This might lead to the birth of actual group vs group fighting.

If staff had the ability to change and lock the mercy toggle during certain events two groups could go ahead and just fight it out with skills, poison and spells. One groups would eventually be knocked out, and the winner could capture the leader/captain as well as tend to their wounded before running off.

It would be fun and meaningful to both winner and losers, with only casualties perhaps being only NPCs(who could also have mercy toggled for PCs during this time).

Quote from: Patuk on Today at 09:18:24 AMI distinctly recall past staff members telling us that PK was a once-in-a-week kind of event. With the rules you've made currently, it'll likely be even less. Even if every single PK ended up contested - and they won't - you'd talk about this once a week at the absolute very most.

Is that really the realm of the impossible? One such a talk a week, at absolute most?

Yes, it is in the realm of impossible. Not due to how often it may or may not occur, but due to the nature of the required decision making. Armageddon is a coded game. Whether or not the death happened is based on the code. We will consider resurrections based on what is outlined in the helpfile. What gets added there are instances that we can assess that are basically black and white, was it a bug, were they cheating, did a staff member royally screw up and set a bahamet to have 1,000,000 strength by accident, did that person die of dehydration with a full waterskin in their hand and so on. There is simply not a chance in the burning firepits of Suk Krath that I am opening up staff to have to mediate over every PK that happens on the basis of 'was their RP good enough' where the progress of the story and life of a PC one way or another hinges on that decision. I'm sorry, but that is a fast track to a high stress, no win scenario for staff where whatever they decide, someone will be angry and it would ultimately chip away at the relationship we are trying to restore between players and staff and almost certainly cause higher staff turnover. So no. Draw a line under that. I can understand why people wish this was a thing that we could do, but unfortunately it simply is not.

As a side note about Raiders, if we're going to look at it from an RP/Realism perspective, Raiders killing people is actually a terrible 'business' practice. Victims killed by raiders can't be robbed a second time and killing merchants means a worse economy which also means worse opportunities for raiding in the future. Otherwise I pretty much completely agree with what Halaster said. Also, if mercy is made so you can guarantee not killing someone as long as you're using blunt weapons or something, that'd be awesome for people just wanting to rob others without becoming a murderer.

Quote from: Delusion on Today at 11:00:47 AMIt is concerning that PCs dying at the hands of other PCs is anticipated to be so frequent that staff won't have time to fairly review it.

We all know about the string of dwarf PCs emerging from the dormitory in the Gaj to kill the first PC they saw sitting at the bar. No amount of karma deductions or bans will stop that style of griefing. The integrity of the game world is damaged more by nonsensical killings than by resurrection. In one case everyone has to awkwardly play around the nonsense and often adjusts their behavior based on the OOC knowledge that the griefing can happen and on what ways. In the other, everyone can accept that an event was retconned and the players of the killer dwarfs won't get the same kick out of it.

I think steps have been taken to mitigate dwarves from one shotting PC from happening. More common and egregious is powerful PCs targeting non-combat PCs such as aides, newbies, crafter and other non-combat PC for lame reasons because they are easy kills. This is what I am hoping the policy and the changes to code begin to better address.

Again with Rezz, a general no resurrection policy is systemically much more fair than anything else. Where if there are any exceptions(e.g staff accidently kills entire clan), they should be announced to the community with reasonable justification.

Quote from: Delusion on Today at 11:00:47 AMWe all know about the string of dwarf PCs emerging from the dormitory in the Gaj to kill the first PC they saw sitting at the bar. No amount of karma deductions or bans will stop that style of griefing.

It should be a bit harder for that style of griefing to occur now.  Dwarves are now 1 karma, so a brand-new account cannot play one (this is a big reason WHY dwarves are now 1 karma).  Someone engaging in such obvious griefing will be banned.  We would -consider- a resurrection in this specific instance you mention when it's obvious, blatant griefing like that.

As for @Lizzie 's example, the raider could still kill someone for not obeying when they have them in such a situation.  The expectation however would be that the raider gives the victim a "good scene" to the best of their ability as the situation allows.  And if the raider displayed a pattern of this, we'd have a chat with them.  It would all depend on the specifics of the scene.  Ideally the raider would beat the victim to unconsciousness or incapacitate them if said victim wasn't being cooperative.  Maybe leave them for dead and let fate decide their outcome.

These new rules aren't meant to remove PK and danger.  They are meant to expect players to be considerate of each other from an OOC perspective, and work together to create more interesting scenes and stories.  Sometimes death IS the interesting scene or story, but it doesn't have to be.  The ask is that people think "Is killing the other person the only option here, or is there alternatives?" and "If I must kill them, is there a way for me to make it more interesting or meaningful for them?".  There will be times when a sudden, quick death is required, though the expectation is those will be unusual.

This is all going to be a bit of a change for everyone - staff and players alike.  We are going to have to work together to elevate the community's qualify of Role-Playing, and be understanding and patient with each other as we figure it all out.

It is concerning that PCs dying at the hands of other PCs is anticipated to be so frequent that staff won't have time to fairly review it.

We all know about the string of dwarf PCs emerging from the dormitory in the Gaj to kill the first PC they saw sitting at the bar. No amount of karma deductions or bans will stop that style of griefing. The integrity of the game world is damaged more by nonsensical killings than by resurrection. In one case everyone has to awkwardly play around the nonsense and often adjusts their behavior based on the OOC knowledge that the griefing can happen and on what ways. In the other, everyone can accept that an event was retconned and the players of the killer dwarfs won't get the same kick out of it.

This is a note to state that I removed a post that was off-topic. Please continue this discussion on a very important game policy change. Thank you!

Quote from: Lizzie on Today at 08:19:53 AMI prefer to keep the "I'm a raider, they didn't do what I said, so I killed them" aspect of the game. It's what I signed up for. It was in the docs and has been in them for decades. I've found too often that people come here thinking "oh they don't really mean that, everyone will roleplay perfectly, we'll get the exact scene we want before death, we'll be able to have closure and if not I'm sure they'll change things for us when we tell them how unfair it is."

If the person doesn't do what the raider says, the raider can beat them to an inch of their life and strip them naked. Its up to the person's abilities and luck to make it back somewhere safe after that. Or the raider could find themselves in an equally tough spot. There is still meaningful consequences that don't always have to devolve to murder.

I think this is enough for most situations but to your point Lizzie, its up to the raider to decide and then justify that repeatedly to staff. I believe murder will still happen in this game, frequently at that, for example if you spit on a templar or noble, expect to die. But i think the biggest change is it should become much more clear on why you died.

Additionally, I think mercy should be split between PC and NPCs at the very least to avoid people forgetting to toggle back after hunting. It also keeps it from being something annoying you have to keep track of. If mercy PC is toggled off, death would happen as it is currently. The choice of killing a PC really happens at that point where you toggle it off.

In terms of resurrection policy, I am actually okay with keeping it as is, it is unfortunately a two way street of abuse here. Its jarring to the narrative to see people who died be rezzed for whatever reason, and I can only see the people getting rezzed are the people that some staff is heartbroken to see die.

Quote from: Pariah on Today at 09:22:58 AMMy only concern is the extreme players, there are some that view PK as something that should never happen, they are too soft, then there are those that think if they type think I want his boots and he doesn't hand them over, they deserve to die, too hard.  But I have faith that we have more people in that "Goldilocks" zone than the polar opposites.

Yeah I do think most people have pretty reasonable views on PKing. I would say both the 'Pks should never happen' and 'Pking should be a core part of the game' crowds are loud minorities. I still think if you mess with the wrong person, get caught up in a plot or have some other good motiviation to kill or be killed, it should be completely fine. But I want something more than 'you didn't empty out your bag for me in the wavy dunes, now I'm gonna kill you on my 3 months played half giant raider'.

I do think the new advanced start will be nice, we'll have people who don't have to go through the vulture/chalton/scrab and so on up the line gauntlet for weeks to get survivable.

My only concern is the extreme players, there are some that view PK as something that should never happen, they are too soft, then there are those that think if they type think I want his boots and he doesn't hand them over, they deserve to die, too hard.  But I have faith that we have more people in that "Goldilocks" zone than the polar opposites.

Quote from: Patuk on Today at 09:18:24 AMHold on, hold on, hold up.

Quote from: Usiku on Today at 02:49:40 AMIn this instance, we simply cannot open the door to staff being expected to be the 'RP judge' on every single PK, it's just not feasible, there is no way for us to be able to make consistent and fair calls on something like that

I distinctly recall past staff members telling us that PK was a once-in-a-week kind of event. With the rules you've made currently, it'll likely be even less. Even if every single PK ended up contested - and they won't - you'd talk about this once a week at the absolute very most.

Is that really the realm of the impossible? One such a talk a week, at absolute most?

I would assume if someone is getting talked to about PK frequency, they are probably doing it too much, but that's just a guess.