Hated Trends

[Trenidor]

I've noticed that of current there are certain trends going around that others don't like, and I decied to start my own page on things I personally don't like but see all the time:

1. Hunters that go around killing every frikkin creature they see.
2. Hunters that carry a crap load of armor around
3. Hunters that walk around hunting with the sword or melee weapon
4. Bandits that kill ppl and take all their clothes leaving a naked body in the road
5. People that pick up languages from over hearing speach and instantly begin speaking them once they have the skill.
6. Constantly using the look comand at every person that enters the room
7. Skinning animals you see dead on the road.
8. Engaging combat abruptly after entering a room while in outside areas
And more....

[Forest Junkie]

4. Bandits that kill ppl and take all their clothes leaving a naked body in the road

I think it's hilarious, yet quite realistic. *shrugs*

7. Skinning animals you see dead on the road.

WTF. What's wrong with skinning animals that twinkish fucks left behind so they can get in ten more kills before Krath sleeps?

[Agent_137]

yea  . . . a lot of that list is just like, "Yea...relax, man."

So . . . yea . . .

[Mr.Camel]

6. Constantly using the look comand at every person that enters the room

I don't see anything wrong with that if it comes with emotes or anything other than the simple look spam. If someone comes into the room naked or something like that, you would notice. Unless its some crowded room or your character is doing something that they wouldn't notice people coming in.

[Petra]

1. Hunters that go around killing every frikkin creature they see.

Humans are known for overhunting populations to the point of extinction.  Make a nature-loving Akei'ta'Var elf and do something about it .

2. Hunters that carry a crap load of armor around

Carry as in wear or keep in their backpack?  What's wrong with either scenario?

3. Hunters that walk around hunting with the sword or melee weapon

Hunting in Zalanthas is a far cry from hunting deer or other fauna in real life may be.  Most beasts that you may hunt could also be hunting you.  As for what weapon they use, we're talking about stone, wood, or bone swords, generally.  Aztec indians hunted with wooden swords back in the day, ya know.  It's not as unrealistic as you may think since these aren't exactly traditional swords.

4. Bandits that kill ppl and take all their clothes leaving a naked body in the road

Bandits probably even want the crappy shoes on your feet for their worth, this is a world where resources are scarce, man.  Hell yeah they're going to strip you naked.  They may pull out your teeth too and sell is as ivory!

5. People that pick up languages from over hearing speach and instantly begin speaking them once they have the skill.

Trust me, it's not that simple.  Getting a language on your skills list and speaking it are two different things.

6. Constantly using the look comand at every person that enters the room

Some people are curious.  I go to a club and I'm checking everyone out too.  Though I agree sometimes in game it's a bit much, especially when they do the look and immediately walk into the next room.

7. Skinning animals you see dead on the road.

It depends what you are skinning them for.  If you're a scavenger and you want to skin it, go for it.  What upsets me more than this is when they skin an animal and leave the skinnings on the road.  It just looks powergamish.

8. Engaging combat abruptly after entering a room while in outside areas
And more....

How else do you intent to roleplay out having the element of surprise or attacking first and asking questions later?

In closing, I think you're way over reacting, bub.  Sorry.

[jhunter]

Petra said:

In closing, I think you're way over reacting, bub. Sorry.

I agree with you Petra.

[Ayashah]

1. Hunters that go around killing every frikkin creature they see.

I am with you there. I have dealt with it IC though

I basically took younger 'hunters' out on hunts and told them ahead of time 'we are hunting X' today. I would remind them of it when any other creature was pointed out with a 'we dont want to over hunt them' or 'its mating season for them. Leave the females for now.'

There's ways of dealing with it IC.  

[Trenidor]

lemme explain things:

1.
YOu know those players that have chars for a few days and the next day their gone... This is one of their faults. This kills the population, but that's not why I don't like it. I don't like it because it's a form of powergaming, going around repitiously killing for training and to obtain money.

2.
Armor is for thos who need protection from certain death. Hunters don't need all that much protection from things that are a distance (if they're a bow hunter) and even if they do fight with say a knife or a spear, they most likely want more agility and moveablility to dodge.

Face it, normal hunters don't walk around with 100 pounds of leather straped all over them.

3.
Like I said, spear hunts and knife fights seam alright, but heading out with a sword? doesn't seam right. When hunting an animal you've got to act like them, crouch over a bit, feel as though you are one with them....(lol I sound a little creepy)

4.
I guess this is alright if you're desperate or a rapist, but taking their clothes and wearing them on yourselves? I know I wouldn't want to wear someone's flee-infested bloody clothes; I wouldn't want to touch their inside let alone the outside.

5.
Pretty understandable...takes a long time to learn a language enough to speak it, and even at that you don't know every word.

6.
This one I don't mind as much as some....But why is it that they don't ever look at the npcs?

7.
Dead animals have disease, most ppl are sensible enough to understand this and stay away from rotting bodys along northroad. Skinning them only shows how desperate you are I guess.

8.
Outside rooms are larger than innerwalled areas. If everyone understood this, we'd all walk slowly while outside instead of doing the n n n n in about thirty seconds. With that, we could emote running at the person and attacking.

[jhunter]

2.
Armor is for thos who need protection from certain death. Hunters don't need all that much protection from things that are a distance (if they're a bow hunter) and even if they do fight with say a knife or a spear, they most likely want more agility and moveablility to dodge.

Face it, normal hunters don't walk around with 100 pounds of leather straped all over them.

Some people who hunt don't just hunt, they also work as guards and escorts in addition, so they wear something in between as far as protection goes.

Being outdoors in Zalanthas is fucking dangerous, while your hunting you never know who the fuck is going to come along and try to gut -you- for what you've got on you.
May as well hunt with something you can also use to fend off a humanoid attacker and not be carrying an arsenal in the desert.
Also, Zalanthas is (get this) a fantasy world , if you really have that much of a problem with people hunting with such things, because it might not be all that realistic...I would think you'd also have a problem with the fact that they are hunting big-ass insects and lizards as well...

Just my opinion of it.

[Teleri]

1. Hunters that go around killing every frikkin creature they see.

I agree that this is very troubling to see, especially when all hunters should really know better as denizens of the world.  If you're a hunter, chances are very high that you live/have lived out in the wilderness in a fairly small area, leaving it only in minor exploration or to trade and even flee something.  Thus, it is in my opinion that all such hunters would really know better than to overhunt an area.  If they had eliminated much of the useable wildlife in previous years before their character was "created", these offenders would be quite screwed for food and die or at least be much more mobile.  Thus, all who live off the land, and NOT just the elves, should not overhunt if they want to keep surviving, as they most likely have not before.

Then, you have douchebags (sp?) from the city who hunt solely for the purpose of getting hides and other such resources from the animals they hunt.  Usually, these are merchant house employees.  I could see these people overhunt quite a bit, but they could possibly be curbed by the threat of getting ambushed by some tribe/outlying village for their transgressions.  So, it would probably be reasonable for a city-dweller to overhunt...but I would recommend to anybody playing this way that they play their character as NOT extremely wilderness-savy.  After all, they didn't always LIVE there, and would always be at a disadvantage in comparison to an indigenous resident.

2. Hunters that carry a crap load of armor around

If they're carrying it around in their packs, I have no problem with that, but I can clearly see that this question has to do with them wearing heavy armor.  Unless they're hunting something REALLY dangerous, like a bahamet, mekillot, silt horror, or tembo, I would say that the average hunter should not wear that heavy shell armor.  In the wilderness, you need to have some element of stealth and a great amount of flexibility, both of which heavy armor would cut down on significantly.  I see nothing wrong with wearing leather, or even accessory pieces of heavier armor (bracers, collars, caps...not full freakin helmets), on the regular hunter.  And, more often than not, hunter characters are and should be considered normal hunters like that.

3. Hunters that walk around hunting with the sword or melee weapon

I'd say this is okay, in some cases.  IRL, there are hunting swords, which I assume were at one time used for felling deer and larger animals.  If someone's trying to kill a tregil with a massive, two-headed granite battleaxe of slaying, I'd say they're being ridiculous.  If they were going against a bahamet with that, I'd say they were being cautious.  But, then again, anybody in their right mind would consider it absolutely crazy to go against a bahamet with anything less than a sizeable party of hunters...but that's another story.  So, some weapons used in combat I view to be just fine in using in hunting.  If people would just use their common sense, it would not be so noticeable at times.

4. Bandits that kill ppl and take all their clothes leaving a naked body in the road

This, I think, is realistic.  The bandit(s) were probably trying to get as much money as they could off the poor sap they just killed, which is understandable.   They're like hunters in that regard, using every piece of the kill useable.

5. People that pick up languages from over hearing speach and instantly begin speaking them once they have the skill.

I've never noticed this as a trend.  However, I believe that if someone's character learns a langauge completely from just casually hearing it and not putting anything into context, then the player of that character should have the common sense to not have their char start speaking in that language.  From just hearing a completely foreign tongue spoken, with nothing else but audio to go by, one can NOT learn it, but only imitate the sounds.

6. Constantly using the look comand at every person that enters the room

I don't know why, but this just doesn't bother me.

7. Skinning animals you see dead on the road.

As long as they're throwing away the meat from that body, for they don't know how long it's really been there, I see no problem with this.  When I encounter a dead animal like that, I assume it's been dead long enough to have the meat spoil and even some of the hide to be ruined.

8. Engaging combat abruptly after entering a room while in outside areas

There are probably a good ten threads out there dealing with something along this line, in the context of twinky PvP combat.  I'll not go into it again.

Though many of these qualms seem to be minor, Trenidor does bring up a few good points.  All players should use their common sense and discretion when in certain situations.  Step into the place of that character, close your eyes if it helps and try to mentally picture yourself in place, with the modifications putting you at the skill/stat level of that char.  Do you really think you can get through that dense stand of baobab and thick brush in your heavy shell armor and sneak past those halflings 200 yards away?  I think not.  If you kill 20 duskhorn in a half a week's time, is the herd just going to keep around, hoping nothing bad happens or willingly provide their predator with easy targets?  No.  Think about it, think about it again, and once more before you make that call.

That said, I think there should be some code in place where, if a certain animal is killed a certain number of times in a certain area, that animal spawns much farther away or in a completely different (rationally, of course) region.  But, this is probably not feasible.

[jhunter]

On a couple of the last comments...

I'd -love- to see anyone IG actually try sneaking past anything in heavy shell armor...as of yet I have not, but it would be funny.

On the subject of the animals....I would think that just because a bunch of coded ones were killed doesn't really mean alot...I would think, that there are vnpc animals as well...

[X-D]

2.
Armor is for thos who need protection from certain death. Hunters don't need all that much protection from things that are a distance (if they're a bow hunter) and even if they do fight with say a knife or a spear, they most likely want more agility and moveablility to dodge.

If you were only hunting animals and if the only things that were hunting you were animals, I would agree with that, but, since you have umpteen number of npc races/tribes and pc races and tribes that hunt others, I would say that extra armor and melee weapons are only prudent.

Face it, normal hunters don't walk around with 100 pounds of leather straped all over them

Normal hunters where? Earth? Let me see here, last time I checked Zalanthas was not earth, and on earth your not likly to run into little mean fast guys with weapons that are interested in eating you.

4.
I guess this is alright if you're desperate or a rapist, but taking their clothes and wearing them on yourselves? I know I wouldn't want to wear someone's flee-infested bloody clothes; I wouldn't want to touch their inside let alone the outside

But it is not -you- it is another person of that world that is just as flee-infested, dirty, sweaty and bloody as the one they killed for the money and gear.

On many of the other points, when code supports such things as sneaking up on an npc (auto-flee or agro) Then people will be more likly to wear lighter gear and be more interested in hunting in that manner, but for the time being, it only works on pc's.

As for looking at npc's some do, but really no need, npc's don't change much from day to day after all, though look spam does not bother me in the least.

[Gorobei]

Hunting in Zalanthas is a far cry from hunting deer or other fauna in real life may be.  Most beasts that you may hunt could also be hunting you.  As for what weapon they use, we're talking about stone, wood, or bone swords, generally.  Aztec indians hunted with wooden swords back in the day, ya know.  It's not as unrealistic as you may think since these aren't exactly traditional swords.

I was about to rant once more about the foolishness of swords in this game, but then I did some extra research on the Aztecs in particular, for this post.  Hey, neat, they did use swords!
They did not, however, use them for hunting.  This would render any resources you'd want from the animal useless, unless you managed to kill it in one blow.  DON'T HUNT WITH SWORDS OR AXES, PLEASE.

I'll put in a clip, because I found this article to be very interesting.  Here's what's most relevant to the discussion:

"Shock weapons were of higher status than projectile weapons for mainly three reasons. One, projectile weapons were often used for hunting, and therefore the tools of commoners." (suggesting that shock weapons were not (shock weapons being the melee weapons))

How else do you intent to roleplay out having the element of surprise or attacking first and asking questions later?

You cannot get the element of surprise when you first have to charge half a league across empty desert to get to the guy!
If you want the element of surprise in the wild, use hide or sneak.

[Pungee]

lemme explain things:

1.
YOu know those players that have chars for a few days and the next day their gone... This is one of their faults. This kills the population, but that's not why I don't like it. I don't like it because it's a form of powergaming, going around repitiously killing for training and to obtain money.

Uhm... The things come back. You know that right? How is it powergaming anyway? There's no other way to train or get money if you're a... hunter. You kinda... Kill animals and get better at it so you can kill more animals and bigger animals then sell their remains for more money. That's sorta how things work.

2.
Armor is for thos who need protection from certain death. Hunters don't need all that much protection from things that are a distance (if they're a bow hunter) and even if they do fight with say a knife or a spear, they most likely want more agility and moveablility to dodge.

Face it, normal hunters don't walk around with 100 pounds of leather straped all over them.

Ever seen some of the stuff in the wastes or in the northlands? It's called a Bahamet and they're vicious beyond most things. As for how much they can carry? There's a reason there's this thing called a Strength stat.

3.
Like I said, spear hunts and knife fights seam alright, but heading out with a sword? doesn't seam right. When hunting an animal you've got to act like them, crouch over a bit, feel as though you are one with them....(lol I sound a little creepy)

Since when? I know plenty of deer hunters. None of them 'act like a deer'. They wait, they look for tracks, they move quietly and then they kill. Pretty simple. There's no 'connection' for most of them.

4.
I guess this is alright if you're desperate or a rapist, but taking their clothes and wearing them on yourselves? I know I wouldn't want to wear someone's flee-infested bloody clothes; I wouldn't want to touch their inside let alone the outside.

Uh... This is Zalanthas. Not Beverly Hills. If you're robbing and killing it means you probably need the clothes and money badly enough so you aren't terribly concerned about the blood stains. I mean, have you been in the commoners quarter? People starve and drop dead there regularly.

5.
Pretty understandable...takes a long time to learn a language enough to speak it, and even at that you don't know every word.

There's once again a reason code regulates this. If it shows up on your skill list... It means it's A-Ok to try it out. You come off sounding like an idiot for RL days, but you can try it if you want.

6.
This one I don't mind as much as some....But why is it that they don't ever look at the npcs?

Because the NPCs are the same people everytime? Regulars at the bar? Do you really want to get look spammed with that anyway?

7.
Dead animals have disease, most ppl are sensible enough to understand this and stay away from rotting bodys along northroad. Skinning them only shows how desperate you are I guess.

True, dead animals do have disease.... But there isn't a Basha's nearby last time I checked. If you're starving or you need the money, you'll skin that dead thing that's been rotting in the Zalanthan sun for a week or more.

8.
Outside rooms are larger than innerwalled areas. If everyone understood this, we'd all walk slowly while outside instead of doing the n n n n in about thirty seconds. With that, we could emote running at the person and attacking.

Go ahead and emote it. Some people might actually emote back. Others might just run. That's up to the player and it's argued over in another thread elsewhere.


So in short, yeah, relax. Things are the way they are for a reason. Go make a 'rinth Elf or something and then play that for awhile. See if you still feel the same way about stealing rotting clothes from someones fresh corpse when it means your char starves or eats.  

[jhunter]

This would render any resources you'd want from the animal useless, unless you managed to kill it in one blow. DON'T HUNT WITH SWORDS OR AXES, PLEASE.

Hrrrmmm, didn't native americans use tomahawks for war, hunting, and skinning?
Isn't that basically a crude axe?

[Gorobei]

This would render any resources you'd want from the animal useless, unless you managed to kill it in one blow. DON'T HUNT WITH SWORDS OR AXES, PLEASE.

Hrrrmmm, didn't native americans use tomahawks for war, hunting, and skinning?
Isn't that basically a crude axe?

... yes.
Shut up.









But seriously, folks.  If you're going to chop something with an axe, keep in mind that it's skin is going to have big fat slashes in it, afterward.  Tomahawks are a slot smaller than the axes I was thinking of when I wrote that quote, too.

[Gorobei]

So in short, yeah, relax. Things are the way they are for a reason.

A lot of the time, that reason is that this is a very old game.  Change is good, and if something gets someone's dander up, then there's a chance that it's worth fixing.


P.S.  The only reason that I'm attacking your points and not Trenidor's, Pungee, is that you managed it rather succinctly.  I agree with you on most points.

[Pungee]

Hehe. It's cool Gorobei. It's the GDB, I don't get too excited about it unless I'm terribly bored and too tired to Arm.

[John]

How is it powergaming anyway? There's no other way to train or get money if you're a... hunter. You kinda... Kill animals and get better at it so you can kill more animals and bigger animals then sell their remains for more money. That's sorta how things work.

So it's okay for me to use the same logic? Steal from all the NPCs cause hey, that's how it works. You're a... thief. You kinda... steal and get better at it so you can steal more things and bigger things and then sell them for more money. That's sorta how things work.

If you're starving or you need the money, you'll skin that dead thing that's been rotting in the Zalanthan sun for a week or more.

And then get very sick. Now how many wish up asking for the sickness to be coded onto them?

[Pungee]

So it's okay for me to use the same logic? Steal from all the NPCs cause hey, that's how it works. You're a... thief. You kinda... steal and get better at it so you can steal more things and bigger things and then sell them for more money. That's sorta how things work.

Go for it. Most NPCs dont have anything worth stealing from what I've seen.

And then get very sick. Now how many wish up asking for the sickness to be coded onto them?

You're talking to the wrong guy. I once emoted a near fatal illness just to make things interesting, when my food source wasn't tainted. If they coded in sickness from eating rotten food, huzzah.

[X-D]

If they coded in sickness from eating rotten food, huzzah.

Grin, I would not mind, but I don't think it would be worth the time, simply because it would only get a few people a few times.

[Quirk]

2. Hunters that carry a crap load of armor around

Not one of the people who've posted on this so far have covered what I'd think would be the most obvious point. This is a desert world. It's hot out on those sands. People traipsing round in heavy chitin or obsidian are going to dehydrate and die. Maybe it isn't coded that way yet, but that doesn't make it make sense. Naatok posted a very good comment on this in this thread here:

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1986

3. Hunters that walk around hunting with the sword or melee weapon

Really, the obvious hunting weapons are the spear and bow, and perhaps the club when killing something with a beautiful hide you want to damage as little as possible. Axes and swords were designed for human vs human combat. When you're facing something that has a huge gaping maw full of teeth and is generally going to savage you in close combat even if you kill it, you want to keep a healthy distance.

4. Bandits that kill ppl and take all their clothes leaving a naked body in the road

I'd see this as one of those things that depends on the desperation of the bandit. What I find far more amusing is to see a nice middle-class House guard with a good upbringing and a cushy job looting every last thing off a corpse.

6. Constantly using the look comand at every person that enters the room

Yeah, this annoys me. A while ago I was in a tavern with about seven or eight other PCs. The coded spam of entering, looking, sitting, standing, eating, etc meant that only perhaps one line of text in four reaching my screen was an emote. It didn't feel like RP. To go a step further, I could have sat in a central location in many "RP-enforced" muds and had a better RP experience with more emoting and fewer coded echoes. The removal of the look echo would please me mightily.

7. Skinning animals you see dead on the road.

I don't buy the "disease" explanation, as almost any of the animals you see dead on the road would have wounds inflicted by claws or teeth or weapons as a ready explanation of how they got dead. This disturbs me not a bit.

8. Engaging combat abruptly after entering a room while in outside areas.

Not good, not nice, but understandable given that many people will react to an emote indicating a stranger heading towards them by spamming commands to get the hell outta Dodge. Really, if they're heading the way you just came from, unless their mount outruns yours by some silly factor you should be able to cut them off. Code-wise you can't. If they're spamming commands to get up the road, there may be no other option - you don't have time to prepare an elaborate emoted attack.

Quirk

[X-D]

Not one of the people who've posted on this so far have covered what I'd think would be the most obvious point. This is a desert world. It's hot out on those sands. People traipsing round in heavy chitin or obsidian are going to dehydrate and die

And many times over it has been stated Zalanthas is not earth, these are not earth humans they are zalanthian humans and a lot tougher then earth humans and far from the toughest race of zalanthas either.
Maybe everybody else remembered this fact and decided it was not worth bringing up yet again the desert heavy armor thing.

Besides, None of us know the properties of any of these skins or shells or chitin, on a desert planet with magic and a few thousand years for things to evolve it would not be a far stretch of the imagination to think that the conductive properties or insulation properties of some of the shell/chitin/skin might actually help cool the person or insulate them from the heat. After all, man sized beetles can't exist on earth but they manage it on zalanthas.

[Krath]

WTF. What's wrong with skinning animals that twinkish fucks left behind so they can get in ten more kills before Krath sleeps?

I never sleep...

[Quirk]

And many times over it has been stated Zalanthas is not earth, these are not earth humans they are zalanthian humans and a lot tougher then earth humans and far from the toughest race of zalanthas either.
Maybe everybody else remembered this fact and decided it was not worth bringing up yet again the desert heavy armor thing.

Besides, None of us know the properties of any of these skins or shells or chitin, on a desert planet with magic and a few thousand years for things to evolve it would not be a far stretch of the imagination to think that the conductive properties or insulation properties of some of the shell/chitin/skin might actually help cool the person or insulate them from the heat. After all, man sized beetles can't exist on earth but they manage it on zalanthas.

Zalanthas is also a lot hotter than Earth. You know, X-D, this smells like justification. Assuming some kind of magical properties of chitin make wandering round in heavy armour realistic seems just lame to me. However, since you've raised this point, let's go to the docs, shall we?

http://www.armageddon.org/general/fightingstyles.html

A few choice quotes:

Thus, availability of materials aside, heavy armor is not really practical in most circumstances, for it saps the strength and moisture (via sweat) of the wearer far more than it would in most parts of the real world.

The Southlands are generally much hotter and dustier than the Northlands, so heavier types of bone and wood armor tend not to be used except by those fighters based exclusively within Allanak (e.g., the Highlord's soldiers). Independent mercenaries and adventurers of the south tend to favor lighter armors and clothing, suitable for desert wear.

Now, it does acknowledge that the North is relatively cooler, with more shade available particularly in the forested areas, and gives some latitude for heavier armour in that context. It depends very much on the terrain in which your character usually finds himself or herself. However, the initial point made by Trenidor about the unrealistic nature of a hunter wandering round loaded down with heavy armour still has a great deal of validity, and the docs bear this out. Nowhere do the docs suggest any mystical properties of heavy armour to protect the bearer from heat.

Quirk