What would entice you to play more in the cities?

[zealus]

Some clans are already lax on the rules. It depends on your leader. Talk to your leader if you think you're fine to leave the city.

[Halaster]

Some clans are already lax on the rules. It depends on your leader. Talk to your leader if you think you're fine to leave the city.

Bribe, or murder your leader!  It's the Zalanthan way!

[Master Color]

Some clans are already lax on the rules. It depends on your leader. Talk to your leader if you think you're fine to leave the city.

Bribe, or murder your leader!  It's the Zalanthan way!

I suspect this response is at least partially tongue and cheek. But you can't expect either of those to be solutions to suffocating leadership in clans.

It shouldn't be up to players to correct oppressive leaders. Staff need to step in and do something about it.

[DesertT]

I'd be tempted to offer that absent leadership is just as debilitating to city clans (mainly the restrictive ones) than are oppressive leaders.

If you can't be around for your subordinates, maybe you should consider a different role.

Restrictive clans NEED leaders who are engaged and providing RP opportunities (in whatever form that might look like).

It's not fair to other players when they are recruited to a clan just to have the leader pop smoke for multiple weeks on end.  Nobody likes staring at a sparring dummy and as a new join, there's only so much we can expect most players to entertain themselves.

[LindseyBalboa]

I would also be okay with taking away the things keeping people inside cities: just make c-elves become d-elf clones as per 'help elf,' have city and desert running, and just very preferable to their area. It makes sense anyway and it's in the help file they're the same race. And keep going with everything else.

Just remove all the Byn or Militia restrictions on leaving cities. And don't restrict anyone to them and just let people come as their characters please or situations dictate - the reason characters stay inside cities should be because the character wants to or it is preferable to.

It's a roleplaying game and if there's not stuff to do, and it's a choice between playing a character restricted to a city or one not, I can see how it's become an easy choice.

So don't make players break in game rules just to find basic roleplay as a player of a roleplaying game, and instead mechanic-wise facilitate finding interaction. I can easily see the argument that it's kinda more important now to let players interact than it is to restrict them for theme. We have more areas and less players; a lot of players are more casual to a degree than they used to be.

It is where the game is going elsewhere it seems already.  D-elf tribes kinda got this treatment recently, with restrictions relaxing on where they run.

People should stay in cities because it's safer, there's more money, there's opportunity, there's action, there's cheap food, water, shelter. Not because they have to even if all the other players are outside the area you're confined to. If you wanna go out into the dangerous wild and risk everything with your Byn recruits go ahead. Wanna take your c elf with desert running but no direction finding? Have fun avoiding raptors in a sand storm. Add some more dangers and reasons to stay inside, but losing the restrictions is a pretty solid argument.

[Yelinak]

Make it so that one clan in the city has actual reasons to care about another clan in the city

The fact that this is not the case is why city play is such shit.

Nobody has any reason to care about each other, and it's tearing me apart, Lisa.

[kahuna]

There's only one thing that brings PCs to cities to roleplay, characters that inspire and make you want to play with them. If people aren't playing in cites it's because those characters don't exist there, whether literally or figuratively.

[Veselka]

Make it so that one clan in the city has actual reasons to care about another clan in the city

The fact that this is not the case is why city play is such shit.

Nobody has any reason to care about each other, and it's tearing me apart, Lisa.

The Room Quote is gold.

[Veselka]

I think the idea of built in antagonism between Houses would be welcome.

In Tuluk, it was always thought that Tenneshi and Winrothol were like Montague and Capulet, but it never really played out that way. It would certainly be much cooler if it could (and would).

I feel part of the reason people avoid the cities is the absolute binary arbitraryness of the Crim Code. People would play more to the hilt, if they weren't going to risk being instagibbed by 3 Half Giant Soldiers for playing their character well.

I really think that (except for things like defiling) a Soldier NPC should have to be present in the room for most crimes to trigger crime code.

Yes, there is the vNPC world to take into account. But how many people are passively waying the AoD/LEgions to report crime just because they saw it? I think that Soldier NPCs should represent the vNPC population in their presence, as with them present, the crime will be reported. If not, it should be no crime code, with exceptions made for things like magick / defiling that are appropriate to city defenses.

[Patuk]

I'd be tempted to offer that absent leadership is just as debilitating to city clans (mainly the restrictive ones) than are oppressive leaders.

If you can't be around for your subordinates, maybe you should consider a different role.

Restrictive clans NEED leaders who are engaged and providing RP opportunities (in whatever form that might look like).

It's not fair to other players when they are recruited to a clan just to have the leader pop smoke for multiple weeks on end.  Nobody likes staring at a sparring dummy and as a new join, there's only so much we can expect most players to entertain themselves.

I'd be tempted to offer that the same is true for staff onvolvement. The south has been getting oodles of RPT attention. Tuluk.. Hasn't. One reason it doesn't see more play, I think, has got to be how abandoned it's felt ever since getting reopened.

[BadSkeelz]

I'd wager there's actually more PCs active in Tuluk than Allanak right now, and these RPTs (which are pushing back previously scheduled ones elsewhere) are some sort of attempt at addressing that imbalance.

[Patuk]

I've not kept count. I have talked to more than one former leader in Tuluk, and it seems to be a recurring theme. The current stuff Allanak is up to doesn't even exist in isolation; so far, the past nine months in the city, they've.. Built a road I guess. It really isn't much.

[FantasyWriter]

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.

Leader PCs think they are at or near their clan caps, and don't hire, but 2-3 minions are actually dead out in the sands and you have no way of knowing.  Clan stagnated and dies.

[whengravityfails]

I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said already.

1. Given the amount of power that comes with the role of Templar (and how poorly it is usually wielded) this has become a huge block for me. Literally every unpleasant experience I've had at the hands of another PC that I didn't enjoy gritting my teeth through came at the hands of a Templar (not to say every unpleasant experience from a Templar hasn't been enjoyable). With how easily this one role can ruin characters on a whim, it needs much more stringent standards and monitoring - or be easier to kill. Whether they are easy to kill in reality or not trying to get people to jump in on a plot to assassinate one is rather...difficult. People would rather just leave the city, and I grew wise and learned to do the same thing.

2. The loss of the Den was a huge blow. A bar/restaurant/theater that cuts across social classes in that specific location was wonderful. It was often populated and was built to facilitate all kinds of meetings. There's nothing even remotely as appealing for the general public.

3. Crafting spots in public spaces. This is kind of a no-brainer. Crafters want to RP too, being stuck in a workshop away from everyone else is counter to the aim of facilitating RP.

4. Gicks being allowed in cities. Obviously people like to play gicks. If you don't want to die or be forced to be Gemmed, you can't play in the cities. So, that's kind of a huge problem. While I think just dropping the fear/hate/not allowing them would be weird, there should be ways for gicks to get around it in a fashion that is -sanctioned- by the government of the city-state in question, even if it is hidden/secret/temporary.

5. People need stuff to beat up/rob/shoot arrows into in the city like they do outdoors or people will just keep going outdoors to do it.

Whatever you do, attempting to make cities more attractive to play in is the key - not making the wilderness more punishing. If it suddenly and arbitrarily starts becoming more lethal due to turning the difficulty up to 11, all you'll end up with is irritated wilderness players. They're not going to go to the cities just because the wilds became deadly. I wouldn't. I'd still rather face a rabid pack of kryl than the insufferable headache of the average Allanak Templar.

[Veselka]

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,53428.msg1006233.html#msg1006233

There are 4 people Staffing Indies, 2 people staffing Tuluk, and 3 people staffing Allanak. I think that says a lot about the current focus.

[BadSkeelz]

Hard not to remember that the last RPT that got run for the North wound up accidentally bushwhacking 2+ sponsored roles, either.

[Foulspawn]

Here to provide some insight from the view of someone new. And not just from my point of view, but the few people I've managed to tag along me when I started playing Arm a month and some change ago. So far I've basically had 4 characters. Two wilderness ones and two city ones.

The reason I was drawn to the outside was because it felt like I always had something to do mechanically, or at least a 'purpose' which led to building my character around that. And the fact that I did something in the wilderness ultimately put me on the map for people to grab me in their clan and all that. Mechanics keep people going and create situations that push me to want to roleplay and get to know others.

In the wilderness I'm faced with hardship and discovery (the latter will fade off of course). Mechanically challenging situations leads you to seek out others to get what you need. I got to know the weapons merchants because I wanted a fitting weapon. I discussed and shared tips with other outdoorsy characters. I got to know the local medical peddlers to keep me stocked, etc.

Where as when I play in the city, what should feel like a wider range of choices actually feels more restricted. You can either try to fill in the slot of a crafter in a GMH (there's only so many slots and these guys aren't going to die any time soon. A sore thumb from hammering a chitin plate in the wrong way inside of their cozy crafting halls isn't going to kill them), try your hand at potentially becoming a live-in concubine (Read: Noble's Aide) or become a lone scumbag in the rinth (which feels very lonesome because trying to find people to join together with or interact with doesn't work too well when everyone's hiding.)

I read a suggestion in this thread for support for coded mundane jobs. What I mean by mundane is: bartender/waiter at X, courier for Y, gardener for Z, cleaner for Q, baker for W. Something that mechanically gives a reason for your character to exist in the world there. I agree with this to a degree, especially roles in areas of higher traffic. You're a wench in the Gaj? Well, knowing there might be someone there to talk to would bring Jimmy and Jimbo in. And since they're there, a few others might come in as well. Though I don't believe this would alleviate it too much.

The gist is: mechanics facilitate and create roleplaying situations. If I were to go back to the tavern example, give people a reason to go there past just filling up their Sims-like social bar. Stick around a tavern for X amount of time and you gain a buff for an ingame day or two to your stats. You just detached from the harsh world and regained your motivation.

Ultimately, there need to be some mechanical draws to wanting to be in the city, which would keep people in or even make them want to play city roles. While people will play interesting characters without mechanical draw to them, it's hard to deny that some are less likely to make Jimmy Two-Fingers the Rinthi Scumbag, who is lucky if he gets to talk to one guy once about something before trying to organize crime on his own, when Johny Chalton-Feller gets his pick of the GMH or Indie fun time, with people wanting to keep him alive, fed and happy. Outside you have: combat, food&water (some do) and a lot of resources. And those resources then get funneled into a lonesome crafting hall in the back of an impregnable compound.

[Riev]

Just pitching, again, for Jakhal-and-Raider-like dens of thievery that open up in various city spots. Clanned Guild or Elven clan? They recognize their own kind and maybe leave you alone.

Gives Bynners and City Militia areas to root out corruption and evil. Gives city-folk a reason to be wary about walking around at night. A few scant resources, the occasional pick or pinch of spice making it worthwhile, etc.

Then let them patrol at night, or be able to 'leave' their little temporary den to attack passerby. I am certain staff could fine tune it so not every spamwalking crafter dies, but it adds a little something to cities. Reasons to get your climb skill if its on a rooftop, reasons to be combat-capable for your corresponding Sorceror-King. Gives 'thiefly' people that aren't going to be attacked by them a place to 'hide' temporarily. I can think of many more reasons why this could work.

Give my combat-characters a reason to be in the city, outside of "train with the Byn/AoD/Legions for the IN CASE something should happen a year from now".

[Pariah]

Here to provide some insight from the view of someone new. And not just from my point of view, but the few people I've managed to tag along me when I started playing Arm a month and some change ago. So far I've basically had 4 characters. Two wilderness ones and two city ones.

The reason I was drawn to the outside was because it felt like I always had something to do mechanically, or at least a 'purpose' which led to building my character around that. And the fact that I did something in the wilderness ultimately put me on the map for people to grab me in their clan and all that. Mechanics keep people going and create situations that push me to want to roleplay and get to know others.

In the wilderness I'm faced with hardship and discovery (the latter will fade off of course). Mechanically challenging situations leads you to seek out others to get what you need. I got to know the weapons merchants because I wanted a fitting weapon. I discussed and shared tips with other outdoorsy characters. I got to know the local medical peddlers to keep me stocked, etc.

Where as when I play in the city, what should feel like a wider range of choices actually feels more restricted. You can either try to fill in the slot of a crafter in a GMH (there's only so many slots and these guys aren't going to die any time soon. A sore thumb from hammering a chitin plate in the wrong way inside of their cozy crafting halls isn't going to kill them), try your hand at potentially becoming a live-in concubine (Read: Noble's Aide) or become a lone scumbag in the rinth (which feels very lonesome because trying to find people to join together with or interact with doesn't work too well when everyone's hiding.)

I read a suggestion in this thread for support for coded mundane jobs. What I mean by mundane is: bartender/waiter at X, courier for Y, gardener for Z, cleaner for Q, baker for W. Something that mechanically gives a reason for your character to exist in the world there. I agree with this to a degree, especially roles in areas of higher traffic. You're a wench in the Gaj? Well, knowing there might be someone there to talk to would bring Jimmy and Jimbo in. And since they're there, a few others might come in as well. Though I don't believe this would alleviate it too much.

The gist is: mechanics facilitate and create roleplaying situations. If I were to go back to the tavern example, give people a reason to go there past just filling up their Sims-like social bar. Stick around a tavern for X amount of time and you gain a buff for an ingame day or two to your stats. You just detached from the harsh world and regained your motivation.

Ultimately, there need to be some mechanical draws to wanting to be in the city, which would keep people in or even make them want to play city roles. While people will play interesting characters without mechanical draw to them, it's hard to deny that some are less likely to make Jimmy Two-Fingers the Rinthi Scumbag, who is lucky if he gets to talk to one guy once about something before trying to organize crime on his own, when Johny Chalton-Feller gets his pick of the GMH or Indie fun time, with people wanting to keep him alive, fed and happy. Outside you have: combat, food&water (some do) and a lot of resources. And those resources then get funneled into a lonesome crafting hall in the back of an impregnable compound.

Very well said.

That is also why I love playing outdoor characters.  (When I'm not saving Hogwarts from a goblin invasion).

[Kavrick]

What foulspawn said is pretty accurate from my experience too. City gameplay in general is massively restrictive to who is around player-wise to interact with. As an off-peak player, during the day as a city character all I can really do is interact with the economy which is far from enthralling when item prices seem completely arbitrary. I think it's not too hard to figure out why wilderness characters are so popular when they have freedom and just a larger variety of content to interact with.

I'll kinda reitterate on a previous thing I've said, I still don't think it's particularly healthy for a game that's 10-20 players off-peak and 30-40 players on peak to split it's players between so many different groups, locations and factions. Especially when you want players to rely on and interact with other players without a consistent way to find them.

[HammerofJericho]

I think the biggest idea from this thread that really gets me excited is the idea of more "harvestable" and dynamic resources in the city to interact with. Whether those are gang mobs, rotating mobs to steal from,  npc apartments that change up. These all sound awesome. Get players to team up against the environment not against each other so much.

[Pariah]

...
I'll kinda reitterate on a previous thing I've said, I still don't think it's particularly healthy for a game that's 10-20 players off-peak and 30-40 players on peak to split it's players between so many different groups, locations and factions. Especially when you want players to rely on and interact with other players without a consistent way to find them.

I've long been on the side of consolidation of the playerbase.

However, Having lived through everything from Kanks, Halflings, Pre-Kryl Grey Forest, old Tuluk, Tuluk closed, re-opened Tuluk and current time frame.

I will say that if it's done incorrectly, it will just cause people to quit playing.  We saw it with how Tuluk was just closed suddenly, we dropped from 60ish folks playing to like 20-30ish.

But I do agree that the world is entirely too big for the current playerbase.  If there were ways to build "your own thing" similar to mul outpost and how it's doing it's own thing, it would be nice.  If there were places to go that offered some safety in the wilds that actually had people or a reason for people to go there, that would be nice.

I'd say the one thing that would be nice is more semi-secure storage ala apartments outside of Allanak/Tuluk.  If there were semi civilized outposts (not luirs) that rangers and hunter types could go live and congregate around.

But ultimately this is all pissing in the wind, because we don't know what Staff wants to do theme wise or story wise.  Maybe that's where this conversation should start?

I think the biggest idea from this thread that really gets me excited is the idea of more "harvestable" and dynamic resources in the city to interact with. Whether those are gang mobs, rotating mobs to steal from,  npc apartments that change up. These all sound awesome. Get players to team up against the environment not against each other so much.

That would be sweet as hell, but probably a balance nightmare, make em too easy they are just rats, make em too hard you end up with corpses all over the place of crafters who just bumbled into them.

[Kavrick]

I think the biggest idea from this thread that really gets me excited is the idea of more "harvestable" and dynamic resources in the city to interact with. Whether those are gang mobs, rotating mobs to steal from,  npc apartments that change up. These all sound awesome. Get players to team up against the environment not against each other so much.

I can agree with this pretty heavily. As is at a standard level you get things from the outside and then offload them in cities, which turns cities into a slightly binary experience. Adding more things that you could only find in cities, whether it's some unique fungus that only grows on the walls of the gaj or specific materials that can only be bought in certain shops would be really nice. I mean as a very obvious comparison, anyone who's used wilderness food forage and city food forage will have experienced the disparity there. Not saying that foraging for food in the city should be as good as foraging outside for food, but it would be nice if cities had unique foraging options that you couldn't get in the wilderness. Or at least more, as I imagine some do exist.

[Pariah]

I think the biggest idea from this thread that really gets me excited is the idea of more "harvestable" and dynamic resources in the city to interact with. Whether those are gang mobs, rotating mobs to steal from,  npc apartments that change up. These all sound awesome. Get players to team up against the environment not against each other so much.

I can agree with this pretty heavily. As is at a standard level you get things from the outside and then offload them in cities, which turns cities into a slightly binary experience. Adding more things that you could only find in cities, whether it's some unique fungus that only grows on the walls of the gaj or specific materials that can only be bought in certain shops would be really nice. I mean as a very obvious comparison, anyone who's used wilderness food forage and city food forage will have experienced the disparity there. Not saying that foraging for food in the city should be as good as foraging outside for food, but it would be nice if cities had unique foraging options that you couldn't get in the wilderness. Or at least more, as I imagine some do exist.

I think the cities should RELY on things from outdoors, like meat, bones, shell etc.

Or there should be shortages in the bars, grocery etc.

Right now these shops just magically re-up all their food and materials.

If there was a centralized gathering point similar to obsidian buyer, but for food and materials and the game took that into account, you could have starvation, you could have shortages of raw materials all stuff that would realistically happen if Allanak were a true city.

If say there was a meat wholesalers, and he bought meat based on need or availability and the price fluctuated, it would be essentially the starts of an in game stock market driven by supply and demand.

[Kavrick]

I've long been on the side of consolidation of the playerbase.

However, Having lived through everything from Kanks, Halflings, Pre-Kryl Grey Forest, old Tuluk, Tuluk closed, re-opened Tuluk and current time frame.

I will say that if it's done incorrectly, it will just cause people to quit playing.  We saw it with how Tuluk was just closed suddenly, we dropped from 60ish folks playing to like 20-30ish.

But I do agree that the world is entirely too big for the current playerbase.  If there were ways to build "your own thing" similar to mul outpost and how it's doing it's own thing, it would be nice.  If there were places to go that offered some safety in the wilds that actually had people or a reason for people to go there, that would be nice.

I'd say the one thing that would be nice is more semi-secure storage ala apartments outside of Allanak/Tuluk.  If there were semi civilized outposts (not luirs) that rangers and hunter types could go live and congregate around.

To build upon this, I do think both allanak and tuluk should stay, I would never suggest closing them. But a good example is the sheer number of delf tribes with player counts that easily rival and are higher than the counts higher than the great merchant houses individually. This alongside how insular delves are even compared to tribal humans makes the interactions and chances to meet people in cities even lower. Like for example, we have this thread started up and during the conversation taken place here, another southern tribe has been announced, which, with no hate to Hazel, it sure seems interesting, doesn't seem like a good idea for the situation.

As for settlements, I personally love having my own little personal space to get furniture in and store things in, the fact that Luir's has no apartment options when an entire faction is based around Luir's is a very confusing point of contention for me. I understand that it was destroyed for plot related reasons but from an ooc perspective the lack of alternative is strange to me.

I think the cities should RELY on things from outdoors, like meat, bones, shell etc.

Or there should be shortages in the bars, grocery etc.

Right now these shops just magically re-up all their food and materials.

If there was a centralized gathering point similar to obsidian buyer, but for food and materials and the game took that into account, you could have starvation, you could have shortages of raw materials all stuff that would realistically happen if Allanak were a true city.

If say there was a meat wholesalers, and he bought meat based on need or availability and the price fluctuated, it would be essentially the starts of an in game stock market driven by supply and demand.

100% I don't think city foraging should be able to replace wilderness foraging. It's hard to say exactly, but some sort of resource that could only be found in the city would be nice. Also the whole thing with the way NPC shops are right now is pretty messy and I don't really know how I would personally fix it.