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

[Riev]

Just throwing this out there (as it may have already been stated) but what if insta-paralyze was changed to a gradual over-time effect that took 20-30 seconds to take hold and go thru the nervous system of the victim to eventually paralyze rather than immediately?

I can chime in.

If you poison me with something that paralyzes me, and I have 30s to get away? I am spam running to the nearest apartment/compound gate/house with locks.

You know why? Because I've thrown weapons with heramide at people before, and they were only 5 rooms away from an escape, and ran immediately there, where I was unable to get to them.

Edited to add: Also, that's what another poison kind of already does, and nobody uses it. Because there are better options.

[kahuna]

Just throwing this out there (as it may have already been stated) but what if insta-paralyze was changed to a gradual over-time effect that took 20-30 seconds to take hold and go thru the nervous system of the victim to eventually paralyze rather than immediately?

I can chime in.

If you poison me with something that paralyzes me, and I have 30s to get away? I am spam running to the nearest apartment/compound gate/house with locks.

You know why? Because I've thrown weapons with heramide at people before, and they were only 5 rooms away from an escape, and ran immediately there, where I was unable to get to them.

Edited to add: Also, that's what another poison kind of already does, and nobody uses it. Because there are better options.

So how is that relevant to fixing it? If the argument is "Well players will just run away so I can't win." I don't think that's a good argument. This can apply to any aspect of the game from subdue to bash.

[Delirium]

Instant paralyze is a bit silly outside magick.

Peraine could sap all the strength from your limbs instead, which drops you to a resting position and makes you unable to stand or move much. You'd still be able to emote or whisper but you wouldn't be able to shout, and talking or getting objects (only lightweight ones, like curatives) would sap stun? Waying would cost double stun. It would set in about as rapidly as heramide unless you cured it.

[Bebop]

I am just pretty disappointed because since I've been back I put everything into a few characters in particular.  I really enjoyed them and both were kind of ruined by either the constant threat of PK for completely stupidly barely justifiable IC reasons that began from a partially OOC issue and arbitrary rule enforcement.  The other was RPing to the nines and killed instantaneously with no chance to save from the skills being used on then in a place that if the game world were real there would be some serious consequences.  The reason for it happening was also relatively lame and unnecessary.  One character I didn't touch my skills, the other that was killed instantly I worked hard on them, as hard as I could manage.  It made literally no difference.  Not having good stats.  Not leveling as fast as I could while still RPing.  Nope.

The end result is that after a year and a half I feel kind of down about what I've experienced over the past year and a half and have quickly lost all desire to play again.  I know if I keep playing I'm going to have to go through the SAME grind and could at any time just blink and die to some silly code issue or whatever. 

I used to die SO often when I played before, but those deaths felt fair and satisfying.  I'm not having the same experience after my five year break.  I want to come back and be a social player, but I don't have the stamina to have my characters come into game, play my heart out and hit the wall of coded players taking over the narrative and watching the social mores of the one city-state we have now get tossed out the window.  I also don't have the volition to keep trying to appease the same leaders that have been in the game for real life years and years and years.  I just can't force myself to do it right now, not even casually.  I just don't see the reward in playing a social character.  I really don't see it.

[Malken]

Most social players (who require a story to enjoy the game) left with Tuluk.

[Dar]

Were things really all that different before? Gin lived for ages and the lifespan of a rinthi was counted in hours if you did not appease the guild those days.

Same with templarate. Templars tended to live long. Especially in the Lirathans.

I mean if you had your fill of the nakki current populace.  There are other pretty developed societies right now that you  can play with.

Death was always sudden in Arm. Always. People are complaining that peraine and heramide are too common now. Before, heramide was sold in stores! Tan Muark had 50+. Guild had dozens upon dozens.

Deaths are sudden because fleeing is too powerful and the consequence for failure too high. But this does not make the pills more common, if anything it makes pking rarer. Because people who aren't certain of success, don't try.

Being lured into an apartment for a kill is actually a good death. It means there was rp involved. You had to be tricked. Your trust had to be won, etc.

Would you really prefer to be susceptable to be attacked by non instant methods in the cities?

Can you really blame the leaders for not dying? How does this even really work? On one hand, the deaths are too rampant and quick. On another hand, there is not enough death.  If your PC Bebop did not die and continued on, would you have become the leader that other people do not want to interact with by their characters?

[Dar]

Most social players (who require a story to enjoy the game) left with Tuluk.

As if Tuluk offered any of that.  Tuluk was even worse then nak.  Lirathans that never died and had omniscience, omni reach.

[Heade]

Being lured into an apartment for a kill is actually a good death. It means there was rp involved. You had to be tricked. Your trust had to be won, etc.

I don't think people are complaining about being lured into someone else's apartment where they get PKed. You're right. That is a totally legit RP death.

People complain about being unrealistically shadowed through their own door, having their key pickpocketed from their hand right after they used it to lock their own door, and getting insta-backstabbed in their own apartment. People complain about being in their own apartment, a small box, and someone opening the door while they're looking at it and walking in to backstab them without them ever getting an echo that the door was opened, or that someone was in there. People complain about issues that shouldn't really be issues, because the code shouldn't allow them to begin with.

If you resolve some of those, fewer people will be complaining, I think.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, I'd really like to see us go back to making slavery more prominent in the game, and allow PC slavery since the majority of Zalanthans are supposed to be slaves. Allow existing PCs to be enslaved through IC means. ALLOW the characters to have alternative means of punishing other characters, or sending them a message, and we may see more of that.

I've never played a character that was involved in any type of rape scene in the game, but I do remember interacting with others who were, and I know that was a tool for conflict and retribution back in the day, too. X made Y unhappy, so Y raped X's lover, Z, instead of just PKing X.

For these reasons, I was always against getting rid of things like PC slavery and the rape plotlines. A decade ago, I said if you remove people's ability to dole out alternative "punishments" to other PCs, then PCs will be more likely to use PK as the ultimate conflict resolution/punishment. Well, here we are.

Torture, and general fear-mongering were more commonplace back then, too, because if your character was a person of power like a Templar or a Noble who could potentially just enslave you on a whim, people tended to be more afraid of them, because there was more on the line than just character loss. And the potential fallout from upsetting them was far more visible to the public when you'd come back to the gaj with your fingernails pulled out, or missing a hand, or with a disfigured face, as opposed to just being found on the corpse pile later, having died quietly in an apartment.

All of these things were removed slowly over time in order to avoid "triggering" anyone, or for other reasons. But together, it made the game feel far less gritty and harsh, and in my opinion led to a rise in the PK first attitude of many players. I know we've lost some very good RPers over the years, and I'd really like to see us move in a direction to try to get some of them back. I think committing to the idea that we explore adult themes here, and dropping the pretense of avoiding triggering people would allow us to bring back some of the things that made Zalanthas really feel alive.

I think a good first step would be for one of the Imms to take on a project to really DEFINE how slavery works in Zalanthas. Give us good documentation on it like we had on the old website(but perhaps even more fleshed out), and re-open PC slavery as something that can be both special apped, or happen IC. If staff is open to the idea, I volunteer to come on staff to spearhead the development of the documentation and subsequent implementation. I'll also be happy to help with other duties.

EDIT: Also, re-open Tuluk.

[Hauwke]

There still are very select slavery roles you can take, a Byn mul for example. But I do think slavery would be pretty cool to open up, on the sole condition that the enslaver has the onus on them to provide the enslaved with content and things to do.

[Riev]

There still are very select slavery roles you can take, a Byn mul for example. But I do think slavery would be pretty cool to open up, on the sole condition that the enslaver has the onus on them to provide the enslaved with content and things to do.

If I remember correctly, the actual problem with enslaving PCs was that they all eventually turned into plots against their masters and didn't really roleplay the "I am a slave, I work for this house and owe them my loyalty" very well.

Not having things to do, for a Byn Mul, sucks a huge one. However, I think it was more that slave roles weren't being played consistently or realistically in the first place. As much as we all think we could do it well, apparently we didn't.

[Brokkr]

In most cases doing it well and realistically was, unfortunately, usually boring.

[Mr. Fancypants]

On the slavery tangent:

For slaves to be a viable role, there needs to be an avenue toward freedom that isn't "escape", perhaps modeled off Roman slavery.  That way, characters who are enslaved during active play do not have to be stored, and instead have a hope of earning their way back to freedom through good behavior. Characters who start out as slaves would then have the opportunity of changing the direction of their storyline. Earning one's freedom should not be easy or common, but it should be genuinely possible.

Otherwise, slavery will continue to be a role which is dead-ended and doomed to stagnation. Once the player has fully explored the space they occupy, there will be no room for growth and movement, and there will be little reason to revisit a similar role.

[Heade]

On the slavery tangent:

For slaves to be a viable role, there needs to be an avenue toward freedom that isn't "escape", perhaps modeled off Roman slavery.  That way, characters who are enslaved during active play do not have to be stored, and instead have a hope of earning their way back to freedom through good behavior. Characters who start out as slaves would then have the opportunity of changing the direction of their storyline. Earning one's freedom should not be easy or common, but it should be genuinely possible.

Otherwise, slavery will continue to be a role which is dead-ended and doomed to stagnation. Once the player has fully explored the space they occupy, there will be no room for growth and movement, and there will be little reason to revisit a similar role.

I agree that more would need to be done with slavery to be interesting and to keep players engaged. Earning freedom might be one of those things, but there are plenty of others as well. That's why I volunteered to team up with staff to really flesh out a detailed slavery document for Zalanthas before rolling out something like opening up PC slavery again.

I wouldn't want it just opened up wholesale without any documentation, just to fail, and to get shelved for another 10 years because of it.

[clown alt]

I love this tangent.

[Hauwke]

Yeah dude, anyone wants an angry mul slave lemme know.

[Vex]

Open slavery as a clan app-in, for Salarr, Kadius and Kurac, for crafts slaves.

Give them the standard custom craft option, with room to increase it by up two additional custom crafts per month, with the caveat, the crafts must be ones ordered from other characters. So, then, you can test slavery waters, in a situation wherein slaves have something useful to be doing and working on, that requires interaction at LEAST within the clan, and potentially, eventually, outside the clan as dictated by rp.

People could then, once again, actually have a snowballs chance in hell of ordering custom works from a merchant house that is actually completed, slavery as a role is once again tested OUTSIDE of a combat role, with some innate ic justification for said slaves to be engaged with in a meaningful, interesting way.

Depending on testing, perhaps it leads to careful allowance of enslavement as an ic consequence, possibly done on a 'term' basis, not unlike indentured servitude. Full blown, slavery as a punishment, as a role, would be rather hard to do in an enjoyable way, due to the absolute lack of trust, knowledge of a life of relative freedoms, social connections, etcs, but knowing its for a set duration, rather than a 'until death or escape', may encourage people to not immediately plot ridiculously, and see it through to its conclusion.

Baby steps.

[Harmless]

I want to thank Heade for opening up the R-word discussion.

I want to say that one of the best events I saw with a prior character was an arrangement for mature-sexual RP as 'payment' for something.

It was consensual, but the act was taken in order to settle a debt between two characters, and it was made 'public knowledge' by involving a third person.

The impact that scene left on the victim, and the people around the victim when the victim told my character about it, was huge.

I never got to see how the scene played out -- for all I know, the players FTB'ed the whole thing to get past it -- but in the end, all parties were then 'settled.' Some were scarred by it, as shown by the RP, and they got to live on and keep telling their fucked up story a bit longer.

It is a lot more satisfying to know that your character (but not you, the player) endured something and was forced to learn a way to deal with it. Rather than just lights out.

As for slavery, I have been an open proponent of more enslaving and the idea of a Roman style contract of slavery is extremely exciting. Sign me up. I'm the type of person who can endure IC years and years (and hey, if I don't die, RL years) of the same role and get through the boring stuff.

If I could enjoy the life of someone who had a shady past, became enslaved as a result of enmity with a greater power, and then had to live through that, I would fall even more back in love with this game.

[ScramblesForPurchase]

Chiming in to say I think slavery as an option could be a viable exploration. The word "indentured" that Vex used would be more along the lines of what I would expect to function well in ARM from a playability standpoint. Contracted slavery for debt repayment or as a punishment. Set timeframes, etc. Lot of levels to this but I can see some avenues for interesting stories coming out of situations like that.

If it was something you could register officially like so and so is bound to do X Y Z for so and so pay fee of 10,000 coins to get seal of approval. If terms not met, bondee will be subject to arenification, etc.

Something to think about.

[tapas]

Quote from: Dar on November 15, 2019, 06:07:23 PM

Being lured into an apartment for a kill is actually a good death. It means there was rp involved. You had to be tricked. Your trust had to be won, etc.

I don't think people are complaining about being lured into someone else's apartment where they get PKed. You're right. That is a totally legit RP death.

I do. I would vastly prefer to lose a character to someone shadowing through a doorway. It's better than spending a moment of my time playing with the prickhole that's trying to trick me out of a character with a locked room.

I think I would prefer a gith or the silt sea even.

[LindseyBalboa]

On Discord the solution of making keys objects you have to hold in a hand to use (as one does with keys) but also making them unstealable in this situation (you're holding on to it), seems like the easiest most chill way to address people shadowing into apartments (which I still doubt is an actual problem except in the echo chamber of the GDB).

As for the tangent, hell yeah bring back enslaved PCs. Allanak is a big ol city of awful slavers, it makes sense.

[Heade]

to address people shadowing into apartments (which I still doubt is an actual problem except in the echo chamber of the GDB).

If people didn't get shadowed into their apartment, have their key stolen from them right after they locked their own apartment door, followed by a backstab, do you think people would be complaining about it on the GDB?

I've had it happen to me, but never started a thread about it. Others have obviously had it happen as well, since they started threads to discuss it. How many people does it need to affect before it meets your definition of a "problem"?

If you haven't had this happen to multiple characters of yours, perhaps you have a different style of play in which you're less likely to be targeted this way(like, perhaps playiong more clanned PCs who don't spend a lot of time in their apartment), but I don't think that makes the people's problems, who are targeted with this cheesy way of PK any less relevant.

[Riev]

Put on your chill pants everyone, and stop making assumptions.

The idea is that you make it so key objects MUST be held/wielded in order to work on a door.
You cannot steal a held/wielded object (without disarm, heh)
So you can get into your apartment, inside, lock the door, and not have someone steal your key.

This will solve the key-stealing problem, and still allow for the possibility that you, walking into your house, are at a disadvantage because now you can't have a weapon out, or a shield, or etc etc, because you are holding your keys.

(Also, murderers can hide inside your apartment and just wait until you come home. Who lives where is a VERY important bit of information)

[Heade]

Put on your chill pants everyone, and stop making assumptions.

The idea is that you make it so key objects MUST be held/wielded in order to work on a door.
You cannot steal a held/wielded object (without disarm, heh)
So you can get into your apartment, inside, lock the door, and not have someone steal your key.

This will solve the key-stealing problem, and still allow for the possibility that you, walking into your house, are at a disadvantage because now you can't have a weapon out, or a shield, or etc etc, because you are holding your keys.

(Also, murderers can hide inside your apartment and just wait until you come home. Who lives where is a VERY important bit of information)

It still doesn't solve the issue of being shadowed into your apartment, which is physically impossible when you consider how people use doors IRL. They tend to close them as they walk through them. There is no physical space to shadow them into their apartment. So, while I don't have a problem with this particular thing being implemented, I don't think it solves the issue by itself.

[Mercy]

(This thread is super long <.< >.> and I haven't been on the forums in a hot minute so my eyes hurt trying to read it all)

This has most likely been brought up already but I just feel the need to point it out.

Gameplay, in my opinion, is too fast for PK not to be an all-or-nothing ordeal. Whether it's a gank-fest, poison, or a locked-door scenario. Spamwalking is basically a get out of jail free card especially if someone wants to make any attempt to RP and not just enter a typing contest with you. And combat happens at a speed that is, in my experience, inconsistent at best. It is possible to make an attempt to RP mid-combat, just not type fast enough, and be forced to make the decision between trying to RP and just outright dying because your time should've been spent typing commands to run away or affect the outcome of the fight.

I understand, however, that people have lives to live and if gameplay in Arm becomes too slow it errs on the side of tedium and greatly reduces what people can hope to accomplish in the spare time they have to play in the first place. At the end of the day, as long as trying to manage the coded mechanics super-cedes roleplay and there's no repercussions for neglecting to inject roleplay into the scene outside of coded commands (I've heard the argument that using commands IS roleplay, and I don't disagree with it) then overwhelming force, be it spamwalking or twelve poisoned blades, is just going to be the way of the world.

[number13]

Think of the situations you want to see in game. What type of activities should be possible? What sort of things should be common? Rare? What sort of fiction are we trying to create and emulate? Design accordingly, to promote the common and dissuade the rare. Just because things have always been a certain way doesn't mean that it's for the best.

To be less cryptic about it, poison and/or backstab should be the starting move in a melee, that puts the initiator at an advantage. It shouldn't be the only move. It also shouldn't be the only sane way to fight. And since conflict is fun, losing a conflict shouldn't be punished by also losing 40/60/100/200 hours worth of grind and character development.

Just as example of changes that could be made -- a successful backstab or a nasty poison could give the victim a status effect that gives an ongoing penalty to their defense and offense and movement, rather than killing or incapacitating outright. (Backstab shouldn't debuff you with an action delay, if this were the case.)

Poison should have to be applied within a RL hour of use. Stuff like bloodburn shouldn't be lethal at all -- it can knock you down to 10 HP, but never lower, maybe. But it's effects should be more pronounced, up until that limit.

There could be a hamstring-ish skill that puts a long delay on movement. The flee skill could be far less certain and give your character a strong offensive debuff.

Meanwhile, skill grind could be cut in half, or more. 3 days played is still an incredibly hefty time investment.

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.