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."

That's WAY too high of an expectation for a game that started out as a hack-n-slash and is advertised heavily as an unforgiving world with permadeath.  People should expect the worst *for their characters* and then be happily surprised if their PC's lives exceed those low expectations. It says so in the docs.

I understand wanting to keep things harsh and lethal, but consider three things.

1. The world is plenty lethal without rocket-tag PvP. Mansa a while ago posted player death causes and PvP was a massive minority, with Carru being the big bad iirc.

2. Armageddon PvP is just plain bad, without even talking about balance it's very easily abusable for the person who instigates. Stealth, magick and even the crimcode (which honestly protects criminals more than victims) can be abused to screw a player who's not playing in an extremely paranoid manner. This isn't even counting the times where I've seen instigators completely ignore both the virtual world and NPCs just because they know staff can't always react. On more than one occasion while playing Two Moons elves, I was attacked in the room right outside the camp, which should have resulted in like 50 elves ganking these raiders.

3. Generally in game-design philosophy, you match high-lethality with short-term character progression. There's a reason why roguelikes are a popular genre, because you go in, level up fast, experience a lot of stuff and die fast. Having high-lethality with a game that expects progression in the days upon days of playtime on a singular character is honestly just incompatible on a fundamental game-design level. Also note that I don't think this means the lethality of Armageddon overall should be reduced, because outside of PvP, I honestly think death is incredibly avoidable once you learn the game and it's dangers. The game is still stupid lethal, but it's more 'play stupid games win stupid prizes' sorts of lethal rather than being completely unfair like PvP.

Quote from: Agent_137 on Today at 09:16:37 AM@Lizzie for most people this game is too much work for that low of an expectation for every pc. 


It could be different.  It's why I have long advocated for faster learning and wider advanced start.

This was posted while I was writing and I just thought it'd be a valid reference of someone else's opinion. Armageddon can be far too much work to also expect people to be ok with dying so easily to PvP. I understand that Arm has a die-hard fanbase of people that play every day and having it be the only game they play, but this isn't a good experience for new players or for players who want to play Arm more casually.

Hold 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?

@Lizzie for most people this game is too much work for that low of an expectation for every pc. 


It could be different.  It's why I have long advocated for faster learning and wider advanced start.

Stamina regen, stun, focus, even mount stamina...

This is not a good idea.

I mean I wouldn't want it to be super fast, so homie logs out, goes plays a round of call of duty then comes back and his mana is full.  But if I log out for the night come back eight hours later and my shit is still 2/108, that sucks.

I 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."

That's WAY too high of an expectation for a game that started out as a hack-n-slash and is advertised heavily as an unforgiving world with permadeath.  People should expect the worst *for their characters* and then be happily surprised if their PC's lives exceed those low expectations. It says so in the docs.

I expect my character to be killed, somehow. The moment they show up into the game world they're fair game.  There's no "if/and/but" in that.  I might not like how Amos didn't let me SEE how he was roleplaying my character's death. But the fact that he killed her is fine by me. Apartment-killing is lame, but I figure they would've gotten me on the street instead if that was when they had their opportunity. So again - legit kill, lousy RPed circumstances.

The more we make excuses for the victims, the easier it is for everyone to play the victim and justify their way out of bad behavior, twinkishness, bullying, changing plotlines to suit their own interests, and circumventing the theme of the game to turn it into something it's not.

This would stimulate logging out to regen mana, instead of being online and roleplaying while waiting for such, I don't think we want this

Spice doesn't tick down while logged out, neither does your HP/MV regen.

One thing that always bugged me is say I'm playing a mage and I eat a baby, then I cast two or three times and have to log off.  I come back to the game, have to wait however long to cast magick again because magick regen isn't done over logout.

If I get shitfaced drunk, I come back to "You're sober now." or whatever it says, same with spice.  Why doesn't mana regenerate over log outs but all these other status effects do?

I think it would be a huge QoL add if they made mana regen over logout.

I like it, I too throughout the years have seen entirely too many paper thin PK's, I myself tend to PK when required (Ordered by my boss/templar or someone discovers I'm a sekret witch and can't be trusted).

Hopefully this will limit the instances of "I'm a raider, they didn't do what I said, so I killed them." "I'm an elf, they looked at my ears funny." and other silly excuses.  I much prefer to just loot the unconscious body and see what happens to them when they are far from civilization and beat to shit with just their boots.

Agreed, we have more ideas we want to work on, but policy and help file changes are things that we can push through ahead of code changes while we wait for code resource and energy on things. Unfortunately the code backlog is always the longest!

The resurrection policy is unfortunately just a result of viability. We have expanded the resurrection policy significantly over the last couple of years and I am always keeping an eye out for opportunities to improve it, but we do have to be very careful with it. In 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, people would constantly be dead and alive again and dead again, we would be asked to make calls on things we didn't witness or don't have all the information on, we would constantly be trying to assess shades of grey and so on.. it simply isn't possible. Resurrection policy is a tough one, it's something I have spent countless hours thinking about and countless hours debating with fellow staff over (we all care about getting it right). When you really tangle with it objectively from every angle, you can quickly understand how complicated it becomes.

My hope is that, while it might take a little while to fully come into effect, the policy changes alongside the karma changes and general RP expectation across the board will elevate the style of play and attitudes across the game and community and create an overall better environment where having that policy *is* enough.

Quote from: Riev on May 21, 2024, 08:55:21 PM(or old staff taking new names to cleanse the pallet)

Riev please. This is not a thing.