I want to believe troll Pk character are rare and should be easily dealt with by staff. As for bandits, I consider them semi-intelligent hostile NPC mobs, they target new players, but if you travel in groups or get back to crim-supported zone they usually leave you alone.

The thing that a clan vs clan setting supports the most and what is harder to detect is when a person has a shitty reason to go after someone, and I truly mean horrible almost non-reasons to seek PK. In the past there have been any number of bored people willing to go after an easy mark when an opportunity rises. Someone contracting you to kill someone is pretty good reason to pk in the eyes of this game. There could be RP leading to the kill as well but ultimately the entire reason is very likely flimsy at best. There other thing of course, as has been mentioned, is that 'IC consequences' only applies to sponsored roles or people staff like so its always the same types of people getting murdered in this game. And again back to my original point, it may be harder to escape if you get targeted by a bored sponsored role or high karma class murderhobo. I hope your class support strong stealth or I guess you can always live in a cave. 

Your milage may vary if you are in a clan, assuming of course that you are not considered fodder but that's probably another thread. 

So long as we have players and staff of the belief that you "should kill your enemies because otherwise they will come back to bother you", this is going to be an issue.

On topic, however, is that Tuluk as a city can't be "unsupported" and still let players have full access. It is a massive sprawling city with political and templarate issues that the players cannot access while it is "unsupported".

The city isn't CLOSED as in no access, but due to the lack of support it will be receiving there is a massive amount of restricted access.

Does it suck? Sure it does.
Does it suck that the sorceror role changes every time a player sorc gets popular? Sure it does.
Does it suck that a player can OOCly assume someone is a mindworm and make shit up, killing off a maximum karma role + special app so they could "win"? Sure it does.
Does it suck that an elf only really needs to hit you for 1 damage to poison your long-lived character and end your story? Sure it does.

Just saying. Sometimes stuff sucks.

Quote from: Roon on Today at 03:07:45 PMOn the other hand, I've found that staff rarely even acknowledge that it's shitty roleplay to just walk into a room and murderhobo a total stranger for no real reason. I've sent player complaints about that a number of times, and by and large, the staff response has been something along the lines of "there's nothing wrong with that, you have no grounds for complaint, and the player who did it is in the clear." With these new karma standards and the request for better roleplay that was implicit in the announcement, I would hope that being a total asshole towards other players can become something that staff care more about and take into account when judging players, even without an actual rule against flagrant murderhoboing.

I agree with this pretty wholesale, it's even worse when the murder-hobo is clearly playing a high-karma role like a gick too. Like, high karma is supposed to represent the quality of the roleplay and how responsible the player acts, but it's fine for them to just murder hobo without rp?
A big problem I have with arm pvp is that the game simply isn't made for good pvp. Combat is rocket-tag, and if someone wants to min-max and grind out a murder-hobo, it's fairly easy to do so, especially when you look at elves and stealth.

I agree that it'd be hard to put in a hard-coded 'no murder-hobo' rule, but if you murder-hobo, it should 100% be taken into account when your karma is reviewed. Should we really be giving mul/drovian access to players who are just going to use it for the pure purpose of killing other players? And to be clear, when I say 'murder-hobo', I don't mean an antagonist that has the potential to kill other players, I mean people who are looking for a reason to kill other players. I view it in same way as I view killing my players when I'm Game-Mastering in a tabletop RPG- I'm never looking for a reason to kill my players, but killing them is certainly on the table if they provoke it or are stupid, I feel as if antags should approach the topic of PKing in the same way.

Quote from: Kavrick on Today at 12:45:40 PM

Quote from: Dresan on Today at 11:07:35 AMYou can't really go targeting sponsored roles without 'IC consequences' so it leads to basically everyone else who happens to be playing an easy target being butchered. For example, you can't really kill the sponsored noble, but what about the aide they just hired, you can't kill the staff boosted sergeant but what about that unclanned PC they seem to be having fun flirting with, you can't really kill X,Y,Z but lets send powergaming mul assassin to kill the newbie crafter they are living with, the crafter isn't contributing to staff run plots after all. Again, all done with staff approval and encouragement.

This is actually more a problem with Armageddon's piss-poor standards for pking. You can roll up a bandit or a murderer and just kill people with next to no roleplay. I've seen it happen, I've talked to staff in requests about it, you're not expected to roleplay or provide any content for the people you're killing, and it's the only roleplay game I've ever played with such low standards, even out of roleplay games that don't have permadeath.

I think the principle that leads to this situation is: this is a game that facilitates frequent unplanned PvP (whether or not there actually is frequent unplanned PvP, the game is set up to accommodate it) and it would be a nightmare to enforce any standards that can't be hardcoded. If a set of "rules of engagement" was implemented, the winner is usually the guy who ignores them, so those rules would get broken all the time and staff would have to investigate PvP encounters constantly. With no rules, at least you don't lose your character just because you weren't cheating.

On the other hand, I've found that staff rarely even acknowledge that it's shitty roleplay to just walk into a room and murderhobo a total stranger for no real reason. I've sent player complaints about that a number of times, and by and large, the staff response has been something along the lines of "there's nothing wrong with that, you have no grounds for complaint, and the player who did it is in the clear." With these new karma standards and the request for better roleplay that was implicit in the announcement, I would hope that being a total asshole towards other players can become something that staff care more about and take into account when judging players, even without an actual rule against flagrant murderhoboing.

Quote from: dumbstruck on Today at 12:16:48 PMI'm talking about people who are here for a good time but not necessarily a long time. Whether it's because of age, infirmity, or generally finding other things to do, and how those things can impact numbers as well. Perhaps it was wrong to have brought you into the discussion. Personally I stopped playing in cities because my characters were treated as inherently more disposable than someone who 'got picked'. When my time is, perhaps /more/ valuable, in the sense that I have a lot less of it and I have to decide how to spend it. I do apologize if you felt targeted in a way that was anything other than neutral. It was most certainly not the intent.

I just didn't understand (and still don't understand) what age has to do with it. Especially when you're old enough to be retired and by definition - have more time available to play - not less. My time has -no- value at all. I don't get paid to exist, I do as I please, when I please, as long as I can afford to do it. My age doesn't limit me at all, in any way, shape, or form.  You singled me out as an example of "age" but "age" just really doesn't apply to the context of this thread or even to your own response.

Quote from: Dresan on Today at 11:07:35 AMYou can't really go targeting sponsored roles without 'IC consequences' so it leads to basically everyone else who happens to be playing an easy target being butchered. For example, you can't really kill the sponsored noble, but what about the aide they just hired, you can't kill the staff boosted sergeant but what about that unclanned PC they seem to be having fun flirting with, you can't really kill X,Y,Z but lets send powergaming mul assassin to kill the newbie crafter they are living with, the crafter isn't contributing to staff run plots after all. Again, all done with staff approval and encouragement. 

This is actually more a problem with Armageddon's piss-poor standards for pking. You can roll up a bandit or a murderer and just kill people with next to no roleplay. I've seen it happen, I've talked to staff in requests about it, you're not expected to roleplay or provide any content for the people you're killing, and it's the only roleplay game I've ever played with such low standards, even out of roleplay games that don't have permadeath.

I'm talking about people who are here for a good time but not necessarily a long time. Whether it's because of age, infirmity, or generally finding other things to do, and how those things can impact numbers as well. Perhaps it was wrong to have brought you into the discussion. Personally I stopped playing in cities because my characters were treated as inherently more disposable than someone who 'got picked'. When my time is, perhaps /more/ valuable, in the sense that I have a lot less of it and I have to decide how to spend it. I do apologize if you felt targeted in a way that was anything other than neutral. It was most certainly not the intent.

n/t
hit the wrong button

Quote from: dumbstruck on Today at 11:46:59 AM

Quote from: Dresan on Today at 11:07:35 AMI don't believe the game has the population to keep disregarding the time and effort of people who are not on the friend's list.

This though. Some of us are old (Lizzie), some of us are dying (me), and some people just generally have found other stuff to do. Being the oppressed minority might make for an interesting story but how many times do you have to tell it before you can tell something else, and why is your story the one disregarded? All too many times it's come down to sponsored roles being considered much more sacrosanct like their players' time means more. It doesn't. Everyone's time is the same. Stuff like that is why sponsored roles have a hard time finding underlings but there's never a shortage of people playing hunters in the wilderness. Their time isn't treated as disposable and worthless there.

No idea how I got tugged into this conversation. I haven't even read the other posts. I just saw my name being mentioned.

So just to address dumbstruck and the quoted snippet they're responding to:

I'm 63 years old. I didn't START playing this game until I was 40. I didn't start mudding until I was 30.  I'm also retired, and have an active life outside the game, outside the computer. Always have, probably always will.

I play usually 2 hours a day during the week, maybe 4 on each weekend day. When I was staffing, I was logged in longer than that, usually doing some aspect or another of my job as a storyteller/builder.

Most of the people on my list on Discord are players who have pinged me asking me for help over the past few years. For the better part of last year, I had DMs locked and turned my status to "invisible" because I didn't want to talk to any of you in private.  Because I'm no longer on staff, I also no longer have access to the DMs of any current staff member.  I'm not a staff favorite, I was never a staff favorite, I've had 20+ years of playing with MAYBE 5 sponsored roles during the entire time. I've never played a templar, or a sorcerer, and played my first and only noble shortly before the game was shut down.

I don't care nearly as much about skill gains, as I do about skill acquisition.  In other words - it doesn't matter to me that my [whatever] skill only lasts 20 minutes because I don't have it at full power. I'm more excited knowing that I can [whatever] at all. Be that making mastercraft jewelry versus being able to make ANY jewelry, flying for 4 RL hours versus flying at all, being able to kill a mekillot in one swing versus being able to survive a couple of poisonous snakes...

My age has nothing to do with it. My approach to gaming and my perspective of the gameplay and theme has everything to do with it.  I don't play to win the code. I play to win the scene.

Quote from: Dresan on Today at 11:07:35 AMI don't believe the game has the population to keep disregarding the time and effort of people who are not on the friend's list.

This though. Some of us are old (Lizzie), some of us are dying (me), and some people just generally have found other stuff to do. Being the oppressed minority might make for an interesting story but how many times do you have to tell it before you can tell something else, and why is your story the one disregarded? All too many times it's come down to sponsored roles being considered much more sacrosanct like their players' time means more. It doesn't. Everyone's time is the same. Stuff like that is why sponsored roles have a hard time finding underlings but there's never a shortage of people playing hunters in the wilderness. Their time isn't treated as disposable and worthless there.