

Every one I know of was done away with due to PLAYERS getting together and whiping them out.

[maxid]

Raider clans have been staff-supported and pop up here and there, but tend to get wiped out through player initiative. We have only ourselves to blame.

This, a hundred times this.

Every one I know of was done away with due to PLAYERS getting together and whiping them out.

And this is 100%  valid.  However, they've left a power vacuum that we are now not allowed to fill.  If new raider clans were invented/allowed, I think the world would be more interesting.  It's just not the same without something like the Red Fangs around.  Sure the SLK have raided some in the past, but it's usually a very specific area of the world, and leaves a solid chunk of the playerbase out of the fun.

Sure you could make a group of (no more than 4!) players who are all part of a 'tribe' or family and recruit a few people IC, but it'd have no staff support, no forum for organizing times, no relatively safe place to keep their stuff, no real place to train up, and it's really a shame to me.

Also, I'm going to do the odd thing of agreeing with Case, in saying that people are too quick to murder, and also A Large Bag in that people are too soft and things rarely rise above petty highschool bullshit.  What I mean by agreeing with both those people is that there are some places where everything ends a halfsecond after you step out of line with a mantis head (sometimes this is a valid way to deal with an issue, but not 100% of the time) and there are some places where it is almost unheard of for pcs to even be inconvenienced in a significant way beyond something like.. not being invited to the party!! Or getting called a poopy head!!  There's no middle ground.  This is entirely lack of player imagination.. and I'm sure there are some things I'm not seeing that enter that middle ground, but there is a massive range of ideas between 'YOU CANT COME TO MY PARTY!!!' and 'backstab amos', and people just don't often do anything but those two options that I have seen.  Again, there are probably instances of the middle ground and interesting conflict, but I feel it is underrepresented.  If you're mad at Leader PC X?  Don't just hire a 60d 'buxom doe-eyed' assassin to mudsex murder him, pick off his minions and let him know who did it, you just might be surprised at how fun the ensuing shadow war becomes. Also, Leader PC X, if you find out someone is fucking with you?  Go for fucking with them back, don't just 'contact Templar; psi AMOS NEEDS 2 DIE' it's so unimaginative.

[Semper]

Sure you could make a group of (no more than 4!) players who are all part of a 'tribe' or family and recruit a few people IC, but it'd have no staff support, no forum for organizing times, no relatively safe place to keep their stuff, no real place to train up, and it's really a shame to me.

This is what prevents any groups becoming significant enough to impact the game world. Sure a handful of PCs can get together and raid, but they'll all die or break apart due to lack of coded support before anything big gets going. It would be nice if the staff opened up the ability for PCs to start their own clans now that Arm.2 isn't going down.

[Malifaxis]

Sure you could make a group of (no more than 4!) players who are all part of a 'tribe' or family and recruit a few people IC, but it'd have no staff support, no forum for organizing times, no relatively safe place to keep their stuff, no real place to train up, and it's really a shame to me.

This is what prevents any groups becoming significant enough to impact the game world. Sure a handful of PCs can get together and raid, but they'll all die or break apart due to lack of coded support before anything big gets going. It would be nice if the staff opened up the ability for PCs to start their own clans now that Arm.2 isn't going down.

I do not believe this to be true.  Therefor:



Yam, as you can see from the pic above, I am drafting you.*

*After I return, of course.

[Riya OniSenshi]

I would say a significant reason for the perceived lack of conflict (I personally see tons) is that most players are entirely reactive or think that conflict means PKing or fucking people up for no real reason.

[maxid]

Sure you could make a group of (no more than 4!) players who are all part of a 'tribe' or family and recruit a few people IC, but it'd have no staff support, no forum for organizing times, no relatively safe place to keep their stuff, no real place to train up, and it's really a shame to me.

This is what prevents any groups becoming significant enough to impact the game world. Sure a handful of PCs can get together and raid, but they'll all die or break apart due to lack of coded support before anything big gets going. It would be nice if the staff opened up the ability for PCs to start their own clans now that Arm.2 isn't going down.

I'd even be ok with taking a few trusted players, and opening up one of the other delf tribes, or allowing a few trusted players/staff to work together to make a human raiding group, or a pack of dwarven tribals.. I mean you don't have to let any Tom, Dick, or Amos make their own clan, but we lost the majority of our outside the walls dangerous PC clans.  It'd be cool to get that back.

[Delirium]

I would say a significant reason for the perceived lack of conflict (I personally see tons) is that most players are entirely reactive or think that conflict means PKing or fucking people up for no real reason.

I also agree with this.

[A Large Bag]

I wouldn't mind seeing a raiding group that is -not- delves. Kinda been done to death.

[Nyr]

I wouldn't mind seeing a raiding group that is -not- delves. Kinda been done to death.