What would entice you to play more in the cities?

[Mellifera]

It's old documentation that is no longer on the site, but there was a blurb, paraphrased, that stated: "The templars need the nobility and they know it."  It was based off of the idea that the populace doesn't 'like' templar-magick any more than any other magick.  Templars command via fear and oppression, but the populace is far more comfortable being governed by the nobility.  Essentially, while the Senate itself is a giant front to this end, it does not make templars all-powerful.  The current 'What you know in Allanak' blurb reiterates this by telling how Tek himself does not trust his templars or his populace; the nobles manage the people that are needed for the city to function.

Your viewpoint on that matter, I think, is conducive to the problem.  Nobility are not a useless appendage that just sit there doing nothing.  Some of them will languish in the extravagant lifestyle, certainly; but those nobles involved in their Family business are performing the exact service that is -required- for the city state to function.  A templar who is not backed by a noble is no big deal.  A templar being condemned by nobility -is- a big deal.  So they have to keep this from happening, and that is the entire world of politicking between nobles and templars.  This is the entire illusion built specifically by that same templarate.  This is already built into the game, into the relationship, and into the workings of the city.  It just requires some actual 'unf' so that it's not just a thing that can be casually tossed aside.

I'm not speaking about nobles lording over templars.  Nor am I bashing on any templars.  I'm talking about simple acknowledgement of that fact, that this is a thing that requires maintenance, and that it's not a nobles+templars team vs populace.  It's nobles and templars and populace in a relatively delicate balance.  Upsetting the balance results in...ta-dah, empty cities.  Not just from a PC standpoint, either.  This relationship where each templar is actively garnering support of noble backing is essential to the movement of organic plots and the checks and balances of the behavior of power.

I don't disagree with you entirely, and it was never my opinion that nobles are or should be some useless fluff presence. I think that virtually and when it comes to player nobility, their role is determined by their house, and each of them have a vital part to play in keeping the city functioning at all. It definitely should help a templar to have their support, and damage them to not have it. I tried to mention as much at the end of my post.

What I disagree with is the idea that it should be some expected responsibility of the nobility to keep the templarate, or templar players, in check, or required for templars to seek out their support. In my opinion that is absolutely not conducive to the place templars are supposed to hold in society. No, tektolnes doesn't trust his templars, but he puts them there for a reason, and that reason is to keep his cities populace cowed, reverent, and obedient, and not to be nobles with spells and a funny language.

A blue robe player and a noble player may be equals in the allanaki hierarchy, but that doesn't mean templars and nobles should be playing on the same chess board at all. I think they do and should have very different roles in allanaki society, and very different expectations in regards to how they interact with the city itself. I think nobles should view templars with a certain level of wariness, fear, and distrust, especially when it comes to their magick, and templars should have their priorities, primarily, elsewhere, depending on their ministry. You might disagree with that, and that's valid, but ultimately I think that this lends itself far better to the setting and to the position of templars in allanaki society.

I should absolutely clarify, though, that what I don't mean is 'templars and nobles shouldn't interact'. They should, constantly, if you've ever played a templar or a noble you'll know that they absolutely need to to get their jobs done sometimes, and RP can happen there. They just shouldn't be doing it under the pretence that they're both just totally normal highborn, and especially not under the pretence that templars have to please and placate the nobility because they absolutely require their support. That's probably the best way I can imagine to further damage the image of the templarate thematically, and give them less of a unique role to fill.

I also don't mean that templars are only there to bully and kill people, that's already complained about enough and more of it isn't needed. In allanak, at least, templars have duties that are directed by their ministry, or the ministry they aspire to, and those duties are more often peaceful than they are destructive. They're just not the same jobs nobles have, and they heavily display that once again the highlord is in charge, and these are his servants.

I'm wary of continuing this discussion more so as not spam the thread about attracting people to cities with a debate around what templars should be, so if you want to talk on it further it might be good if a new thread was opened for that.

(Edited things to be a little more coherent a bit after posting)

[Mellifera]

Anyway, that's a lot of ranting about something that's only getting to be tangentially related to the thread, so here's something a little more directly related:

Though it would be time consuming, and definitely isn't an easy fix, I think staff could attract a lot more people to the cities if there was a focus on opening new city-exclusive clans, especially clans that are very unique thematically or have roles and abilities unlike anything else you can experience in the game. The trend recently has been opening up tribes, and while I love that all these options are becoming available, if you open up a load of cool tribes, people are going to go and play in them, ultimately leaving the cities barren. If you open up cool... guilds, or cults, or institutions, or whatever else is viable within the cities, people will want to play in them and will inevitably return.

Roleplay heavy but coded mundane 'fluff' roles is also one idea that I think would attract me in that direction. That was discussed a lot more further up. To expand on that though, I think if the process to set up and run your own code supported businesses/establishments was an easier and less time consuming process, more people would come to the cities as well, not only to set up their own, but to utilise them and roleplay around them.

[Armaddict]

Fair enough.  To be honest the templar bit was a derail in my original post hoping to put out -something- to address the idea that templars are the worst part of the city.  I, myself, have only 2 or 3 'sticky' memories of where I hated what a templar was doing and those didn't even result in my death.

Opening more clans has always been a big deal of mine, so I agree with that, whether it be old noble houses revamped to be able to more fittingly engage in in-city politics/plots (rather than just being another military force to supplement one clan in excursions), or new clans that are specifically designed to engage on that level.  But whatever it is, the boons they provide have to be something that is noticeably harder to find elsewhere.

It would seem the crux of the thing could be summed up as opportunity, but not free opportunity.  Stamp free opportunity out of the game.  Keep things down and dirty, and the more you rise up, the more it shifts into a different kind of danger.  I think this is already there...but it needs to feel a bit more...organic?  As you climb, you will face adversity.  As your enterprise develops into success, there are other barriers of a different nature than when you first built it.  I'm not sure how to design that exactly, but it seems to be an underlying issue to the whole thing.

[Patuk]

Continuing to act like Templars are where all characters go to die is silly.  They are arbiters of the two city-states.  The two most powerful factions in game.  The players that enter these roles are held to a high standard.  Are they always S tier?  No.  But if you can't play in a city because of a thematically corrupt overlord, do you really like Armageddon thematically or do you just need to win in your own power personal fantasy that Arm just happens to be the vessel of?

Firstly, people don't 'act like' cities is where you die, cities just are where your characters die. DesertT's post and mine are two examples of players whose characters would have been alive if not for them. I reiterate my point from then: I have not been killed or even had people try to kill me outside a city in two years. I have had four PCs die to four templars however.

Secondly, this thread is here to ask people why they don't play in cities. If dying young, senselessly, and helplessly is a reason, people get to post about that. You are free to consider this fine and just part of the setting's theme, just as everyone is entirely as free not to play in any city because of it.

You can't browbeat or talk people into playing stuff they don't enjoy. 'It's supposed to be that way!' is a a poor argument for bringing people who have given up on cities back to them.

[Mellifera]

I have not been killed or even had people try to kill me outside a city in two years. I have had four PCs die to four templars however.

On the other hand, every death I've ever had at the hands of a player has been in the wilderness by a wilderness pc, despite the fact that the vast, vast majority of my playtime has been inside cities.

It's worth considering that experiences here do vary depending on the player.

Adding as an edit that this isn't to say it's not valid for you to say you avoid cities because you've lost characters to templars, it's just interesting that this varies so much for people playing with the same templars in the same cities.

[Patuk]

I believe you, but we have a thread asking why cities are empty, not why the wilds are. Somehow those seem to do fine on population.

[Yelinak]

I tend to believe that the 'chance of PK' is proportional to how much meaningful roleplay there is in the area. If it's dull as hell, people are more likely to take the most drastic measures, just to try and get something going. If they're involved in a bunch of interesting stuff, they're more prone to letting others live because they don't need to milk every scrap of conflict for all it's worth in order to inject some meaning into their PCs. A templar who's bored out of their mind is more prone to doing the most impactful thing they can at every given opportunity, and the most impactful thing a templar can do is execute somebody. By and large, wilderness PCs are less likely to feel stuck because they have so many more options of places to go and things to do whereas city-bound PCs can feel completely stuck and hopeless if there's simply nothing for them to do.

[Riev]

You can't browbeat or talk people into playing stuff they don't enjoy. 'It's supposed to be that way!' is a a poor argument for bringing people who have given up on cities back to them.

I do not have much more to add to this seemingly-four-person-conversation, but I wanted to reiterate this.

The discussion is "What would entice you to play more in the cities?" and telling people "too bad thats how the game is" is simply not helpful to the conversation. Its not for you to disagree and change someone's mind.

[Pariah]

I think we are getting a little off topic.  No where is it insinuated you have to play in the city.  Folks were just asking how they could interest you in playing in the city.

I personally prefer the outdoors 100% and would live there if not for certain coded requirements of the city.

But, I do see value in the city life as well.  Different strokes for different folks as they say.

I wish cities were more alive and had more things to do, more gathering spots, more entertainment, more randomness that the outdoor offers.  I have seen some great recommendations in this thread, like random thugs or robbers who go after you at night if you're dicking around the city when you should be in a tavern or your apartment.

Lowered food/drink costs, making taverns and gathering spots more desireable places to hang out. etc etc.

I don't think cities will ever scratch that itch that running around killing critters in the outdoors does, or the pulse racing when you randomly wander across someone and they roll up on you with three of their friends, are they friendly, are they raiders, you're about to find out!

But being in the city definitely has it's uses.

[LindseyBalboa]

I don't think cities will ever scratch that itch that running around killing critters in the outdoors does, or the pulse racing when you randomly wander across someone and they roll up on you with three of their friends, are they friendly, are they raiders, you're about to find out!

there's a scene in HBO's Rome where a noblewoman sends her merc off. the mercenary and his crew run up on a different noble in the bazaar being carried on a palanquin; they cut off her jewelry, slice her dress, cut off some hair, generally non-lethal pride attacks. then they run off. people watch in horror, I think a few guards are on the outskirts but obviously they're not going to run up and die for no reason so they hang back.

i want that sort of stuff in the cities, but the binary crimcode makes it really hard to do anything violent and be able to get an emote out. why are guards running up solo to fight people? why do they care? why aren't they just waiting til the violence is over, looting the dead person, then making a vague report about 'some breed' running off to the rinth so they don't have to work?

the ways around crimcode are the least interactive manners of violence, as well. backstab. sap. blowgun. thrown weapons. things that make it harder to have time to emote because they rely on you being hidden and surprising and being effective right away.

i'm not even worried about guards hurting my pcs - they just don't give any time for roleplay.

[Master Color]

I have not been killed or even had people try to kill me outside a city in two years. I have had four PCs die to four templars however.

On the other hand, every death I've ever had at the hands of a player has been in the wilderness by a wilderness pc, despite the fact that the vast, vast majority of my playtime has been inside cities.

It's worth considering that experiences here do vary depending on the player.

Adding as an edit that this isn't to say it's not valid for you to say you avoid cities because you've lost characters to templars, it's just interesting that this varies so much for people playing with the same templars in the same cities.

Of all the frustrating deaths I've had, one or two were from wilderness pc's. Ten or more came from powerful leaders and templars.

It might just be a case where deaths by templar feel arbitrary and totally unneccessary. While the delf arrowing me feels like it could have been surmountable?

[Armaddict]

It might just be a case where deaths by templar feel arbitrary and totally avoidable. While the delf arrowing me feels like it could have been surmountable?

This is what I was trying to address with the talk of controlling the scene.  Templar deaths, and templar interactions as a whole, are mostly helpless situations where your only -real- defense to have something immediate to offer.  Deaths in the city are in closed in spaces.  Not always locked door closed in, mind you, but there just isn't a lot of 'hidey space' to go to.  While I got pretty good at laying low in the city, it's not exactly a wonderful experience.

Out in the desert, even when you screw up and get into very bad situations, you generally feel like your choices matter as far as survival...even if the choice that sealed you fate has already been made.

We could change things around, but ultimately there's a mentality around permadeath that shifted drastically from an utterly death-infested world where you made attempt after attempt after attempt to break free of the ditches of life-value to be worth enough that people kept you around to what it is today, where every character starts with the intrinsic value of their potential that is exhausting to see unrealized.

I'm not sure if I'm phrasing that well, it's meant to be equal between those two viewpoints.  I can say that I, personally, while always trying to keep my character alive, enjoy it far more in a world that's actually cutthroat where I am fighting failure and trying to outmaneuver intelligent adversaries and create intelligent adversaries.  I believe people are actually more starved for that content than they realize, as evidenced by ye olde antagonist dogpile that happens reliably.

[Master Color]

I don't really care. Armageddon is a game. I play it for fun.

Arbitrary death by templar is not fun.

[Pariah]

I don't really care. Armageddon is a game. I play it for fun.

Arbitrary death by templar is not fun.

Totally agree with you, being Templar'd sucks.

However, that's one of the powers given to you when you play a Templar, life and death.

They won't remove a templars ability to murder you.  If you feel that they were too cruel and you tried to escape that fate with begging, bribery or promises (empty or truthful) and they just kill you. Maybe that's worth a player complaint to investigate.

But in my experience with Templars I have always been given some way out of death, sometimes I just spit in their face icly and let it come, but if I wanted to live there was a way.

[Veselka]

I don't really care. Armageddon is a game. I play it for fun.

Arbitrary death by templar is not fun.

Quid pro quo -- what kind of death is fun? Death you expect, or death you can escape from? Driving at a point -- I think people dislike that Templars can basically apartment kill you without any repercussion (Jail). If it was escapable (either perhaps bribing an NPC if you were brought to the jails by crime-code) or you could pick lock your way out and try to escape prison...It would feel less like an inevitability in your interaction with a Templar.

[FantasyWriter]

Quid pro quo -- what kind of death is fun?

While I imagine some people are going to be unhappy with deaths no matter what.... here is my list of "good deaths."

• I had the OOC choice to avoid a dangerous situation, and my character decided to do it any way.
• Defending/avenging/invading for a person/people/cause my character believes is worth the sacrifice.
• I know why I died and it was not a (in my mind) OOC motivation.
• I feel like my character has made an impact on the world and completed at least one major achievement that has the chance of going into the collective memory of players for a while

[Master Color]

I don't really care. Armageddon is a game. I play it for fun.

Arbitrary death by templar is not fun.

Quid pro quo -- what kind of death is fun? Death you expect, or death you can escape from? Driving at a point -- I think people dislike that Templars can basically apartment kill you without any repercussion (Jail). If it was escapable (either perhaps bribing an NPC if you were brought to the jails by crime-code) or you could pick lock your way out and try to escape prison...It would feel less like an inevitability in your interaction with a Templar.

TBH Apartment kills are lame and annoying too. Right up there with arrow spam while I'm afk. These are all things that beggar poor faith between players.

[najdorf]

...  or do you just need to win in your own power personal fantasy that Arm just happens to be the vessel of?

Is it possible that the game could be richer with longer lived characters offering more player lead story?  I dont think power fantasies are the only drivers of a wish for character longevity.

I totally get wanting longevity, and less of a grind in the face of a lack of longevity but I also think acting like playing in a city-state is an impossibility because of the hierarchy structure is both odd and incorrect.  Templars and an authoritarian hierarchy are thematic to Armageddon.  Republics and democratic factions out populating those things are not.  People say they want to play Armageddon because of its harsh landscape but seem to also want to reduce Templars to mere city administrators and mediators.

I think everyone likes to play in a harsh lanscape, as long as they are in control of some sort of power. RP ing the weaker chains of power hierarchy is amazing but a good portion of playerbase might skip that.

[AdamBlue]

Hi there. I haven't posted on this forum or played for a very long while, but back when I played good ol' Raymond, the Master Crafter, the entire first half of that character was just breaking shit in the Grind. The Grind is why I don't know if I'll ever come back, and the Grind is part of why the character after I hardly played in the city. There's little to do besides log on, do your crafting stuff, and then hope someone wants to come around and just talk, or roleplay. The things that hurt the RP are:
The giga stealth code yoinking half of your shit, requiring constant paranoia, meaning that even sitting alone at bars you had to be constantly looking around, which make bar-sitting not worth it,
When there were people, it typically meant power-roles kind of taking the time to power-stance on your character without real cause besides 'i can' until you become or are a character wherein you cannot be stanced on, though this is not a bad bullet point; Having antagonists gives the game life, but what happens is that every time a noble or templar character is made, a week before get get ganked by something or someone, they have a period wherein they are the BIG dick of the law and their entire presence is making that known. It's funny, but for some people they'd rather just not deal with it.

Many clans have schedules, and having to coordinate 'oh hey i gotta do some crafting' with 'well i have nothing to do', people are going to hang out with the people they know in the safe places they know, not go to public places where they risk getting ganked. You can only really do that if you aren't really a character of note because there's always twohand maul hide kill doofus or blowdart dingus. The OOC restrictions are a bit antiquated for the day and age in my opinion for this and should be reviewed, considerably.

I always dreamed that if I could get my hands on Armageddon code, I wouldn't have it open all the time, I'd literally run it as a platform like a game of Tabletop where I always introduced little plots and could animate characters to make the world feel alive, even without prompting someone to ahelp or ask for it. Little surprises that didn't necessarily mean anything noteworthy or plot related, but just small things. Rats running down the streets was popular. People in the market talking about rumors, or going, "Hey, aren't you the guy..." I remember the old Rat sucker attacks both being good and bad for different reasons, but those at least gave people a reason to always stay together.
My words are basically meaningless because I haven't played in a long time, but I think people don't play in the cities for not only the reasoned I mentioned but because you don't really need the cities. You can get everything you want not even bothering with them, accomplish most goals without them. The crim-code bugginess and the constant sneak-thiefs lead to worse times playing in them. When people know how to circumvent the system, the system is useless and only serves to punish the ignorant or clumsy, and the punishment is just that you no longer get to play that character as you get mantis-headed, meaning that there's only really good thieves left, and a good thief is never caught or knows the tricks already.

I don't know. I feel a lot of this game hinges on meta-knowledge that is got through playing multiple characters over multiple lifespans, even if people shouldn't be doing that, but the cities are the least-changing, most-static... It has it's benefits, and drawbacks. At least in the wild, there's random spawns and enemies, and a carru can come out of nowhere at any time and charge you off the road, even if you just cleared it a minute ago.

I think stagnancy is a big problem, but I don't want to come across that I even know what I'm talking about. I'm just some old player that probably isn't in-tune with the problems of the current age, so please take the things I say with a grain of salt. I think I tried to play again at the start of last year but I just couldn't get back into it, the Grind just annihilated me. I don't have the time I used to, and it's just there's so many things I'd rather be doing, even though I devoted so much of my time to this game. Maybe I'm just getting older and less patient? Could be it. I still check the forums to try and get an idea...

Nonetheless, there's my two cents. And now I disappear back into the ether.

[Brytta Léofa]

Another idea for making taverns a more desirable hangout. You're gonna hate it:

Make taverns physically safer with some code tweaks that apply only in tavern locations.

- Backstab always immediately crimflags the aggressor.
- Throwing/shooting into a tavern fails - the object flies in but fails to connect. (Or hits a random NPC lol.)
- The first strike in a melee attack ("kill aide") has halved damage if it lands. (This is the Griefer Club Dorf problem.)
- Increase the odds of theft detection so it's like 15-20% for master thieves.

These aren't jarring; they all admit reasonable IC explanations.

Taverns are still useful for crime; you just have a better shot getting your mark on their way to/from. Getting shanked on their way to get a drink is the kind of risk players will take all day long (it's a thrill, and you feel like you have some control), whereas lingering in a dangerous spot and getting shanked when you looked away from the keyboard for a second just sucks.

[Pariah]

I think, if city based clans would eliminate the "Don't leave town" rule, you'd get a shit load more people willing to play them.

While I understand you can just ignore the rule and that's totally okay.  Some folks don't want to play the rulebreaker, so they will just avoid those clans to keep their autonomy.

Do away with "babysitter" rules and I think you'll get more folks signing up for clanned roles.

[Lotion]

I think, if city based clans would eliminate the "Don't leave town" rule, you'd get a shit load more people willing to play them.

While I understand you can just ignore the rule and that's totally okay.  Some folks don't want to play the rulebreaker, so they will just avoid those clans to keep their autonomy.

Do away with "babysitter" rules and I think you'll get more folks signing up for clanned roles.

If that rule was removed we would see a lot more runners die in the desert outside of contract than we already do.

[HammerofJericho]

I believe that "rule" exists because people go out and die alot and rinsing and repeating set up is equally annoying and aggravating to a leader who is dishing out coin and effort to build up an employee. The solution should not be to stop protecting your employees. It should be more things being added to make staying inside worth it and more enjoyable for clanned workers.

If everyone just wants to do outdoor stuff then destroy the city states and let's play only outdoor stuff.

[Pariah]

I think, if city based clans would eliminate the "Don't leave town" rule, you'd get a shit load more people willing to play them.

While I understand you can just ignore the rule and that's totally okay.  Some folks don't want to play the rulebreaker, so they will just avoid those clans to keep their autonomy.

Do away with "babysitter" rules and I think you'll get more folks signing up for clanned roles.

If that rule was removed we would see a lot more runners die in the desert outside of contract than we already do.

I'm still waiting to hear a bad thing.  This game is heavily slated towards "You will die." and I'm okay with it.

[Riev]

I believe that "rule" exists because people go out and die alot and rinsing and repeating set up is equally annoying and aggravating to a leader who is dishing out coin and effort to build up an employee. The solution should not be to stop protecting your employees. It should be more things being added to make staying inside worth it and more enjoyable for clanned workers.

If everyone just wants to do outdoor stuff then destroy the city states and let's play only outdoor stuff.

This is the stuff I can get behind. I don't care "why people want to go outside", the fact is that many people find it more enjoyable out there. Skinning. Riding. Skilling up weapons. Surviving the harsh wasteland.

vs

Sitting at a bar, nobody wants to play card games, and bards can't make a living because its them and one AFK person in the whole room.

Entice people to stay in cities, don't make wilderness worse.