Allanaki Gates - Flavour versus Playability

[Halaster]

I have an idea for a solution.  Let's lean into that C in MCB!

Keep it like it is, and it closes when it does now.  However, we add a mechanism that you could bribe a gateguard into opening it for you to let you in...

[The Lonely Hunter]

I have an idea for a solution.  Let's lean into that C in MCB!

Keep it like it is, and it closes when it does now.  However, we add a mechanism that you could bribe a gateguard into opening it for you to let you in...

Don't forget, you can always bribe a PC as well!

[Krath]

Quit is your friend, shops closed, dark, gates closed....quit, come back in 30 minutes

[Kavrick]

Quit is your friend, shops closed, dark, gates closed....quit, come back in 30 minutes

I do want to point out, game mechanics that encourage people to quit out of the game can't be good for player activity.

[Suhuy]

Quit is your friend, shops closed, dark, gates closed....quit, come back in 30 minutes

I do want to point out, game mechanics that encourage people to quit out of the game can't be good for player activity.

Though I may be wrong, I think that was his exact point with the statement.

[Windstorm]

Quit is your friend, shops closed, dark, gates closed....quit, come back in 30 minutes

The point is that a lot of people will do this and wind up not logging back in.

In the case of a newer player who isn't hooked and is having their time wasted, sometimes that means not logging in again at all, ever.

[Windstorm]

I have an idea for a solution.  Let's lean into that C in MCB!

Keep it like it is, and it closes when it does now.  However, we add a mechanism that you could bribe a gateguard into opening it for you to let you in...

Your solution here in the ways that it matters is still something that winds up punishing newer players who might not have coin, and at least in my view is not at all fixing the problem. Veteran players will have the coin at hand and know they need the coin at hand, where a new player is much more likely to trip on this before they know what they're doing, and then quit over it - never to return.

If there's a pattern here to be recognized, it's that older gameplay-focused players on Arm are always going to push for "harsh" stuff that they'll always know the way to get past anyway. The people who want the "harsh" don't have a problem shrugging, then going right past it. Only the newer players wind up losing out on "harsh" stuff, making it not harsh at all, just punishing for the uninformed.

Newer players losing out on it sucks. We lose them that way before they become ArmageddonMUD players.

Above, Krath illustrated my entire point beautifully, if unintentionally: "Just log out."

That's right. The best way to play ArmageddonMUD when it's inconveniencing  you is to log out. To stop playing ArmageddonMUD. Newer players also don't log back in. They got bored and inconvenienced, and they left.

[Inks]

RP wise the closed gates create more tavern interactions and opportunities for RP, in my opinion. And less spamhunting.

I don't think new players are being scared away by closed gates in Allanak and Storm.

There are many other spheres which don't have closed gates if for whatever reason they make it unplayable for you.

I also wouldn't rage at all if they were open at night I just think it is much better having them secure at night.

I do like the bribing mechanic Halaster suggested though. Yes please! Very C in MCB. I would adore that.

[Roon]

RP wise the closed gates create more tavern interactions and opportunities for RP, in my opinion. And less spamhunting.

While this may be true in principle, that principle isn't worth much when the reality is that the taverns and streets are usually empty even when the gates are closed. Then it's a net negative. You get the annoyance of the game's main central hub being closed 1/3rd of the time, but you get none of the benefits that this could in theory create.

That point in time, way back when one could realistically argue that it helped generate a meaningful amount of roleplay, is long gone. It is a self-evident fact that Allanak shutting down a full third of the time has not successfully maintained an active social scene. It's daft to cling to a negative because we pine for the positive that it may have once brought, long ago in the past. Clearly, keeping the gate schedule has not helped in that regard. It just made people stop playing in Allanak.

The principle itself doesn't even hold up, to be honest. This is a game of two cities. That other city has never closed its gates at night (unless a horny gurth got too close, but that's another matter). This fact didn't seem to have any adverse effects on Tuluk. While it would be far-fetched to say that Tuluk has been thriving and awesome at all times, it would be equally frivolous to say that the city's problems stem from the fact that the gates don't close at night.

In fact, even in Tuluk (or Luir's or Cenyr or wherever), people don't generally venture out at night. The gates being open 24/7 is not some sort of carte blanche for people to ignore the in-game clock. If nothing else, the visibility mechanics prohibit that. Nobody is asking for the gates of Allanak to remain open so that they can start a hunting trip at late night. It's so that if you get back two minutes past dusk, you're not left to jerk off under the dragon statue for half an hour.

It's actually really absurd that a bunch of people in this thread have clung to the ridiculous argument that anyone wants the gates to stay open so that they can fuck around in the desert at night. Nobody would do that. People just don't want to be told, as someone bizarrely suggested earlier, that they should "simply log off for a while" if their RPT happened to last ten minutes longer than expected.

And as I alluded to earlier, there's also the realism angle: why is the absolute strongest and most resourceful civilization in the Known World, which also happens to be a haven for the only demographic that actually could potentially operate at night thanks to magick, one of the few places in Zalanthas that keeps such nonsensically strict regulations on when one can or cannot enter the place? It simply doesn't make sense. If anything, realism would suggest that every settled location shuts itself at night except Allanak. That's what would actually make in-game sense.

It all just seems to be a pointless holdover from days-gone-by which people are now retroactively inventing make-believe reasons for keeping in place, despite how directly and demonstrably it hurts the game. Maybe if it was a Zalanthas-wide cultural norm to shut all settlements at night, it could be defended as a fundamental aspect of the game. But that's not the case.

[Inks]

I find your arguments very reasonable compared to a lot on here Roon.

I am sure many were basing their gates being barred at night realism thing from cities of the medieval world being barred at night which were a lot safer than the Vrun of Zalanthas.

But your arguments are very reasonable and well written, as I said I wouldn't rage about it if it did happen, but now I would even feel more okay about it. Kudos.

Back to OP: The gates should close at night not dusk 100% agree with this.

[Riev]

I have an idea for a solution.  Let's lean into that C in MCB!

Keep it like it is, and it closes when it does now.  However, we add a mechanism that you could bribe a gateguard into opening it for you to let you in...

If only someone suggested this 3 pages ago.

[Night Queen]

I'm hardly one of those veteran players and I really don't want the atmosphere toned down like this, I like the way it is at the moment, I think it adds danger and potential for excitement that there wouldn't be otherwise. When things are toned down for "playability" the RP setting suffers most of the time and I think this is one of those cases



Issue with being able to bribe to get in is it'd be meaningless since a lot of simple hunter grebber types are rich anyway! I guess if it was a LOT of coins then maybe, would give the Crimson Wind something to do.

Maybe at night we should have horrible mutated nuclearwaste-esque creatures from proximity to the magick of the walls, creeping out from beneath the sand to feed...

People that won't come to the Gaj at night to RP are part of the problem and could do better really. This goes for Sergeants that don't encourage Byn to do the traditional activities as well (a lot of stuff gets driven by having that group around)!

[Brokkr]

Just noting that between this getting implemented and now, there was an effort to push the tougher aggro NPCs back away from the gates.  Used to be you might find a scrab or gith captain three or four rooms from the gates.  So beyond everything else, the "game" necessity of having them closed at night has changed.  Since powerful aggro NPCs don't tend to divebomb the gates.

Also of note just because I think it has changed player behavior is that time didn't used to sync.  So like when the hour changes IG being linked to XX:10, XX:20 etc. RL clock.  So folks tended to come back in earlier, etc. This may have also killed some of the benefits.

[Kestria]

I have an idea for a solution.  Let's lean into that C in MCB!

Keep it like it is, and it closes when it does now.  However, we add a mechanism that you could bribe a gateguard into opening it for you to let you in...

'rent guard' Like you do backrooms in taverns for the backroom.  To be let in for a set amount of coin, like 100.

2 IG years later, these guards are going to be wearing ankheg from all the bribes they get!

[Armaddict]

I think it's a good compromise.  I'd honestly PREFER that such bribes were done through actual PC's of the Arm to increase interaction webs, but I'm not sure how active the Arm stays at most times right now, so that may not be feasible at all.

[Lizzie]

I don't feel strongly for or against changing the Allanak gates. However I still think that simply making them shut at night instead of dusk would give players more time to get in, and less time stuck out.  By late afternoon if you're not already on your way back to the city, you should just plan to - not get back to the city.

But you have to account for the "daylight" hours to disengage from or kill that lone critter who runs into you on your way back.  If it's night-time, then the planning error is on you. If the sun is still out, then the gate could still be open.

So as I said up-thread - "dusk" should still be open. Good time to add some room echoes and timed scripts to shout to grebbers outside to get in, maybe a final warning at the stables that if you're planning on getting out of town, you'd best finish packing your mount and go.

[Feu de Joie]

The Gates should close at dusk, open at dawn.

Citizens of Allanak should have to wait 30 secs, and pay 50 sid (racial and/or House affiliation adjustments too) to get in.

[Lotion]

Quit is your friend, shops closed, dark, gates closed....quit, come back in 30 minutes

I do want to point out, game mechanics that encourage people to quit out of the game can't be good for player activity.

Similarly bad are mechanics that encourage people to afk for long periods of time

[ShaiHulud]

Sorry Hal and others. Gate closing does not need anything. Leave as is. Learn, deal, adjust.

To add, you think we are losing players because of gate closures? That is a straw, man.

[Roon]

To add, you think we are losing players because of gate closures? That is a straw, man.

Absolutely. While this game might not have lost droves of people specifically because the gates of Allanak close at night, I think that fact has driven more and more players to play away from the city. This, I know for certain, has caused some players to leave the game. The fact that Allanak is so inconvenient to play in when you don't have 6+ hours a day, which then leads this game's supposed main hub to feel empty more often than not. The fact that it's boring to play in a city that is closed off from the rest of the world a full third of the time. The fact that the game at large has generally drifted to favor the ranger playstyle, and how this affects the city that shuts its gates 1/3rd of the time. That has had a direct and measurable impact on Allanak's activity level, and since all roads figuratively lead to Allanak, a dearth in players there is felt throughout the whole game. Things grind to a halt everywhere if there's nothing going on in the Black City, and as players grow older, having to wait half an hour for the gates to open becomes a bigger and bigger deterrent. The result is that there aren't enough players in Allanak to make the world go 'round. Simple as that.


Moderated by Kestria

[CirclelessBard]

To add, you think we are losing players because of gate closures?

It's a simple fact of game design that if a player has nothing to do in a game, and nothing to engage with, they are going to lose interest and turn off/log out of the game.

There is a pretty good chance that a player will tolerate an individual gate closure or shop closure or other time-based inconvenient thing if they are already having fun with the game. What's 30 minutes when that last RP scene lasted 3 hours and was super fun, right? Great time to take a break and rest your eyes.

But if they are constantly locked out of things, not able to find RP opportunities, and not able to participate in the collaborative storytelling experience that the game advertises on both its website and promotional posts, then yes, players will absolutely leave, and they will go to games that offer consistent RP experiences, of which there are now many.

The better question to ask is "Do gate closures contribute to a player being unable to find roleplay?" and the answer is yes, either by locking the player themselves out of roleplaying opportunities, or locking out other players that could have potentially interacted with that player.

[LindseyBalboa]

To add, you think we are losing players because of gate closures? That is a straw, man.

Absolutely. While this game might not have lost droves of people specifically because the gates of Allanak close at night, I think that fact has driven more and more players to play away from the city. This, I know for certain, has caused some players to leave the game. The fact that Allanak is so inconvenient to play in when you don't have 6+ hours a day, which then leads this game's supposed main hub to feel empty more often than not. The fact that it's boring to play in a city that is closed off from the rest of the world a full third of the time. The fact that the game at large has generally drifted to favor the ranger playstyle, and how this affects the city that shuts its gates 1/3rd of the time. That has had a direct and measurable impact on Allanak's activity level, and since all roads figuratively lead to Allanak, a dearth in players there is felt throughout the whole game. Things grind to a halt everywhere if there's nothing going on in the Black City, and as players grow older, having to wait half an hour for the gates to open becomes a bigger and bigger deterrent. The result is that there aren't enough players in Allanak to make the world go 'round. Simple as that.

the cities are the busiest places in the game right now.

allanak is popping.

wouldn't gates being open all the time be more about wilderness PCs trying to come hang out?

show up earlier, wastelander. night's dangerous.

[Lotion]

I just logged in with plans to do wilderness things but saw that it was 8 minutes into late afternoon and logged out

[Dune Bunny]

Can't say I've ever felt like the gates were hindering my time in Armageddon, even when stuck outside at night. It's fun solo rp to be worried about what might come, or to just set up camp under the dragon and do whatever, way people, etc. I've bribed a few templar PCs to open the gates for me, which was nice and terrifying in it's own right, especially the one time I offered way less than he was expecting. XD

I can definitely see where it might be an inconvenience to other players though. Sometimes you leave the salt flats at early afternoon, but ten scorpions and their annoying as hell poison later, you're just a few minutes late to get inside the gaping, fiery gates of Nez Shabbar, I mean, the gates to Allanak.

I personally don't feel like there's a pressing need for a change, but if there's going to be one, why not just mix some of the ideas in this thread to give leeway to both sides?

Make the gates now close at late night, and add in a bribe mechanic for anyone that poorly managed their time and couldn't make it back during dusk. Maybe add in a scary RP element to it, that will have a gate guard psi/alert any pc templars on at the time that some self-important grebber just bribed them to open up those massive gates so he could bring in his beetle with 25 dead chalton remains strapped to it.

[FantasyWriter]

Happy medium: Codify bribing the gate guards and have it alert PC Templars and MAYBE soldiers.

I mean the outside of gates weren't even quit rooms (also before >quit ooc). That was a HUGE help. Imaging being stuck outside and having to wait to enter the gates just to log out with a non-ranger.

100 coins get you in/out
1000 coins get you in/out with a 90% chance of not getting ratted out by the guard.