all PVP is surprise attacks. Not lame, but what do we do?

[Riev]

It could be the Guild also has some means of pardoning their guys, via a friendly vNPC templar, for a hefty price. But in general, it means if you kill in apartment, you become public enemy number one, unless you've got a PC templar willing to sign off on the death.

This is an IC thing really, but anytime ANY PC engages in an assassination, unless it was done without anyone knowing who did it, it becomes a witch hunt. Everyone wants to fight the bad guy, and it gets to the point where the Templarate sends assassins after the assassins, except Templarate Assassins have all the benefit of being backed by the Templarate.

My ONLY... read ONLY problem with slowing down combat/poisons so it isn't instantaneous, is that you then need to rework flee.

Flee should be on a timer, based on skill. You "begin looking for an escape" during which time you stop attacking back, and find a way to flee. If you do, you take the attack of opportunity, unless you beat the skill check by <x> amount.

At least then, people know you're about to flee and can try to disarm, or bash, or whatever they might have to try and close the gap.

[Armaddict]

Flee would also need to have something added that adds delay to the person pursuing them to some varying degree also based on skill.  Otherwise, people will just say fuck using bash and just wait to charge in and attack again.

You might say that's well and good, but as it gets played out and people get used to it, it would get tiresome and pointless, I promise.

[Greve]

You're already lagged out for like a year when you initiate combat. This is part of why people feel forced to resort to instant/inescapable ganks.

[Hauwke]

You're already lagged out for like a year when you initiate combat. This is part of why people feel forced to resort to instant/inescapable ganks.

A large chunk of that, is people spamming the hell out of flee until they succeed, then just spam walking off.

Putting a delay on flee attempts, preferably a before delay, so there was warning so that something could be done about it, would be a good solution to that. It would potentially lower the number of one hit kill attempts, because then Angry Amos the Byn Fighter could feasibly kill a guy in PvP.

But, it would cause a whole slew of problems with people being unable to run away by spamming it and hiding. Would it not? Yup, that's the point.

If you want to run away, you will actually need the skill, because that's what it is, a skill. It's not just running from a fight, it's running in a manner that doesn't cause you to trip up, doesn't allow the guy to cut you off.

[Heade]

Culturally, murder could become the province of the templars. Taking the life of a citizen must be licensed by the Highlord, because all lives belong to Him. Assassins and the like that kill in Allanak, even in areas like apartments,  are branded super-criminals and automatically given permanent Wanted flags. Thieves and burglars that steal from certain people and places are automatically given temporary Wanted flags. Casting a spell without a gem should give you a permanent Wanted flag.

If you have a Wanted flag, soldiers should be able to track you down, via asking vNPCs which way you went, maybe via special flagged tracks that appear with the Hunt command. There should be (an even greater) move cost for sneak-hiding while Wanted.

(and by certain places, I mean, the Gaj and it's apartments, because we want for those places to be used. If you do your criminal stuff there, you lose the ability to be social in Nak.)

It could be the Guild also has some means of pardoning their guys, via a friendly vNPC templar, for a hefty price. But in general, it means if you kill in apartment, you become public enemy number one, unless you've got a PC templar willing to sign off on the death.

Not a fan of this part of your ideas. We have to remember that the City-States are huge and lacking in technology. Being able to get a rock-solid description of a murderer that could reasonably identify him/her from the other million inhabitants of the city and then being able to spread that description among said populace, and having said downtrodden populace actually give a shit is, in my opinion, an act of futility.

The coded number of locations is inconsistent with the documented size of the city-state. Because of how large the city is, in the canon, I have always looked at places like the Gaj as only representative of one of the many, many taverns that would, in reality, be throughout the city. But because we have a playerbase that is a far cry from the 1 million+ inhabitants of Allanak, it is difficult to remember that you're in a huge, overpopulated metropolis of a city. But, this is a roleplaying game, and that IS the city we inhabit.

[number13]

Not a fan of this part of your ideas. We have to remember that the City-States are huge 

The amount of witnesses is huge and we lack the ability to populate the world sufficiently. You can creep into the Gaj's top floor, traverse narrow corridors, and linger by an apartment door for in-game days, waiting for your victim, and never see anyone else. When the victim screams out, dying, there will be no one to listen.

I'm a fan of the idea of AI agents being used to populate MUDs. Google can teach AI agents to play DOTA2, and beat top-tier DOTA teams, so I imagine teaching a few agents to be believable players in a MUD is within the realm of possibility, and in a decade, will be in the realm of affordability. It will be computationally cheap. But we're not quite there yet, so systems have to take the place of simulated players.

...and lacking in technology.

The city-states don't lack in technology. It's just that their technology is based off psionic and magical powers rather than electronics. Anyone, without fear of discovery and reprisal from the criminal element, can communicate to a templar, instantly. From anywhere, with apparent privacy. It's better than a cell phone.

I've often touted for the idea that PCs and certain NPCs are special, that telepathy is actually very rare in Zalanthas. But the kayfabe of the game is, everyone can use the Way. The implications of that are not accounted for, at all. It's actually silly. But so long as that's a thing...crimes should be basically impossible to cover up. There's going to dozens of potential observers at any particular moment, and all of those eyeballs can tattle instantly, with little risk to themselves.

A lot of those eyeballs are going to be devotees of the Highlord. A lot of those eyeballs are going to be people who just don't like the idea of neighbors getting murdered, don't like the idea of Rinthi creeping through their apartment complex, for reasons of self-preservation, for the noise and smell and mess disrupting their routines, and just basic decency (which does exist. most people in-game are not psychopaths.)

After a string of non-stop crimes, the templars should be posting sneaky soldiers or paid snithes in the Gaj, with max Scan. That doesn't happen because it's boring to play that out. It's boring to sit there waiting. But it makes perfect sense for it to be happening.

I could go on and on. There's an infinite number of justifications that could be made for any crime immediately being flagged.

But the real justification is game design. Apartments should be safe-ish for the owner, not death traps, not loot boxes for burglars, or else they are useless.

[Heade]

You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:

1. People don't WANT to know a Templar. To know a Templar is to draw their attention, and as they have the power to end a person's life for nothing at all, most citizens wouldn't even want to be on a Templar's radar. And if you don't KNOW a Templar, you can't exactly contact one on the way. Knowing a Templar is a good way to increase the likelihood of your own death. Also, reporting a crime, if that criminal was working for someone important, or paid off someone important, might get you killed just to shut you up. Which leads me to the next point...

2. You're not taking the corruption of the game world into account. People are poor, law is flexible depending on who you are, and who you've paid. If we were going to simulate making the world populated everywhere, and making crim-flags happen everywhere, we should also then simulate the ability to bribe officials anywhere to keep that from happening for a bit in that location. And bribes to such NPCs should be cheap. Because, unlike the player economy, vNPCs subsist on very meager amounts of sid, as demonstrated by both documentation and clan salaries.

3. But bribing PCs is notoriously expensive, because the PC economy isn't on par with the documentation. Some types of characters could potentially make enough to bribe a PC Templar, while others would struggle to ever make enough to warrant a conversation. I'm fine with this end of things, because certain professions of PCs -should- be more capable of coming up with the sid to bribe important people for special situations. But virtually anyone should be able to bribe a vNPC or two, for next to nothing, because those bribes represent how the world operates on a normal, day to day basis, per the documentation.

So, ultimately, we could simulate all of that. The imms could implement all of it, but it would just end up being the same situation we have now, where in the more sparsely populated areas of the game, they could simulate bribing an apartment gatekeeper to hold up people at the entrance for 5 minutes, or bribing a guard captain in an area to "forget" the report that they get about something happening in an area during a period of time, or whatever. But it'd just be a bunch of work for nothing when the result would be the same. Right now, we can imagine that those things happen. And in some cases, where more bribes might be able to make even further headway than we currently can with code, we can wish up, or move to bribing PCs if our own PC is financially capable of doing so.

[Hauwke]

You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:

1. People don't WANT to know a Templar. To know a Templar is to draw their attention, and as they have the power to end a person's life for nothing at all, most citizens wouldn't even want to be on a Templar's radar. And if you don't KNOW a Templar, you can't exactly contact one on the way. Knowing a Templar is a good way to increase the likelihood of your own death. Also, reporting a crime, if that criminal was working for someone important, or paid off someone important, might get you killed just to shut you up. Which leads me to the next point...

2. You're not taking the corruption of the game world into account. People are poor, law is flexible depending on who you are, and who you've paid. If we were going to simulate making the world populated everywhere, and making crim-flags happen everywhere, we should also then simulate the ability to bribe officials anywhere to keep that from happening for a bit in that location. And bribes to such NPCs should be cheap. Because, unlike the player economy, vNPCs subsist on very meager amounts of sid, as demonstrated by both documentation and clan salaries.

3. But bribing PCs is notoriously expensive, because the PC economy isn't on par with the documentation. Some types of characters could potentially make enough to bribe a PC Templar, while others would struggle to ever make enough to warrant a conversation. I'm fine with this end of things, because certain professions of PCs -should- be more capable of coming up with the sid to bribe important people for special situations. But virtually anyone should be able to bribe a vNPC or two, for next to nothing, because those bribes represent how the world operates on a normal, day to day basis, per the documentation.

So, ultimately, we could simulate all of that. The imms could implement all of it, but it would just end up being the same situation we have now, where in the more sparsely populated areas of the game, they could simulate bribing an apartment gatekeeper to hold up people at the entrance for 5 minutes, or bribing a guard captain in an area to "forget" the report that they get about something happening in an area during a period of time, or whatever. But it'd just be a bunch of work for nothing when the result would be the same. Right now, we can imagine that those things happen. And in some cases, where more bribes might be able to make even further headway than we currently can with code, we can wish up, or move to bribing PCs if our own PC is financially capable of doing so.

Instead of having to resort to vNPC bribes, why don't we just bring everyone down to level they should realistically be at? Because it straight up wouldn't work, someone would ruin the system. Which is why I think the ability to go to a street corner and type 'bribe dude' would be a good way to supplement criminal undertakings.

[number13]

You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:

The game isn't simulationist. It's essentially a narrative game, with a few rules on top to adjudicate (a few) situations.

All I'm saying is that it's plausible to conjure a narrative that justifies assigning Wanted flags for murder in apartments, or picking certain locks, or picking pockets in certain locations. And furthermore, that the current situation is poor game design. Instead of apartments being sought after rewards, they are death traps. Something drastic has to change so that they have at least some utility.

[Heade]

You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:

The game isn't simulationist. It's essentially a narrative game, with a few rules on top to adjudicate (a few) situations.

All I'm saying is that it's plausible to conjure a narrative that justifies assigning Wanted flags for murder in apartments, or picking certain locks, or picking pockets in certain locations. And furthermore, that the current situation is poor game design. Instead of apartments being sought after rewards, they are death traps. Something drastic has to change so that they have at least some utility.

Well, I agree with that last part, anyhow. There have been multiple suggestions in the past that could help with this. One of them is being discussed right now in the doors and locks thread. Another is to allow PCs to hire NPC guards, even if those guards only work at their apartment and won't follow them around, but will protect them while they're in their rented space. The idea of affluent PCs hiring NPC guards was a topic that was brought up quite awhile back, but I think it has some merit depending on the implementation.

[Nile]

I know backstab was OP.....but it seemed to prevent huge amounts of the 'rare' poisons flooding the city. Now everyone with blowguns is an assassin whereas before it was extremely limited and came with a clear set of weaknesses.

[mansa]

Sidenote:
No classes start with blowgun use, but have to branch it.
3 of the 5 branch it from the poison use skill

[Lizzie]

I know backstab was OP.....but it seemed to prevent huge amounts of the 'rare' poisons flooding the city. Now everyone with blowguns is an assassin whereas before it was extremely limited and came with a clear set of weaknesses.

Everyone who has strong connections to the templarate, the Guild, the noble houses, the elven whatever they call themselves lately, the merchant houses - are all assassins, if you want to go down the list. If you have a pet templar in your pocket or a GMH agent considers you incredibly useful and profitable to his plans, you just say "oh hai lrd templar/agent this breed just tried to attack me this morning!" and boom. Dead breed. No blowgun necessary.

Assassins are not defined by their skillsets. They are defined by their ability to ensure that someone doesn't wake up in the morning. Someone who could befriend someone, hire them, bring them to the silt sea, and push them off the ship...needs only the pilot skill. No combat needed.

[Jihelu]

Out of all the things my Assassin that would 1v1 Drov beetles could do that I considered OP, master backstab was not one of them. I think I had VG elf strength and I still could not do some stupid stuff with it.

Was it good? Yes. Was it op? No, not unless you were a dwarf with some really stupid strength.

[Greve]

But the kayfabe of the game is, everyone can use the Way. The implications of that are not accounted for, at all. It's actually silly. But so long as that's a thing...crimes should be basically impossible to cover up.

This is actually a very good point. I don't have a solution off the cuff, because it has been part and parcel of Armageddon for two decades, but it's definitely something that has been under-addressed for the lifespan of this game. When you really think about it, an entire world where everyone can send instant mental messages to anyone would be a world that barely resembles anything we can conceive of. I don't have a great big statement to make here, but it's certainly true that the implications are not accounted for. When it comes down to it, I suppose it's one of those OOC QoL features that we're best served pretending isn't a fact of life in Zalanthas, because quite frankly, half the things that go on in this game would not be possible if it were a real world where people effectively have cellphones built into their brains. Over the years, I've caught myself wondering the removal of the Way would be beneficial or detrimental to the game. Other RPIs have functioned well without it, albeit with a smaller grid and fewer clans. It has always been kind of an elephant in the room.

[rinthrat]

But the kayfabe of the game is, everyone can use the Way. The implications of that are not accounted for, at all. It's actually silly. But so long as that's a thing...crimes should be basically impossible to cover up.

This is actually a very good point. I don't have a solution off the cuff, because it has been part and parcel of Armageddon for two decades, but it's definitely something that has been under-addressed for the lifespan of this game. When you really think about it, an entire world where everyone can send instant mental messages to anyone would be a world that barely resembles anything we can conceive of. I don't have a great big statement to make here, but it's certainly true that the implications are not accounted for. When it comes down to it, I suppose it's one of those OOC QoL features that we're best served pretending isn't a fact of life in Zalanthas, because quite frankly, half the things that go on in this game would not be possible if it were a real world where people effectively have cellphones built into their brains. Over the years, I've caught myself wondering the removal of the Way would be beneficial or detrimental to the game. Other RPIs have functioned well without it, albeit with a smaller grid and fewer clans. It has always been kind of an elephant in the room.

Everyone in the real world has a cellphone. Crimes are still covered up.

[Jihelu]

People in real life get robbed at gun point for over a minute long and then call the police afterwards and can't remember a single thing about their attacker.

People in Arm do a single look and can remember every detail about a fully cloaked person in a second.

[GetKanked]

People in real life get robbed at gun point for over a minute long and then call the police afterwards and can't remember a single thing about their attacker.

People in Arm do a single look and can remember every detail about a fully cloaked person in a second.

This is the real problem.  I played a raider somewhat recently, and by the time I rode back to my base of operations in [city] my mdesc, down to specific tattoos, was all over, despite being cloaked, masked, and having every part of my body covered.

This is in addition to the raid target being a grebber.  I rode up on them, emoted a couple times, then said - stay away from the bug and you'll live - only for them to immediately type 'mount beetle;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w'

People know that spamwalking or spamfleeing and ignoring Rp saves them, so there's no recourse except to instagib.  If you want to see PK get less 'random' (it likely wasn't random, you weren't privy to the other Rp going into it) then react more realistically instead of just spamming 'escape' while Waying everyone you've ever interacted with the full mdesc of the person you saw for twelve seconds fully cloaked.

If someone stopped and Rp'd, I left them alive 9 times out of 10, a little bruised but otherwise ok (one guy received an unlucky crit, sorry fella).  If they spamfled/etc. I made it a point to chase them down and murder them if possible.

[kahuna]

Masks used to hide mdescs but were removed. Also contact/psi used to show whatever sdesc you had at the time. So people could send you messages as the figure in a dark hooded cloak. Not sure when changes were implemented but I am all for bringing back the masks at the very least.

[Vex]

If someone stopped and Rp'd, I left them alive 9 times out of 10, a little bruised but otherwise ok (one guy received an unlucky crit, sorry fella).  If they spamfled/etc. I made it a point to chase them down and murder them if possible.

There is also the problem, of mul + dwarf + dwarf + human riding up to someone, instantly all throwing on THREATEN , and then essentially stripping the PC down naked with some suspect ooc-through-ic snark. Yes, that pc lived, but I rather doubt, they'll really have a good opinion of the game after that.

There is also the problem, where some group, simply rides in and murders someone without an emote, only for it to be 'lol oops, wrong guy, haha', like it's some kind of really funny thing, to just blow up a random pc because of the assumption 'only they wear this cloak'.

I've seen both go down, the first down south, and the other up north.

Much like AoD/Garrison with their crimcode immunity, players in groups or with some huge advantage, will usually abuse other players to the hilt, if given the leeway to do so. It is annoying, yes, when people flee away instantly and speed run back to town, but given the way most aggressors behave, it would be a failure to not understand why.

Fine with pvp/pk, but in arm, 99% of people only want to do either, when they're picking on a pc that has no chance.

That is the real problem. That, and zero karma dwarfs.

[Armaddict]

Also I thought it was stated somewhere that the Way was not usable by everyone in Zalanthas, but PC's always get it because playability.

I might be mistaken.

[Brokkr]

Read literally the second sentence in help "The Way".

[X-D]

This is in addition to the raid target being a grebber.  I rode up on them, emoted a couple times, then said - stay away from the bug and you'll live - only for them to immediately type 'mount beetle;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w'

He did RP, He got up and ran for his life. Just as valid as you appearing right next to them and telling them to stay away from something when you did not know how far away he was from the "bug". (And no it was not me)

On topic to the rest of the thread...I have been staying out of this mostly to consider things. Considering complete.

I do not understand why this thread exists.

In all of Real life human history, an OVERWHELMING percentage of killings are some sort of surprise attack OR on a subdued victim, often taken in some sort of surprise attack.

In movies, games, books, plays, Those two methods are a HUGE majority, from Julius Caesar to Saw, from Alien to John wick, from the Pulse nightclub to your average weekend in Chicago to terrorists beheading people. Even to the natural world where most predation is done by surprise.

Surprise, Overwhelming force and cutting off escape have been the tried and true methods since life learned how to take other lives.

And unlike RL where the odds are in favor of the aggressor, in Arm the odds are heavily in favor of the intended victim already...isn't there alreadya care bear mud?

[Harmless]

I just want to say I would be totally fine with bringing back anonymity and the points about masks needing to hide mdescs I feel are valid (I think I've been a proponent of bringing more anonymity code in for a while, beyond only 'hide').

Secondly I want to say that anytime people say "spamfleeing is the problem' or 'spamthreaten is the problem' or 'spam..anything is the problem,' again your argument is coming down to blaming player actions.

however staff have said before that to flee is a form of roleplaying and does not necessarily mean bad roleplay. so is coming out of hiding without any warning and attacking, that is a form of RPing -- there may be RPing BEFORE the attack attempt that you didn't see, and when your victim is done fleeing? you better believe there will be RP.

-----

The solutions are in revising our systems so that things are sensible to people. So that when you get a kill, it's satisfying. When you die, it's satisfying (if not also sad).

If deaths are unsatisfying in some way, either on the killing or killed side, then I think the solutions lie in revising things (one at a time, seeing what effects each revision has) until things seem to be sensible again.

-----

To simply assert "there is no problem" is to ignore quite a lot of discussion that has been going on in the GDB not just in this thread but in many before mine over years.

To simply assert "there is no problem" is to ignore that staff have already made balancing changes in the way poisons are handled, that staff have recently given us the threaten feature (which is, IMO, a good thing indeed) in order to promote more RP and less spam-commands in PVP.

There isn't just a problem now, there has generally been beefs over these issues for a long time and it's just going to be a continued discussion.

[Armaddict]

Read literally the second sentence in help "The Way".

Huh, maybe it was some discussion about psionics where this got tangled in.  Guess you gotta reconsider how it all works after all!