Following into falls or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sinkhole

[bcw81]

;-; I fell down my first hole this week. It was terrible. I cried. I was going to be the first sergeant not to do that and now I failed! (It was actually pretty fun to RP, but still)

It's a right of passage.

[Is Friday]

Yeah I'm sure it was fun to RP in your biography entries because everyone died to the fall of wait...

[bcw81]

Yeah I'm sure it was fun to RP in your biography entries because everyone died to the fall of wait...

No one died. It was the same hole.

[Is Friday]

Yeah no one cares.

Congratulations on having a group with a lot of stun and hp. Maybe that's what we're doing wrong, guys. Just keep rerolling until you have enough stun and hp to RP out these great scenarios.

[Mordiggian]

I think there are merits to this discussion but if this thread is going go the same route the resurrection thread dead, it's going to get killed.

[nauta]

For an easy, non-code intensive option you can change all obvious fall rooms to just have an unusual direction coded to them. Like "Down" for instance. So instead of going "North" and falling off the edge, you have to type "Down."

This won't stop fleeing off a cliff on accident, or stumbling off during a sandstorm, but so what? There's no reason why those wouldn't be legitimate dangers.

It also requires no work on the coder's part. Just need a Builder to go in and change the directions.

I suppose the problem with this is when there are multiple exits that are falls (rooftops) and where 'down' is already taken up.

[Delirium]

What's more ridiculous, a misplaced keystroke sending you over the edge of a massive cliff, or coded protections in place against OOC mistakes?

Coded protection wouldn't stop you from:

a) Being disoriented in a storm and going over the edge
b) fleeing in the wrong direction and going over the edge
c) various magickal attacks
d) being subdued and thrown over the edge
e) a crit-failed ride attempt sending you over the edge
f) I'm sure the list goes on

It would simply protect you against meaning to type "l n" and typing "n" or a lack of OOC understanding that it was a climb room.

I think this draws the right distinction: there are IG dangers that are coded (a-f are great examples).  Then there are OOC dangers (typos and poor room descriptions).  I suppose I'd be of the camp who would like to eliminate OOC dangers from the game.  Sure having OOC dangers helps to 'simulate' a dangerous hostile world, but that's by accident, not design, and, for me at least, it is always pretty dubious, jarring, and immersion breaking.  There is no way, for example, I can understand why my PC would literally walk off a rooftop, or why my PC decided to sap their mount instead of that jozhal.  In such cases, I (and others) have to go back and do post hoc explanations, which are often super flimsy.  (By analogy, I remember a while back someone suggesting that the wall-of-spam effect in bars 'simulates' how noisy a bar is - in a sense this is true, but that's by accident, not design.)

Finally, someone who gets it.

[Asanadas]

"I, the player, shouldn't be subject to flawed construction of the in-game world environment where, communicating through a text parser, and observing the world through text, arbitrary and illogical flaws from a system made by an amateur coder years ago can insta-kill my character and everyone else around him."

[Beethoven]

I agree with you, Delirium. Like I said, it didn't feel "harsh" or "gritty" when I walked off the edge of the Shield Wall; mostly, it felt like slapstick comedy. I had to make up some silly reason why he had done that, (namely, "the sun was in my eyes!") It made everyone treat him like he was stupid for the rest of his life, when it was really just my dumb OOC mistake, since I forgot which room desc indicated the very edge, and second-guessed myself. I wasn't blown away by how unforgiving and dangerous the desert environment was. I just felt like I was screwed over by an OOC thing that my character would have never realistically done, and was forced to make up a shitty way to explain it IC.

[RogueGunslinger]

I get that same feeling when my character randomly decides to walk out into the desert without mounting his beetle, or when some House  aide is wearing gloves and silks and I bow to them.

At the end of the day there's a million different OOC mistakes you can make that will affect your character. That's just kind of how the game works.

[Beethoven]

You can fix some of that stuff more easily than others. You can't fix the beetle thing. The House aide thing can be an IC mistake as easily as an OOC mistake.

[RogueGunslinger]

edit: Was side-trackign the thread.

[Asanadas]

Yeah, those are haha funny mistakes. Things that are whipped away with an OOC wink and a nod.

Running your entire clan off a cliff is haha funny, too. Except, there's no agency to laugh it off because you've sealed the book-end of your character and multiple others.

Can you recognize that these things cannot be equated? It's the difference between getting shot by a BB pellet and a .50. "Well you got shot both times! Builds character!" That's pretty nonsense.

Bootstraps though.

[Beethoven]

I am with you all the way, Asanadas.

[Armaddict]

Hehehe... slippery slope arguments.  Ironic.

I think you're misinterpreting.  I wasn't saying if this happens, these other things will happen.  I was drawing comparisons to other areas of the game where a similar sort of problem exists.  OOC mistakes that have IC ramifications, to demonstrate that this is not a secluded bastion of nonsense that is refusing to be fixed, it's part of how the game functions.

Some of those things are things that I, the player, have felt wronged by.  I have my own 'oopsie deaths' to my name.  This is, however, a -raw- topic having to do directly with recent events...things are always far more pressured when they're -raw-.

What I am arguing against is the idea that the playerbase feels that their behavior should be safeguarded by code to allow them to take some risks but not others.  If this static danger is always there...why are you skirting right by it?  If you're in unfamiliar ground...why are you not checking things out very carefully?  People fall off cliffs in Real Life, as well, you know.  To say it would never happen because <this> is wrong.  When people give you explanations of why it could have happened, you say no, because you're in direct control of your character and that's not how it happened.  Yet you, under direct control of your character, make a mistake, and it's tossed as a code misgiving.

I have been in situations where I have led people off a cliff.  It is a giant 'Oh.  Shit.'  I came up with an IC excuse, dealt with ramifications, and moved on.  The first step of it, though, was accounting for the fact that I could have done things very differently and avoided the situation entirely.  It wasn't the code's fault I went off a cliff.  I literally put myself into the position where I could slip.  The poor decision was being in that position in the first place, where a slip-up could occur.  PC safety comes through PC action, PC risk also comes through PC action, which is dictated by the player, not the code.

[RogueGunslinger]

Yeah, those are haha funny mistakes. Things that are whipped away with an OOC wink and a nod.

Running your entire clan off a cliff is haha funny, too. Except, there's no agency to laugh it off because you've sealed the book-end of your character and multiple others.

Can you recognize that these things cannot be equated? It's the difference between getting shot by a BB pellet and a .50. "Well you got shot both times! Builds character!" That's pretty nonsense.

Bootstraps though.

First off, we were were discussing falling in holes, not leading others into holes. Secondly traipsing out into the wilderness without a mount can be just as deadly as falling off a cliff. And theres plenty other ways a simple OOC mistake can get you killed. Mistargets being one of the better examples. My whole point is there's little difference between accidentally typing a direction, and falling off a cliff, and the numerous other ways you can make an input error and die.

I don't want the danger of falling off things to go away completely. I like that that fear causes people to slow down, take their environment into consideration and interact with it. Some of the ideas in this thread to limit the possibility of falling off things comes off kind of like lifting the gutter bumpers in bowling.

[Beethoven]

Yeah, those are haha funny mistakes. Things that are whipped away with an OOC wink and a nod.

Running your entire clan off a cliff is haha funny, too. Except, there's no agency to laugh it off because you've sealed the book-end of your character and multiple others.

Can you recognize that these things cannot be equated? It's the difference between getting shot by a BB pellet and a .50. "Well you got shot both times! Builds character!" That's pretty nonsense.

Bootstraps though.

First off, we were were discussing falling in holes, not leading others into holes. Secondly traipsing out into the wilderness without a mount can be just as deadly as falling off a cliff. And theres plenty other ways a simple OOC mistake can get you killed. Mistargets being one of the better examples. My whole point is there's little difference between accidentally typing a direction, and falling off a cliff, and the numerous other ways you can make an input error and die.

I don't want the danger of falling off things to go away completely.

I don't, either, but I want to be sure they're 'OH HIGHLORD GOTTA GET AWAY--OH SHIT' falls instead of 'dum-diddly-dum OH SHIT' falls.

[RogueGunslinger]

Don't treat the wilderness as a place you can just diddly-dum your way around and be safe, and it's not a problem. I can't be the only person who spams look in every direction after I move a room?

[Synthesis]

If you sit in the Gaj your entire life, you'll never fall down a hole.

This is not an optimal solution.

[Is Friday]

I wonder if it's possible to make the fall rooms only fit one PC at a time much like certain tunnel rooms. This would prevent train wreck lemming RPTs. I'm fine with the leader / guide going down, but unless they're riding nut-to-butt I don't see it as being defensible.

[Beethoven]

I always spam look and try to be careful, and it happened to me. I felt the room desc was misleading at the time, when I didn't know better, and it still felt dum-diddly dum.

[wizturbo]

Since I return to Armageddon after an extended hiatus, I can say with absolute certainty that a hole in the ground is the most dangerous force in the world for PCs.  More PCs have died to a hole in the ground than all of the absolutely insane shit that's been going on since October 2014.    I won't go into what that insane shit is, for IC reasons, but when a hole in the ground tops all of that in terms of PC death counts there's a problem...and it isn't "harsh desert world" it's an OOC error, with no IC explanation for it whatsoever.

Sorry, but a hole in the ground doesn't make me think its a harsh and gritty world.  If you want to keep the same harsh, gritty feel, go make tons of other IC desert threats.  Roving packs of gith, or flying fucking spiders, but don't tell me that a hole in the ground is the IC fear we should all have when leaving the city.

[RogueGunslinger]

I always spam look and try to be careful, and it happened to me. I felt the room desc was misleading at the time, when I didn't know better, and it still felt dum-diddly dum.

No doubt, there were times rooms could be misleading, I've done that too in times past, but I think they've mostly been fixed them and give fair warnings. Or even, in the case of the shield-wall, stop you completely. The recent additions to the sinkhole freaked me out at first because they're very blatant.

Since I return to Armageddon after an extended hiatus, I can say with absolute certainty that a hole in the ground is the most dangerous force in the world for PCs.  More PCs have died to a hole in the ground than all of the absolutely insane shit that's been going on since October 2014.    I won't go into what that insane shit is, for IC reasons, but when a hole in the ground tops all of that in terms of PC death counts there's a problem...and it isn't "harsh desert world" it's an OOC error, with no IC explanation for it whatsoever.

Sorry, but a hole in the ground doesn't make me think its a harsh and gritty world.  If you want to keep the same harsh, gritty feel, go make tons of other IC desert threats.  Roving packs of gith, or flying fucking spiders, but don't tell me that a hole in the ground is the IC fear we should all have when leaving the city.

I seriously have no sympathy for someone who misses the blatant warnings around those rooms. For the people following them, absolutely, that's idiotic. But the more ways the environment punishes the unprepared and inattentive, the better in my book.

[Asanadas]

I've got no sympathy for people who aren't as in-tune to the threats of the world as I am.

I've got my map with all the hazards listed out, and I just stay far away from anything that has the chance to hurt me. Even if I somehow make a mistake and get close to a hazard, my arranged database of "this will kill you" triggers will light up my page and play a tiny siren so that I can stand clear. There's no reason for newer players to be cut a break for not having the collective years of experience with this game. Characters dying in OOC ways is what causes the harsh, gritty atmosphere I love!

[RogueGunslinger]

You're being ridiculous. Expecting people to check their inputs and look around their environment in an incredibly deadly world really isn't asking too much.

What the difference between walking off a cliff, because you didn't look to see where you were. And walking into a room right with a Mekillot, because you didn't look to see where you were. What's the difference between accidentally typing "n" instead of "l n" and typing "fele" instead of "flee".


Not to mention vets, with maps and triggers, still fall off stuff because they weren't paying attention.