Is it wrong that I want to kill all of you?

[Eyeball]

tldr; What if the glass ceiling and lack of real possibility is what's actually making this game boring?

It's too late, IAmJacksOpinion. Most of the people who want a dynamic environment have left now. Those still here seem to be content with how things are (big SOCIAL and small KILLING), which is why you'll find nothing but resistance on the GDB.

[Desertman]

tldr; What if the glass ceiling and lack of real possibility is what's actually making this game boring?

It's too late, IAmJacksOpinion. Most of the people who want a dynamic environment have left now. Those still here seem to be content with how things are (big SOCIAL and small KILLING), which is why you'll find nothing but resistance on the GDB.

Maybe I was just never part of the "killing groups", but it seems to me like just as much killing goes on now as it always has.

Maybe the ratio of number of PVP murders to total number of players active has dropped since our playbase has gotten bigger. I could see that. But as for raw numbers of PK's happening regularly that I personally know about...it seems like business as usual to me.

Armageddon has never been a game where I've seen people slaughtering each other wholesale outside of wars and RPT's. Usually you hear about one or two here or there a week, and it keeps those deaths interesting.

I don't really want a game where I'm hearing about a new murder twice a RL day. It would make murder and death yawn worthy for me instead of an interesting story.

[Kismetic]

If life was any more expendable than it was already, we should rename the game to Thunderdome, and make it a strictly PK mud.  I'd still play, sometimes.

[bcw81]

Less posting more plotting. Turn to.

I am plotting as hard as I can damnit.

[musashi]

I think the lack of satisfaction people in IAmJacksOpinion's camp feel comes from Die Hard Syndrome.

Some people like to role play for the social interactions and intrigue where murder is the climax of a story line. I think for people like these Armageddon as it currently stands is generally a fun game, but it can be disappointing when crucial people in the story get carru'd randomly and you're left with no climax for your plot.

But for other people, they enjoy the game when it's more like a Die Hard movie. Action action action death and destruction all the time with awesome explosions wherein their characters are beaten down to a bloody pulp ... ... Armageddon can do that for them too no problem except for one minor snag. These kinds of players still want to come out on top when it's all said and done. Or at the very least they want their death to be a glorious epic ballad the likes of which the bards will sing about for ages to come.

Players who want this experience can get it really well in a table top game where the storyteller has complete control over the world, the players are not fighting against each other generally speaking, and they are the focal point around which the world is revolving. In that setting you can have countless close calls and "got by on the skin of your teeth" moments.

Armageddon isn't good at delivering that kind of experience. It can do the action, death, and destruction no problem, but like the universe ... it is entirely indifferent towards anyone's individual PC. If you get into the thick of the shit ... you are very likely to die. Quickly. And without ceremony. No matter what your class is, no matter how many days played you are. How well you trained your skills. Or what kind of sweet elite gear you have.

So when people complain that Armageddon doesn't have enough death and conflict while at the same time, complaining out the other side of their mouth that any conflict that gets started is quickly squashed with an uber vengeance ... I suspect that they're the above type of player, and that's what's rooted at the core of their disappointment with both ends of the spectrum Armageddon provides.

I'm not saying they're bad players, I count myself among the number of people with Die Hard Syndrome. They, we ... just have a different taste for what we like in an RPG, and Armageddon isn't really tailored to cater to it.

[Kismetic]

Well said, musashi.  I would like to think most of us live in a middle ground between those two spectrums.  One thing I wanna disagree on is the point of Armageddon not having as many close calls.  Comparative to a table-top setting, it probably doesn't, but most characters (ok, not tavern sitters, which are less common as a trope since the fall of Tuluk, maybe?) who have lived longer than a few weeks have probably already experienced a 'close moment', if not an actual death, and that's why I think the balance is a perception issue of where one is playing.

Or an outcry for PC gith or something.

[musashi]

I see what you're saying Kismetic. I think though, that most of the close calls you are alluding to tend to be PvE situations.

I have had countless close calls fighting a mob in the desert that almost killed me but I managed to get away from just in the nick of time.

I was speaking more to when player vs player conflict is the dynamic going on, or an epic RPT like mass extinction event - within the context of a plot. I think a close call with a carru that has no vested interest in tracking down and murdering you once you flee with 5 hit points left is a lot more common than getting away from a troop of Bynners who are getting the same rush you are getting, except for them the win condition is actually catching and killing you.

In those grander situations, Armageddon is very unforgiving, and very quick.

[musashi]

To elaborate a little bit:

Even in situations where the staff might be animating something specifically for you and your group ... it's very difficult to achieve that Die Hard experience because the line between too easy and overkill is hair thin. I suspect this is why there are so many stories about entire Byn troops being slaughtered by a spam fest of mantis or tarantulas ... I honestly don't think it's because the staff wanted to twink kill everyone so they just typed in whatever command they have to load monsters and held their finger down on the enter button till the beeps stopped ...

I think it was much more likely a case of them thinking things were going a bit too easy so maybe just ... just one more spider ... ... ... shit. 

In a table top things move at the speed of a rolled die so it's a lot easier to get close to that thin line without accidentally hopping over it. In Armageddon things move at computer processing speeds ...

[Kismetic]

Well, yeah, PVE is more commonly the close call, and that bears weight, but those close calls when someone tries to kill you, and you get away, or vice versa ...  Those may be rarer, but they're a rush.

That said, whenever I've had the desire and ability to kill someone without contest, enacting that has never been difficult.  I don't know if that translates to table-top, by comparison, either, because sometimes, a body has to die.

[Kismetic]

I suspect this is why there are so many stories about entire Byn troops being slaughtered by a spam fest of mantis or tarantulas ... I honestly don't think it's because the staff wanted to twink kill everyone so they just typed in whatever command they have to load monsters and held their finger down on the enter button till the beeps stopped ...

I got rezzed the one and only time because staff typoed the number of creatures to spawn, and they got every one of us (maybe twelve people) back in the game within the hour.  I know staff can be fair, and times when a party just gets obliterated, I want to trust that the response was proportionate, and going back to that tabletop analogy I do like, sometimes you spend the end of the night marking and erasing new character sheets.

On another note, welcome back.  You have always been a fun person to chat/debate/go-to-philisophical-war with.

[wizturbo]

In a table top things move at the speed of a rolled die so it's a lot easier to get close to that thin line without accidentally hopping over it. In Armageddon things move at computer processing speeds ...

I would love it if combat took 10x longer (literally) but was more deadly.  And by longer, I mean, long delays between attacks.  It would allow for combat with 5-6 other players to be intelligible rather than so much spam it's impossible to see what's actually going on.

[musashi]

I totally agree. It's a big rush.

I just think the ratio of getting that rush vs getting a wtf moment where you're staring at the mantis head on your screen and have to go back through the buffer just to see what the hell happened ... leans heavily towards the latter.

Hence the complaining on the GDB.

Where as in table top games, it leans much more heavily towards the former.

[Kismetic]

You know what?  I was thinking about this the other day when I killed some guy.  That old idea of the timed final emote before mantishead.  So much closure, so less whining.

[musashi]

and going back to that tabletop analogy I do like, sometimes you spend the end of the night marking and erasing new character sheets.

On another note, welcome back.  You have always been a fun person to chat/debate/go-to-philisophical-war with.

You do for sure. I'm not saying these things don't happen in table top games ... or that their inverse doesn't happen in Armageddon. I'm just saying that the frequency at which they happen are very different.

And thanks.

[musashi]

That said, whenever I've had the desire and ability to kill someone without contest, enacting that has never been difficult.  I don't know if that translates to table-top, by comparison, either, because sometimes, a body has to die.

Yeah. I've experienced conflict in Armageddon from a plethora of angles. Not every angle yet I'm sure but I've:

• been the victim in the jail cell getting a slow drawn out death from the powers that be.
• been the powers that be giving the slow drawn out death to the victim in the jail cell.
• been the poor sod getting jumped in the middle of the desert.
• been the guy jumping the poor sod in the middle of the desert.
• been the deviant getting hunted down by a war band.
• been a part of the war band hunting down the deviant.
• been the deviant who obliterated the war band that was trying to hunt him down.
• been in large mass battles with death flying around like cats in a tornado.
• been the unstoppable engine of death one hitting bahamets and wading through mantis hives and gith packs.

Out of all the situations I've been through, the deaths and conflict that were most enjoyable have been the slow jail cell variety because at least you have a chance to process what's going on.

In all of the others, whether I come out of it as the slain or the victor ... I'm always left with that wet blanket feeling of: Wow ... that escalated quickly. Having an action sequence that is stretched out long enough to really build up that gritty sense of tension and excitement that you find in table top ... I just haven't seen it in Armageddon, and I think the reason lies in how quickly the code resolves conflict, and I don't know that it's something that can be changed, or should be changed even. Arm is just different like that.

[musashi]

I would love it if combat took 10x longer (literally) but was more deadly.  And by longer, I mean, long delays between attacks.  It would allow for combat with 5-6 other players to be intelligible rather than so much spam it's impossible to see what's actually going on.

Yeah. The most nerve racking combat I have ever been in was always 1 on 1. The combat engine of Armageddon seems to delivery the nail biting experience best in 1 on 1. It's just slow enough to read and process what's happening. Get some emoting in, some witty banter, etc.

The more people you involve in the conflict though, the more the game quickly spams up and turns into a landslide of text on your screen that you're desperately trying to ignore and just focus on your HP so you know when you spam flee. At least in my experience.

[Kismetic]

I said this once in another thread, maybe even this one, that Arm requires a degree of efficiency.  I don't want to wait longer for a coded action than it takes me to fire off an emote from the hip.  Combat could be about ...   10-20% slower, and I'm all for it.  And deathmotes.

[musashi]

Yeah. I sympathize with the sentiment ... but I honestly don't have any good suggestions for what could be done to fix it.

Making combat slower would probably make 1 on 1 combat tedious in the extreme, and I reckon a lot of combat in this game both PvP and PvE ends up being 1 on 1 whether it's sparring in a clan compound or hunter vs scrab so ... I'm honestly not on board with making combat slower because I think it would hurt more than help.

Death emotes also sound nice at first glance to me but when I try to envision how that would look and play out in a larger battle where people are dying all the time, often with no idea what happened leading up to their death until after they re-read the logs ... it seems like it would be clunky and awkward.

It seems to me that any meaningful solutions would need to be tailored towards the type of event in question. Code changes that only affect mass combat but not 1 one 1 combat for example ... but I'm not a coder, and I have no idea how feasible such a solution would be.

So basically ... I've just resigned myself to Armageddon giving a different experience than a table top RPG does, and I've tried to enjoy a different style of play than the Die Hard style I normally par take in.

[musashi]

... ... but I still voted for bitch bring it on in the poll. 

Old habits die hard.

[Mordiggian]

It's a challenge to create properly balanced 'encounters' in 'PvE' situations because once you start dealing with large numbers of PCs, and/or very skilled PCs, there is a very, very fine line between an encounter that the PCs demolish in five seconds, and an encounter that results in a bunch of PK reports.

[ABoredLion]

I think I remember seeing somewhere that in a scenario where staff accidentally kill a player, there's like five PK reports in some form or another following it, that -someone- has to wade through. I can imagine the headache. I think some staff members have really perfected that balance you speak of though, Mord.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

It's a challenge to create properly balanced 'encounters' in 'PvE' situations because once you start dealing with large numbers of PCs, and/or very skilled PCs, there is a very, very fine line between an encounter that the PCs demolish in five seconds, and an encounter that results in a bunch of PK reports.

I think that this is more an issue of how targets are chosen than anything else. If you knew the first npc would attack the first pc, and so on, that alone would change group combat.

[Kismetic]

... ... but I still voted for bitch bring it on in the poll. 

Old habits die hard.

Yeah, most of us did. 

[Mordiggian]

It's a challenge to create properly balanced 'encounters' in 'PvE' situations because once you start dealing with large numbers of PCs, and/or very skilled PCs, there is a very, very fine line between an encounter that the PCs demolish in five seconds, and an encounter that results in a bunch of PK reports.

I think that this is more an issue of how targets are chosen than anything else. If you knew the first npc would attack the first pc, and so on, that alone would change group combat.

Nah, I can't search for the post right now but I think it was Talia that explained targeting in another thread. Usually the NPCs are launched at you with no specific target, but if we wanted to do something like make sure the templar leading the charge is attacked first, it's entirely doable.

The encounter balance issue is more a side effect of the way the game handles combat, but fortunately there are some super creative people on staff who have come up with some awesome (sinister?) solutions.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Glad to know that there are solutions to such an issue, and that they apparently get used well. Excellent.