What would entice you to play more in the cities?

[Bebop]

...Apartments/hallways should likely be no hide...

I love this idea.

As it is, apartments all over the place are sitting completely empty out of fear they're inescapable death traps.

One of the main appeals of cities, I would think, is that PCs can have a home there. But they're just so easy to break into and most on here seem to fear them as deathtraps.

+2

[Kialae]

Most of my player-on-player deaths have all happened in locked rooms.

[Gunnerblaster]

I absolutely agree with the sentiment to make apartments feel safer.

As it stands, you're safer finding a save room in the wilderness and leaving all your crap there vs in a locked apartment. It's also pretty idiotic that someone with a high enough hide can just... Go invisible in a tiny room with no furnishings. Like, is this guy hidden under my sleeping mat? Maybe behind a large bag? Hallways should be equally as hard to hide in, as well. It's not like crowds of people are hanging out in the halls or moving in and out of the building in a large enough crowd to warrant someone somehow remaining completely and utterly undetected.

[Tuannon]

To mellow it out a bit, maybe the fancy gated apartments should be fancy gated and secure, the Gaj should be pretty secure if you pay off the rooftop elves.

Personally I have only used an apartment as a place to log out and a place to store logs, so my experience is limited.

[FantasyWriter]

I have never killed in an apartment, and I have never been killed in an apartment.

How much would it help just to make apartments auto unlock from the inside?

Code Select Expand

>close door w
You close the door.

>open door w
You open the door.

>close door w
You close the door.

>lock door w
You lock the door.

>open door west (with or without a key)
Unbolting the latch, you open the door.

I assume you can use the open command while in combat.  If not, make it so and to me, this would end the "deathtrap"iness of apartments as presented in this thread.

[Tranquil]

-snip-

I'd love for crimcode to not be a thing at all, but with how binary Arm combat is, and how normalized it is to exploit game mechanics and break the IC/OOC veil, you'd probably get more danger on the streets of Allanak then in the wilderness (if we ignore getting templar'd that is). Getting OHK'd by a dwarf or a half-giant or what have you.

As for the apartments and miscreants, I totally agree. I only ever rented apartments like 4-5 years ago because I was simply too new to realize that they are inevitably going to get entirely sacked within a week. Now, I don't even bother. PC housing is one of the few things cities got going for them.. in theory.

Compounds used to compensate for the lack of safe PC housing, but now there's so many tribes and out-of-city organizations with storerooms and personal storage, it's a thing that everyone has.

I personally don't think pickpocketing is a HUGE reason why people don't play much in the cities, but I do think it's part of the reason. Perhaps some sort of OOC 'steal' limit could be implemented. Maybe every 24 hours, you could have only 1-2 successful pickpocket rolls against PCs. A pretty out there and somewhat blunt idea, granted.

[Riev]

My hot take on apartments in the cities:

It used to be VERY difficult to find a lockpick. And once you DID have one, it broke. When you finally had enough skill to break into an apartment, you basically had to have your favorite three picks to use, and you had to be a MASTER assassin to even attempt the highest locks. It was also very difficult to even get to pick making.

Now, pick making is easier to get to, SOMEWHAT easier to start off with, and there is no ability to "police" them as there was before.


Apartments are fine. Clans that deal in their protection just cannot possibly police them like they used to, and non-clanned PCs are able to do whatever they want, without ever being consequenced.

[Pariah]

I have never killed in an apartment, and I have never been killed in an apartment.

How much would it help just to make apartments auto unlock from the inside?

Code Select Expand

>close door w
You close the door.

>open door w
You open the door.

>close door w
You close the door.

>lock door w
You lock the door.

>open door west (with or without a key)
Unbolting the latch, you open the door.

I assume you can use the open command while in combat.  If not, make it so and to me, this would end the "deathtrap"iness of apartments as presented in this thread.

I distinctly remember getting apartment murdered and it went like this.

Backstab to me
unlock door
open door
flee

(in the time it took for those commands to take place, there is a slight delay on open door to flee)

Badguy closes door
Flee happens, you have no where to go!
try again three more times, he just closes the door after I open it and DING mantis head.

[Kavrick]

I think criminal classes/PCs right now are just kinda a weird thing where they're either completely useless and don't have anything to do or they're godlike invisible creatures of mass murder/theft. I really want criminals to be a more common thing to add that dynamic to the city, but it seems like it's either no fun for the person being subject to the crime or it's no fun for the person doing the crime (crimcode flags, ten guards teleport into your room and drag you off to a cell to afk for x amount of time). I could be wrong but that was kinda my experience with it, it was either all or nothing. I think partially this is due to criminal characters utilizing skills that dont have much counter unless you're playing a specific class and criminals not having much to do that doesn't involve PCs. Someone mentioned the idea of having NPC apartments they could break into and stuff and I think that would be good.

[Kronibas]

Once upon a time, there was an enormous thriving Byn unit in Allanak.  It was huge, with lots of troopers, runners, and, well,

The Byn was just so popular and thriving that they put apartments over the Gaj and gladiator.

As a result, Allanak was thriving, and the Gaj was packed all of the time.

Do you guys know what happened, to end this?

The imms created an RPT complete with psionicists, mekillots, almost all of the newbie Bynners dying — one of the the two players working on forming an indie group out of this large clan quit playing, and it just totally destroyed the clan at the time instead of being some sort of weird "culling" moment.

Don't do stuff like this again, just killing PCs because a clan's too large, and you may not find yourself ever having to wonder how to "rebuild" the population of cities.

[Kronibas]

^^^ weirdly happened as Nyr was doing a population drive and role calls for Tuluk.  HMMMMMM.

[BadSkeelz]

The old Kuraci Fist was similarly undone by forced RPTs trying to thin out some extremely skilled combatant PCs for... reasons? To make room for the Garrison, I suppose. I just know staff got upset with us not wanting to hang around a meteorite that drained our hit points by 1/hp every ten seconds just by being in the same room as the thing. We had one small pebble that damn near killed us bringing back to Red Storm, leaving a much bigger deposit behind in a devastated camp that might as well have had a radiation exclusion zone set up around it. Our leaders were explicitly told by staff that we weren't going to get events run anytime soon for failing to take the bait.

Most of the PCs got bumped off in the next couple months via gith wizardry, or stored as their friends got rubbed out.

Players enjoy challenges that they can engage with and overcome with hard work and cooperation. Players do not enjoy being picked on by nigh indestructible opponents, PC or Staff.

[Patuk]

You could just do it the Nergal way, and kill off close-knit celf gangs by marching in the mul from the Folley to murder everyone. Somehow I didn't play a celf for years afterward. Really makes you think.

[Dresan]

I think the above would fit more into a thread called why being herded into any clan/group sucks in the long term. Not that don't I feel its part of the reason why people are no longer in cities, just that it would be a fun conversation to have in more depth.

Back to cities though, I wasn't originally considering apartment building halls be no hide but I can see that too.

As someone who plays sneaky/combat types I know that the ones who almost always suffer in this game are the social/merchant character who arguably should be safer in cities. However, these types of characters and players have been weeded out from the game since for the longest time money was worthless,  merchant houses sold the best stuff so why craft, and finally when players of aides and squishies were being killed left and right most people just shrugged.

The game has also continuously pushed players towards stalkers,raiders and other powerful combos/races with plots, resources and the convenience of being able to look/find more interaction/fun that comes from just having ride/direction sense on demand while making  city bound classes/roles the least viable and often in more danger of death thanks to bored sponsored roles that can easily utilize templars murder powers. Even the criminal classes outside of killing squishes or just being annoyances with petty theft are subpar compared to wilderness classes unless you go mage...even more so after the poison and blunt weapon dice changes.

[Veselka]

I think in general Cities should just be more Staffed by Staff. Indies / Tribes should be expected to not only make their own fun, but they likely enjoy being left alone moreso than their city counterparts.

There should be more going on in Cities, purely from more Staff presence/interactions/storylines, than out in the wilds. The wilds should be desolate, less animate, and less 'fun' on its own. It should be dangerous and difficult to traverse and not a playground.

I found this equation more or less true in the past -- When you played in a tribe, you felt lucky to get Staff interaction, but at the same time, you made almost all of your own fun with your built in tribe-mates, their loyalty, their 'us against them' sort of mentality was enough to drive you forward. It also helped me hone my Solo RP chops and enjoy it, actually.

It's difficult for many city based roles to operate on their own without Staff assistance, particularly Noble and Templar roles. Left to their own devices, they tend to exhibit behaviors that the playerbase on a whole seems to not enjoy at all. Given direction and purpose, they tend to engage with the playerbase in a more beneficial fashion.

I agree with some of the points brought up in this thread -- that sponsored roles shouldn't just be filling a slot, but there should be plot devices/background stories/plot propoulsion given to the character from day 0. Staff should think of a few things before putting up the role call -- small plot hooks that can get the sponsored role started off with a bang.

Examples:

-T'zai Byn Sergeant. Coordinate with the Southern Templarate team and come up with a Classic Sewer Problem that needs the Byn's attention, and maybe House Jal (NPCs if there aren't any PCs around). Nyr did this with one of my Byn Sergeants in the past, and it was a great hook for a day 1 Sergeant. Dangerous mission. Rally the troops.

-House Oash. A magickal experiment went awry and created a temporal rift in one of the rooms of the Oashi Barracks -- Items keep appearing and disappearing at random, when left on the center table. You need to put together a team (Circle) of Magi to investigate it, and try to keep it under wraps/control before the Templarate finds out, or (at your own risk and discretion) involve the Templarate, that's up to you.

-House Borsail. A new stock of slaves has come to fruition for your inspection and to auction off to the Templarate and other Nobles. Write up the NPCs (sdesc, desc, and brief background) and we (Staff) will take care of building them. Over the course of the next 1-2 RL months, cajole and coerce your colleagues into buying the slaves. If you sell them out, you'll likely be rewarded. Leftovers will need to be sold off at a discount, so do your best to get rid of them at high prices. Low price of 10k, high price of 20k.

-House Kurac. A potential new strain of spice has been discovered in Red Storm by the spice buyer and been put aside. Go investigate in the Warehouse while keeping it under wraps -- if there are loose lips, see about silencing them with coin or by other means. If you obtain the sample of spice, retrieve it and bring it back to Luirs for study.

Simple hooks -- Not necessarily world shaking or too much right out of the gates, but I can't tell you how many times I was just plopped into a leadership role and not given much direction or insight as to past greivances or 'what's going on'. Just 'here's your skill boosts, ready go'.

Creating guidelines for this prior to apping in a new PC would be wonderful.

[FantasyWriter]

I think in general Cities should just be more Staffed by Staff. Indies / Tribes should be expected to not only make their own fun, but they likely enjoy being left alone moreso than their city counterparts.

City players have three staffing teams.  Red Storm, Tribals, and Outdoor Player clanns, and Unaffiliated have one between all of them.
Are you saying they should get NO support at all?

The wilds should be desolate, less animate, and less 'fun' on its own.

Why do you want to take fun things away from other people just so your play-style can get more attention?
Try to keep change suggestions that make what you want more attractive, and not make what other people like less enjoyable.

I found this equation more or less true in the past -- When you played in a tribe, you felt lucky to get Staff interaction, but at the same time, you made almost all of your own fun with your built in tribe-mates, their loyalty, their 'us against them' sort of mentality was enough to drive you forward. It also helped me hone my Solo RP chops and enjoy it, actually.

So you didn't get attention when you played in tribes, but you think they get too much attention when you aren't?

Us vs. them City Oppertties: GMH v. GMH, MMH v. GMH, Commoner v. Highborn, Noble v. Templar, Southside v. Rinth, Undertuluk v. Topside, Nak v. Tuluk, City v. Wild?

It's difficult for many city based roles to operate on their own without Staff assistance, particularly Noble and Templar roles. Left to their own devices, they tend to exhibit behaviors that the playerbase on a whole seems to not enjoy at all. Given direction and purpose, they tend to engage with the playerbase in a more beneficial fashion.

I agree with some of the points brought up in this thread -- that sponsored roles shouldn't just be filling a slot, but there should be plot devices/background stories/plot propoulsion given to the character from day 0. Staff should think of a few things before putting up the role call -- small plot hooks that can get the sponsored role started off with a bang.

I've always assumed one of the most important parts of writing a sponsored roll is 1) what do you plan on doing with this role and 2) how do you plan to do it, and a staffer decide to/not to sponsor and back your idea as much as your character concept.  I would much rather be pushing my own staff-backed story than playing animated NPC for a staffer's plot-line that I only get snippets of information about from time to time and left directionless when not puppeted or when their goals start working against my own.  I think it was earlier in this thread where someone commented that getting a sponsored role with coded and/or virtual power behind it was like being a mini-staffer with a "job" to do to entertain others, and I definitely agree.  There are hundreds of plots you can pursue with no or minimal support.

[DesertT]

Maybe make it so you can see at night in the city even when the weather is "Gritty sand blows in from the DIRECTION, piling in small dunes."

[Kavrick]

Maybe make it so you can see at night in the city even when the weather is "Gritty sand blows in from the DIRECTION, piling in small dunes."

So much this. There are massive walls around Allanak, not being able to move around at night, even with a torch is hell. Also means that whether or not mc crime city elf can do crime at night is rng if there is no storm.

[Gunnerblaster]

Wish we could have a nice, concise summary of the suggestions so that Staff don't need to read through 9 pages. Half of those being whole different conversations that kind of go off rails.

I'd like to know what ideas from the ones gleamed, Staff considered viable.

[Kialae]

Wish we could have a nice, concise summary of the suggestions so that Staff don't need to read through 9 pages. Half of those being whole different conversations that kind of go off rails.

I'd like to know what ideas from the ones gleamed, Staff considered viable.

*a wild mansa appears*

[Pariah]

Wish we could have a nice, concise summary of the suggestions so that Staff don't need to read through 9 pages. Half of those being whole different conversations that kind of go off rails.

I'd like to know what ideas from the ones gleamed, Staff considered viable.

*a wild mansa appears*

Lmao, I was gonna say the same shit.

[Dresan]

I think some people touched upon this but one major problem the entire game suffers from is how easy it is to just isolate yourself.

This has been a long running problem where the design of the game prevents and discourages interaction between players. Its ironic that apartments are the most dangerous places in the game.

The Tan Maurk used to have an entire green land with water. These was once deamed too much and volcanos few across the known to resolve the problem. However, the problem didn't stop there, barracks are basically the same freaking way. You could enter a barrack and you have, trianing, food, the way and everything you need to play the game without ever leaving. 

There have been events like the gith wars that could have been used to force the pah tribes into areas between tuluk, luirs and allanak where they would be more in direct contact with people, cities and travelers. Further making it an ongoing sore point to keep the gith/mantis or whatever at bay using luirs as a meeting hub. Water could have been scarce with the gem destroyed, making them more willing to negotiate with civilized hubs because it would be the last sources of water not controlled by enemy forces. How much more dangerous would have this made travel, instead of it just being snakes and desert storms.

Consolidation didn't have to mean closing clans and tribes, you can really have a good time with just two or three people after all, but instead making sure that people had reason to interact with different factions and had more opportunities to encounter each other beyond travelling to location just to sight see. Desert storms could have then been used to make it difficult to traverse outside of beaten paths. I am starting to think the breakdown of the north road between Allanak and Tuluk was a bad idea after all these years. As if empty desolate long spaces made travel more difficult than a path with more choke points that was more congested with actual people belonging to different factions.

But i digress, mostly beause again this concept of having reasons to interact with each other breaks down even at the city level thanks to fortress clan compounds. It didn't have to be this way, back when Tuluk has an open arena that allowed people to train across clans and employement status the arena used to be a hotbed of activitiy where people hung out just to see the sparring between different people. Now years later the staff is now willing to giving away skill boosts in exchange for sticking around a city for two RL months. I am not sure this is any better than someone sitting at an arena twinking for hours at a time but providing people a constant source of interaction by always being available to spar with. :/

[mansa]

There may be duplicates:

Subcategory | Description
Clan   Schedule too limiting
Clan   "feels like a job, if I'm taking a slot"
Clan   Restrictive Schedule
Clan   Force players outside of safe "clan" rooms
Clan   Easy way to find Byn leaders
Clan   City Leaders are Murderers
Clan   Let players advance high in clan rank
Clan   Bring GHM to Tuluk
Clan   Nobles can't protect their minions
Clan   Make templars create a TPS report BEFORE killing characters
Clan   Minor Merchant Houses reduce the speciality of GMH  (MMH have too much power)
Clan   City Leaders are Murderers
Clan   Give more coded power to Leaders
Clan   Murderous Templars
Clan   City Clans have long recruit phases
Clan   City Politics is very gated / opaque
Clan   Make MMH process easier
Clan   Force nobles to be public
Clan   T'zai Byn "City Based" quests
Clan   Special app into a clan with combat skills
Clan   increase "city based" quests for T'zai Byn
Clan   remove restrictions on 'leaving the city alone' in clans
Clan   More noble house antagonism
Clan   Increase clan population caps
Clan   remove life oaths
Clan   relook clan definitions and goals
Clan   templar players killed me
Clan   Hire 2 leaders instead of 1
Clan   Templar Players killed me
Clan   Let clan leaders work OOCly together
Clan   Create more anti-establishment clans in the city
Clan   unable to join existing plots
City   Too Large
City   More coded things to do in the city
City   Arena Games
City   Public "Sparring rooms"
City   City is hard to find rare goods
City   New foraging items in the city only
City   Prevent killing in Taverns
City   City is PVP, wilderness is collaborative PVE
City   Make throwing in taverns fail<- Updated Feb 19th to be "Throwing/shooting INTO tavern rooms has a greater chance to fail"
City   First strike attacks in Taverns are half-damage
City   Increase stealth detection in taverns<- Updated Feb 19th to be "Stealing Failure always crime-codes thief"
City   Shrink city sizes
City   NPC quests
City   More seedy bars in public
City   Close the BANKS
City   City is PVP, wilderness is collaborative PVE
City   Scripted NPCs that teach things
City   Let players buy NPCs
City   More ways to learn combat skills in the City without a clan
City   Nothing happening in the city
City   psionic skills don't cost anything in taverns  <- Updated Feb 19th to be reduced to "2 focus points"
City   More "purpose" in the cities
City   More "city specific" harvestable resources
City   Change how NPCs buy/sell
City   Public Crafting Rooms
City   Sending way messages while crafting
City   Let PCs set up a mat to "sell things" in the bazaar
City   Crafting in Taverns<- Updated Feb 12th in the Gaj to have the Roasting Pits be more crafting friendly
City   Sandstorms in the City - unable to travel at night
City   Bored in the City
City   selling to NPCs sucks
City   More city jobs
City   More PvE in the City
City   Increase reasons why desert players should come into the cities
City   More small jobs for players in the cities
City   reduce cost of alcohol in taverns<- Updated Feb 5th to reduce the cost of drinks in "lower end taverns"
City   increase rewards to city players
City   city roles are PVP, wilderness roles are PVE
City   increase skill gains in the city
City   Make apartments harder to break into
City   No reason for "tribes" to enter the city
Criminal   Unsure how crime code works
Criminal   Instant Hate and playerbase death.
Criminal   Remove "wanted flag" at night
Criminal   Remove "soldiers hunting down wanted characters"
Criminal   0 karma dwarf kills in public spaces
Criminal   No reprocussions for Thieving
Criminal   Coded NPC gangs to deal with
Criminal   More GANGS in the 'rinth / tuluk
Criminal   "NPC" criminals for players to hunt down and kill
Criminal   Give more NPCs for thieves to kill / rob
Criminal   Things for Criminals to do
Criminal   Update Crime Code binary aspects
Criminal   Unable to combat against thieves
Playability   Access to "who's who" and Leaders
Playability   Temporary characters to "observe" arena events
Playability   Temporary characters for RPTs
Playability   City Exploringis more dangerous than Outside  (climb / NPC killers)
Playability   Make wilderness more dangerous
Playability   Don't make wilderness more punishing
Playability   Allow unstorage of characters
Playability   Allow more retcons with characters
Playability   Loss of control of your character forces you to leave the city
Playability   Make wilderness more dangerous
Playability   Make wilderness DANGEROUS AT NIGHT
Playability   Make water harder to get in the wilderness
Playability   RPT should be city based
Playability   It is too easy to isolate yourself from others in the world - create a reason for interactivity
Playability   Gaining skill in the wilderness is faster than gaining skill in the city
Playability   WHERE command to show where players are.
Playability   Players can quit whenever they want to in the wilderness, with more agency
Playability   Force all players to fill out forms when killing characters
Playability   Merchant Classes can way when crafting
Playability   Moree nuance between killing and maiming
Playability   Bring back TRAP skill
Playability   Conflict in wilderness is PVE, and conflict in City is PVP
Playability   Gameplay loop is travel outside city, gather resources, travel back to city.
Magick   Stop removing magick items
Magick   Stop removing magick spells
Magick   Hidden Magicker roles do not work in City
Magick   Magickers are Slaves to the Templars in Allanak
Magick   Make magick not feared
Magick   Nothing to do with Magickers in the city

[Miradus]

Do NOT invoke the Mansa unless you are prepared for the Mansa.

[dumbstruck]

A city version of wild quit for city. There are many players who play rangery types with wild quit in part because you can literally just bounce, without the 1 time in a row lock of quit ooc as it was designed iirc. I know that's a big appeal of it's own.