Let's talk about apartments

[Classclown]

So if the more expensive apartments weren't impenetrable, I am still struggling to understand how burglar types would be affected.

Again. Someone wanted unclanned crafter apartments that could be made crime-proof with hall guards and such. I disagreed and explained why.

When people stop burglarizing apartments at 3am ST because everyone is usually logged off, except for off-peak, then I'll worry about burglars' feelings. High end houses are supposed to be hard to burgle. That's why there are movies like Ocean's 11. It should require skill to burgle expensive apartments.

[Jimpka_Moss]

Windstorm, you have the Right here to expect a decent amount of roleplay with your death. That includes apartment kills that make sense dammit. I don't think the code needs to change, so much as this right here needs to be highlighted as a part of our community's RP standards, as a bottom line.

This is, in practical terms, patently false. No one was the Right to anything except when it comes to consent and Rape plotlines (and god knows some people do their best to skirt those). You have no Right to roleplay. To believe otherwise is to invite bitterness and disappointment. Have no expectation of it. If you want good roleplay, force it on others by putting yourself in a position of power and privilege and demand it from them on pain of .....

removal of karma. Fixed this for us. Also, I hope you have a good internal attitude beyond what I see displayed about what players deserve here. I make up a percentage of the playerbase, and because of that, I can /imbue/ us with that much percentage of that right. And I do, with my constant adherence to my own principles. You could add that. (edited for snark)

[Tuannon]

Going to step in to say that the subject is kind of contentious, please keep the conversation as close to neutral and civil as possible. Thanks.

[BadSkeelz]

Also, I hope you have a good internal attitude beyond what I see displayed about what players deserve here.

I just prioritize strength and get crimcode on my side if possible.

[Tuannon]

Don't co-opt a thread about apartments to air your dirty laundry about PK and 'poor' RP.

[Lotion]

Why was my on topic post removed?

[Tuannon]

Because you are not sticking to the topic, if you want to critique people's PK methods, start a new thread.

[Riev]

So if the more expensive apartments weren't impenetrable, I am still struggling to understand how burglar types would be affected.

Again. Someone wanted unclanned crafter apartments that could be made crime-proof with hall guards and such. I disagreed and explained why.

When people stop burglarizing apartments at 3am ST because everyone is usually logged off, except for off-peak, then I'll worry about burglars' feelings. High end houses are supposed to be hard to burgle. That's why there are movies like Ocean's 11. It should require skill to burgle expensive apartments.

IMO there should be a way for 'high end' apartments to be considered that beyond the simplistic "is your door picking skill above <x>, if so, you win" methodology. At one point, there were 'guards' added but they are not overly useful, as by the time you have the picking skill to break in, you have the ability to 'get past the guards' too.

ITT: Anyone not openly wearing the appropriate tenement 'door key' around their neck or wrists will be followed by a patrolling guard. Not arrested. Not attacked. Followed. Put them on patrol, so you can still get in if you're watching and being careful, but if they catch you? They watch and follow. Anyone found to be breaking in and thieving with a guard watching is OBVIOUSLY not obeying the ACTUAL world (nevermind the virtual)

[Trevalyan]

ITT: Anyone not openly wearing the appropriate tenement 'door key' around their neck or wrists will be followed by a patrolling guard. Not arrested. Not attacked. Followed. Put them on patrol, so you can still get in if you're watching and being careful, but if they catch you? They watch and follow. Anyone found to be breaking in and thieving with a guard watching is OBVIOUSLY not obeying the ACTUAL world (nevermind the virtual)

This would have the coded issue of making apartment ERP much more awkward, so needless to say I'm all for it.

[Riev]

A pimply-faced Allanaki soldier runs in from the west!
A pimply-faced Allanaki soldier begins watching you.
A pimply-faced Allanaki soldier begins following you.

I mean in all honesty, it wouldn't work unless they could notice you weren't wearing your key from like 3 rooms away, but still.

Maybe Nenyuk is sick of having complaints and hires on a 3-4 more security Bynners, on contract, for security at each of their properties. One per floor, every couple rooms just ... keeping an eye on people looking to see if they're wearing their keys.

[Windstorm]

Don't co-opt a thread about apartments to air your dirty laundry about PK and 'poor' RP.

Being the initial poster of this forum topic, I will voice that PK and poor roleplay are a central theme in players being killed in apartments, and we will continue discussing this. It is on-topic. Attempting to tell us what we can't talk about is off-topic. You have spammed this thread with three posts to this effect. If anyone is off-topic it is you. Please stay on-topic.

PCs being killed in apartments and them being a choice place in which to often-unrealistically kill PCs - ignoring the environment of an empty, small room the occupant is familiar with, vNPCs, apartment owners, neighbors and the setting - what are more viable ways to account for the world in this? Are there ways to improve the code?

Maybe fighting should create more noise or an automated guard response. Maybe repeatedly checking apartment availability in a certain outlet should be notated, especially when it's by obvious elves or Labyrinthines.

[BadSkeelz]

PCs being killed in apartments and them being a choice place in which to often-unrealistically kill PCs - ignoring the environment of an empty, small room the occupant is familiar with, vNPCs, apartment owners, neighbors and the setting - what are more viable ways to account for the world in this? Are there ways to improve the code?

Remove crimcode, make it easier to murder people in the streets. Especially those pesky sponsored roles who rely on NPCs to protect themselves from players, instead of other players.

[Jimpka_Moss]

PCs being killed in apartments and them being a choice place in which to often-unrealistically kill PCs - ignoring the environment of an empty, small room the occupant is familiar with, vNPCs, apartment owners, neighbors and the setting - what are more viable ways to account for the world in this? Are there ways to improve the code?

Remove crimcode, make it easier to murder people in the streets. Especially those pesky sponsored roles who rely on NPCs to protect themselves from players, instead of other players.

Yup. No matter who I play, or what I play, I will almost always support this position. I do not see a real, absolutely necessary downside.

[Windstorm]

I think people maybe underestimate how easy it is to kill people in the streets or even overestimate how strong NPCs are. I've seen plenty of all this. I've done some of it myself. It's not hard. But, one should expect the world to respond also. Sometimes, people perform these tactics and "succeed" assuming the world never will. It shouldn't be hard to kill somebody on the street and in my experience, it's not.

That said, killing a noble or a templar should not be an entirely simple task. I don't think it's that hard even now. It may take coordination or more involvement than spamming backstab on Labyrinth NPCs or whatever before you decide to suddenly do it on a sponsored role that's driving a lot of roleplay in their environment, but that's how it should be. These things do come with risk, and again, they should. You just shouldn't be able to do it alone and it's true that you generally can't.

The problem with apartments and the ease of apartment killing is that it basically doesn't come with any risk at all. If you've spent a little while (not very long) developing the skills you can pick a lock, enter silently, and kill an unsuspecting PC in seconds with close to zero chance of getting caught or meeting any resistance but the victim's skills... which they're probably not well-prepared to even use in that moment since they're in their own home, possibly afk or Waying or not expecting to be instamurdered.

[Windstorm]

I'm just giving this addendum its own post because I felt it significant.

Assassinations are neat. Assassinations can be fun. I've done them in multiple games and settings but only in Armageddon is there this weird expectation that all that should be involved is spamming your backstab skill and then finding somebody, doing it solo and sneaking away.

No. This isn't villainy, this isn't engaging or interesting or impressive. Anyone can do that. Instead, plot it. Plan it. Roleplay it. Pay people off. Lure the guards away, account for them or take them out. Involve other people. Make it interesting and not just a code flex. I'd rather every kind of that type of "assassination" (generous term for boneheaded hack-and-slash play) failed so that people had to get more creative, personally.

I could detail escapades in other RPing environments and how deep and involved an assassination can and should be. I wish that was the standard here. Instead, it's "I should be able to sneak anywhere and kill somebody instantly because it's Antagonism(fucking lol, no it isn't)." It's a Uniquely ArmageddonMUD Demand and it's only from a very small section of the playerbase, but it's unceasingly weird to me.

Let people have homes. Right now they're deathtraps and the "villainy" people are advocating for in defense of the status quo is the most boring lunkheaded kind imaginable. If we want roleplaying standards, this is a fine example of where to start.

[dumbstruck]

You mean roleplay in this RPI? What?!?! <3 <3 <3

(Note, I'm actually with you and agree with all of those points. For the longest time I've been in favor of something where you can't kill someone without at least an emote and met with resistance from various parties on an astounding number of different grounds but dear god, it's supposed to be a roleplaying game, shouldn't we require some roleplay? And not just thoughts and feels, but yes, emoting, emotive actions, things that show the other player what your characters actions are in verbally impacting, descriptive ways? Oh, they'll run. Yeah, so did the people when it was me pk'ing. That's the game. If you can't still pk, get good and go at it again from another angle, if you don't want your identity revealed as someone antagonistic, well, maybe you just can't have it both ways and expecting it both ways is unrealistic. You want it realistic, realism dictates that criminal people get treated like criminals.)

[Dune Bunny]

I've posted about it several times in other threads. Until there's a change to stealth's interactions with small rooms/spaces, it's unlikely apartments will be any safer. So long as players with PK in mind can hide in a place that should be near impossible, they'll use that to their advantage.

If I'm in a tiny, torchlit hallway, no amount of stealth is going to make you invisible to the eye. If I'm in my 10x10 apartment, sitting at a table, I'm going to hear my lock picked open. I'm going to hear the door open, going to see the door open, going to hear it close, especially considering the quality of most doors in Zalanthas.

Once you're in my 10x10 apartment, with a table and a few boxes, you're not going to be invisible to the eye. Sure, there's always a possibility, but it shouldn't come with the same ease as hiding on Caravan in the middle of a crowd, or at midnight in a dark alley. There should be severe penalties to stealth in certain places, most apartments especially. Shadowing someone through a doorway should be extremely difficult, or even down a small hallway.

Then you have situations where it's not as simple as just hiding, sneaking, and backstabbing. You have to plan to assassination/robbery, you have to change the location to somewhere you won't be so easily noticed. And worst of all, you might have to work with other players to set things up with roleplay.

One of my worst moments on my character, Sylania; we were in a certain apartment building in a certain part of the world, in a hallway that was barely more than shoulder width. She and her sister are about to enter their home, when I notice a sneaky fella standing there with us. Syl looks at him, and is like 'Hello!' Then next thing I know, I try to speak further to him, and he's gone.

Syl is shocked, reports the instance to a Templar as filthy magick. I felt silly from an ooc standpoint doing so, as I knew it was just stealth, but from an IC standpoint, what should she and her sister have assumed? It just simply should've been impossible for that pc to disappear like that in such a confined space, under two pairs of eyes.

So yeah, my two sids on a way to make apartment trouble less troublesome, and potentially more "realistic".

(Or we can ignore all that, and make the apartment building gate guards work like estate guards. =P )

[Kialae]

I have lost characters in apartments pretty often. I'm faulting myself on that though - you gotta give people a shred of trust to do anything fun in this game, and sometimes it gets you killed. That's MCB baby.

It sure sucks in the moment but eh, I take a break and come back like a week later.

[Roon]

We used to have high-end apartments that took a lot of skill to break into. There weren't many, but they were there. The ones just south of the bazaar come to mind. They were basically penthouses and they had masterwork locks on the front doors. I think there were only two of these apartments in Allanak, don't know about Tuluk.

It also used to be that very few characters had access to the lockpicking skill. Only assassins and burglars got it. Only burglars got it high enough to pick the masterwork locks. Burglar was not a popular class because it kind of sucked at everything except picking locks, so if you lived in a high-end apartment, you were reasonably safe.

Then both of these things changed. The high-end apartments were removed and the pick skill was doled out to all kinds of classes and subclasses. I played a soldier/rogue some time back whose pick skill capped at journeyman, and I never encountered a lock I couldn't pick. I could pick literally every single apartment in both cities and in Red Storm.

It's not much of a surprise, then, that apartments lost their value and appeal.

[LindseyBalboa]

Syl is shocked, reports the instance to a Templar as filthy magick. I felt silly from an ooc standpoint doing so, as I knew it was just stealth, but from an IC standpoint, what should she and her sister have assumed? It just simply should've been impossible for that pc to disappear like that in such a confined space, under two pairs of eyes.

So yeah, my two sids on a way to make apartment trouble less troublesome, and potentially more "realistic".

(Or we can ignore all that, and make the apartment building gate guards work like estate guards. =P )

... non-seq this sounds exactly like the stuff I'd love to have reports of and roleplay about if I were a templar. I don't know if there could ever be enough of PCs accusing other PCs of witch-craft with or without foundation. Nice!

[Lotion]

I think the problem should go backwards
people need a place to put their crap
people have too much crap
people suck at inventory management

try playing a half-elf who spends most of their time in the wilderness and only returns to a city rarely while staying at light encumbrance or below and you will get so much better at this.

[Roon]

I think the problem should go backwards
people need a place to put their crap
people have too much crap
people suck at inventory management

try playing a half-elf who spends most of their time in the wilderness and only returns to a city rarely while staying at light encumbrance or below and you will get so much better at this.

There's no reason to hold that as the expectation for players. Not every character is a half-elf ranger who visits town once in a while. There are very valid character concepts where it should be possible to have multiple sets of clothes or a large amount of tools or just a place to go and discuss matters that can't be talked of in public. People don't "suck at inventory management" or "have too much crap" unless you think the lone ranger experience is the correct way to play the game and the city-dwelling person with a real job and social life is the wrong way to play.

I'd say the game is suffering because too many players do play untethered lone rangers who don't lead lives where there's a reason to have a real home and more belongings than you can stuff into a backpack. Living out of a single set of gear and rarely visiting a city is not some virtue that people should strive for. This game would benefit a lot from being better at facilitating a playstyle where being able to say 'this is where I live and this is what's in my home' is not a liability or simply unviable. At the very least, it would make crafting/buying things other than weapons and armor a lot more appealing.

Unfortunately, since apartments are only marginally more secure than a tent on Skid Row, it's an exercise in futility to play that way. It encourages playing the lone ranger who owns nothing but the shirt off his back and weapons on his belt. That's not the "correct" way to play Armageddon. The fact that too many play that way is one of the biggest problems this game has. While I wouldn't go so far a to tie a direct and exclusive causation to it, city life was way more popular and attractive back when it was relatively feasible to have an apartment because A) they (some of them, at least) were much harder to break into, and B) very few characters had the lockpicking skill or the means to make picks.

[Riev]

and B) very few characters had the lockpicking skill or the means to make picks.

When there was only 2 classes who could make picks in the first place and they were relatively squishy, it was easier to keep track of who had picks. It also required FINDING a pick in the first place to even make them, resulting in people who make picks understanding the rarity and power of them.

With expanded access to picks and some of the 'easiest' recipe picks being at the pristine level? Nowhere is safe, and a thief can ransack an entire apartment without anyone being able to do anything about it. And its defended as "but desert strife"

[Lotion]

I think the problem should go backwards
people need a place to put their crap
people have too much crap
people suck at inventory management

try playing a half-elf who spends most of their time in the wilderness and only returns to a city rarely while staying at light encumbrance or below and you will get so much better at this.

There's no reason to hold that as the expectation for players. Not every character is a half-elf ranger who visits town once in a while. There are very valid character concepts where it should be possible to have multiple sets of clothes or a large amount of tools or just a place to go and discuss matters that can't be talked of in public. People don't "suck at inventory management" or "have too much crap" unless you think the lone ranger experience is the correct way to play the game and the city-dwelling person with a real job and social life is the wrong way to play.

I'd say the game is suffering because too many players do play untethered lone rangers who don't lead lives where there's a reason to have a real home and more belongings than you can stuff into a backpack. Living out of a single set of gear and rarely visiting a city is not some virtue that people should strive for. This game would benefit a lot from being better at facilitating a playstyle where being able to say 'this is where I live and this is what's in my home' is not a liability or simply unviable. At the very least, it would make crafting/buying things other than weapons and armor a lot more appealing.

Unfortunately, since apartments are only marginally more secure than a tent on Skid Row, it's an exercise in futility to play that way. It encourages playing the lone ranger who owns nothing but the shirt off his back and weapons on his belt. That's not the "correct" way to play Armageddon. The fact that too many play that way is one of the biggest problems this game has. While I wouldn't go so far a to tie a direct and exclusive causation to it, city life was way more popular and attractive back when it was relatively feasible to have an apartment because A) they (some of them, at least) were much harder to break into, and B) very few characters had the lockpicking skill or the means to make picks.

I think you misunderstand. I'm not saying players shouldn't be allowed to have all of those nice multiple outfits or whatnot. What I am saying is that players should play characters in a way that is supported by the code or else they will face frequent playability issues.

[Dracul]

Having not contributed to this thread much but experienced most of these things (I don't think I've ever been killed in an apartment yet though, I have witnessed apartment murders...)

A) I'd love to see apartments/tents in Luirs without having to play bob the builder dwarf whose primary goal in life will lead him to a very boring roleplaying experience. forage rock,. get rock, drop rock with ldesc.    ...okay I actually do kinda enjoy that with certain charcters....

B) Locks don't work, I want a physical guard. If it costs more cool, if it makes the other places cost less okay. The amount something costs can always be balanced.