Armageddon General Discussion Board

So there have been numerous times where someone has died and I thought that person should be resurrected, but staff policy on this is very strict because... Well, I don't really know why.

I think it should be loosened up.

I suppose I should give some examples: Killed by own clan members for assisting someone. Killed by crimcode for defending self from attacker. The game disconnecting and reloading with a mekillot on top of where you were.
Even things like people dying for following their leader into a hole deserves to be considered, because that code doesn't really make sense.

I would be concerned about setting precedents. You have to draw a hard line somewhere or people will keep pushing it, and then you open the whole can of worms where people cry favoritism! and unfair! because someone else got rezzed and they didn't.

Yes, a hard line makes sense, I'm not against them, I'm suggesting it move a bit. If you die to OOC circumstances that aren't in your own control or are the result of the code, then why shouldn't that person be resurrected? If a half-giant NPC stomps in and smashes down a newbie in a clan who the leader forgot to induct before starting up a sparring sessions, they should be revived.

As long as the rules are outlined, not vague, and make sense, cries of favoritism wouldn't be a problem.

I can definitely see what Havok said being true! But! I also feel like having any or all of your examples happen to me and losing a character over them would be ugh. Very ugh. Mortifying is the best word I can come up with.

I don't know staff policy but I'm sure they have their reasons for them, and big incidents probably draw issues like those into the spotlight. I wouldn't be surprised if solutions to things like you mentioned were already being discussed - or at least considered - with seriousness on some level.

It's clearly an unintended consequence of seriously ancient code, and it's happened twice recently.

Update the code, or resurrect the players who want it. It's a goddamn game.

Quote from: manonfire on June 10, 2015, 08:23:20 AM
It's clearly an unintended consequence of seriously ancient code, and it's happened twice recently.

Update the code, or resurrect the players who want it. It's a goddamn game.

This is worded kind of harshly, but I can't honestly say I disagree. Let's hope something happens.

I'm pro-resurrection in cases where the code is clearly asinine.

I think in the cases of crimcode, mistargets, etc, where any degree of player error is involved, that resurrections shouldn't happen. If it's a bug, and clearly a bug, though, I would say a resurrection should be looked into. If it's a mistake staff made, I think it should be granted; players shouldn't have to suffer because of staff's mistakes, only their own (or other players). That would be where I draw the line.

A lot of times, deaths that clearly suck for RP reasons are still not due to bugs or staff mistakes.

Other times, deaths that suck for RP reasons are due to irritating artifacts of the keyword based targeting system; like typing backstab dark and then having someone else with the absurdly common keyword 'dark' walk in right before the backstab goes off. This could be preventable in a number of means, such as using combined keywords like tall.dark so that if short.dark comes in they won't be killed. Or knowing the name or full sdesc of your mark. If you're going by their cloak mistaken identity is not only OOCly understandable but ICly also.

In general, the use of commands like backstab, sap, and other things are extremely risky because of that delay where you just wait and see what happens, not to mention the long delay after they go off. I have seen both commands be the cause of unwanted PC death firsthand multiple times.

The use of movement commands also lead to unwanted deaths often. Movements should never be taken lightly; speedwalking and so on are obviously highly risky. The >stop command is instantaneous and is the best defense you'll have; I recommend having >stop macro'ed to an easy to find and hit key like F1.

The fall code is ridiculous. I think it needs revisioning, and I would say urgently. I agree with you, it makes no sense for a group of 10+ people to all go off an edge like lemmings, and wish there were some chance rolls to see if you indeed follow them. It's immersion breaking and it sucks. However, as it stands, there is nothing buggy about it, and it is preventable with better PC leadership, so... it wouldn't be grounds for a ress request until they change the code / revisit it / significantly change their stance on ressurections.

Disconnects and reconnects are so iffy an area to grant ressurections over. People have bad connections and you can't, as a staffer, tell why or how they were disconnected. Players could easily kill their clients, reload them later and then blame whatever happens on the MUD, when the MUD had nothing to do with it. I understand why staff don't grant ressurections here.

I guess i'm just being a long-winded devil's advocate here, but I wouldn't expect the policy to change any day soon.

I've had this argument with staff. What I walked away with was twofold:

1. Staff are afraid of choosing "favorites".
2. Code in game is "working as intended" and deaths that happen due to code are valid.

I vehemently disagreed but there's no argument in disagreeing.

Point 1 could be fixed by a change in policy.

Point 2... I just get the impression that nobody really understands or is able to fix the code surrounding those sorts of things.

But I don't think anything's going to change. It's a big issue for players but a non-issue for the administration, which speaks for how out of touch the two parties can get from each other from topic to topic.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 07:53:45 AM
I suppose I should give some examples: Killed by own clan members for assisting someone. Killed by crimcode for defending self from attacker. The game disconnecting and reloading with a mekillot on top of where you were.
Even things like people dying for following their leader into a hole deserves to be considered, because that code doesn't really make sense.

Ex1: I'd agree with giving that a rez, but it would be a hard thing to say considering you have no idea if Amos the Assassin was just waiting to backstab you, the scrab-scarred man, when you went to fight a scrab. It's a hard line.

Ex2: When has crimcode -ever- set in from defending yourself? I can honestly only say that happened -once-, and that was because someone decided to use the KICK command in a brawl or something silly... About five years ago now.

Ex3: No, if your internet connection isn't stable I suggest you don't play outdoors. Just imagine what happens when Joblow the Asshat gets assassinated and cries to staff OoC that he was linkdead at the time.

Ex4: Falling in holes is the only one I will whole hardheartedly agree with.

I voted no because while there are a couple times where I requested to be resurrected for various silly code related deaths, and denied handily, I wouldn't want it to become any more commonplace than it already is. Unless it's a game bug you should not be resurrected.

There's already a rule that if a game bug, abuse of a game bug, or game crash (not internet glitch but if the server itself actually crashes) causes a character death, the staff will consider granting a resurrection.

I think it also depends on the situation. If the death occurs in a public place, and the body is looted, and dragged to the corpse pile and beheaded before the staff can respond, well it just doesn't make much IC sense to retcon it. In situations like that, I'm glad there's no resurrection.

If it happens in a situation where the staff can act quickly, OR where there is no one to loot the corpse/behead it... then it makes sense to allow the resurrection.

So in summary I see two criteria: is it the result of a game bug/crash/abuse of a game bug? AND would it create IC inconsistancy to resurrect, such as returning a head to a body?

Quote from: bcw81 on June 10, 2015, 08:58:42 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 07:53:45 AM
I suppose I should give some examples: Killed by own clan members for assisting someone. Killed by crimcode for defending self from attacker. The game disconnecting and reloading with a mekillot on top of where you were.
Even things like people dying for following their leader into a hole deserves to be considered, because that code doesn't really make sense.

Ex1: I'd agree with giving that a rez, but it would be a hard thing to say considering you have no idea if Amos the Assassin was just waiting to backstab you, the scrab-scarred man, when you went to fight a scrab. It's a hard line.

Ex2: When has crimcode -ever- set in from defending yourself? I can honestly only say that happened -once-, and that was because someone decided to use the KICK command in a brawl or something silly... About five years ago now.

Ex3: No, if your internet connection isn't stable I suggest you don't play outdoors. Just imagine what happens when Joblow the Asshat gets assassinated and cries to staff OoC that he was linkdead at the time.

Ex4: Falling in holes is the only one I will whole hardheartedly agree with.

I voted no because while there are a couple times where I requested to be resurrected for various silly code related deaths, and denied handily, I wouldn't want it to become any more commonplace than it already is. Unless it's a game bug you should not be resurrected.

example 2 I believe it's Luirs crimcode that will kill both the attacker and defender.

For example 3 it's not your internet, but the server restarting that re-spawns you back where you last saved.

For lizzie the point about IC consistency makes sense and I find myself agreeing with that. But the rule for game bugs doesn't cover quirks in code that aren't really bugs, but still don't make any sense, and it should. Like NPC's attacking people they shouldn't be just because of a coded "clan" feature of the game.

No. No player resurrections. It would be impossible to apply it fairly and evenly across the board, and those voting for it thinking it would apply to them, would find that it probably wouldn't.

Too many people have died, in too many savage, illogical, random and unfair ways - often owing only to bugs or even to cheaters - and not be rezzed, for a trend to begin doing it now. Also? Every time a character has ever been resurrected in the past, it left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. Although I know today's Armageddon is not yesterday's.

It was always like, "Oh, so that character is important enough to various plots for a do over, but not the rest of us." Well all of us leave behind uncompleted quests and unrealized potential when we die.

Yep, let's prolong a grief-causing policy than attempt to fix it now.

Too many people have had their enjoyment of this MUD ended due to some fault to begin fixing it now.

Quote from: Clearsighted on June 10, 2015, 09:07:30 AM
No. No player resurrections. It would be impossible to apply it fairly and evenly across the board, and those voting for it thinking it would apply to them, would find that it probably wouldn't.

This isn't an issue if the policy is not vague and is clearly outlined.

Quote from: bcw81 on June 10, 2015, 08:58:42 AM
I voted no because while there are a couple times where I requested to be resurrected for various silly code related deaths, and denied handily, I wouldn't want it to become any more commonplace than it already is. Unless it's a game bug you should not be resurrected.

Circling back a bit, "Game bug" is too vague and limited of an outline to keep people happy. That is why the poll is if staff should re-examine their policy. People seem to be treating the question as "should staff resurrect people more for good reasons?" and are voting no out of what is a misunderstanding of the question.

If you think ANY of the situations I brought up deserve some sort of resurrection than your answer should be yes. Because as is, policy says it won't happen.

It could be done well.  It would probably take up a fair amount of staff time, but it could be done.  As more and more experience accumulates staff-side, these things would be faster and easier to rubber-stamp "yes" or "no."

I think it's less immersion-breaking to retcon a stupid death than to go around trying to justify:  THE PUNISHMENT FOR SPARRING IN THE YARD IS EXECUTION; or I TRIPPED AND ACCIDENTALLY STABBED THE WRONG DARK.MAN IN THE NECK, LORD TEMPLAR.

In a game that you may lose your character in countless ways, it's extremly hard to put down and define conditions for ressurrection.

If you can not clearly define the situations, then almost each incident requires some attention and close communication with IMMs. Those situations make more people disappointed and frustrated about the game and how it is run.

No, I think resurrection policy is as good as possible.

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:23:33 AM
In a game that you may lose your character in countless ways, it's extremly hard to put down and define conditions for ressurrection.

If you can not clearly define the situations, then almost each incident requires some attention and close communication with IMMs. Those situations make more people disappointed and frustrated about the game and how it is run.

No, I think resurrection policy is as good as possible.

This is nonsense. Whats hard to define about the situations brought up in this thread? There's no gray area with them. They're all right there, they all fucking blow and don't make sense. And all of them will not be addressed by current policy.

Suggested questions for possible ressurections:
Was the death within the last 12 hours? (If not, then instant rejection unless special circumstance, example: no admins on for twelve hours straight due to holidays, breaks, bad luck, ect)
Has the death been widely publicized? (If so, then instant rejection unless special circumstance, example: tektoles got wrecked due to a novice ranger abusing some new combat bug, everybody's heard about it)
Was the death a result of faulty code? If so, please explain how.
Please post a log here of what happened for us to examine.
How would you explain the situation ICly to the rumors of your death?
What players were about at the time of your demise, so that they can be sent an immediate message to cease publicization of your death? Please enter their names here, and they will be sent a message and will be able to send in their imput on the situation and what seemed to happen.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:26:22 AM
This is nonsense. Whats hard to define about the situations brought up in this thread? There's no gray area with them. They're all right there, they all fucking blow and don't make sense. And all of them will not be addressed by current policy.

But there will be situations with gray areas. People, after losing their PCs  will want other, new situations should be added to the rules and conditions . After discussions with IMMs, some will think game treated unfairly to them.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 07:53:45 AM
So there have been numerous times where someone has died and I thought that person should be resurrected, but staff policy on this is very strict because... Well, I don't really know why.

I think it should be loosened up.

It's strict because death is a big part of the game. Death is the end for your PC's story, and potentially a big part of the story for the other PCs around yours. By limiting resurrections to deaths that were the result of code bugs and server quirks it keeps things impartial, even if not necessarily pleasant to the players involved.

Quote
I suppose I should give some examples: Killed by own clan members for assisting someone. Killed by crimcode for defending self from attacker. The game disconnecting and reloading with a mekillot on top of where you were.
Even things like people dying for following their leader into a hole deserves to be considered, because that code doesn't really make sense.

- Players need to be excessively careful in combat situations. Combat is inherently dangerous, and there are ways to prevent accidental assistance or crimcode deaths (lowering hoods, knowing authority as a civilian/a recruit/a lifesworn soldier). Know how the world will reasonably respond to your character before doing an action that might end badly for you.
- If the server crashes and you reload with a mekillot on top of you, that is grounds for a resurrection, along with staff-caused accidents. Link-loss is when you disconnect from the game, not when the server goes down.
- We've recently worked to improve how players are alerted to holes. Leaders should meet us halfway and read room descriptions, and generally be attentive. It's possible that the follow code could be improved, but I'm not a coder so I can only suggest it.

The fact of the matter is, people die of accidents in real life and PCs could certainly die of accidents IG.  I don't think that loosening the resurrection policy is the right answer to those issues. I think the right answer is improving the code and raising player awareness of deadly situations so that the deaths don't happen in the first place.

Some basic investigative work would cover the vast majority of it.

Were you and Amos both wielding sparring weapons in the  yard when you initiated and got HG-ganked by your clan-bro NPC?  Were you talking about how you were going to spar in the yard because the weather's so nice, and the hall smells like dank pits?  Easy resurrection.  Were you actually wielding a poisoned longknife and initiated with a backstab, thinking to yourself about how you were totes gonna spend Amos's 'sids? No resurrection.

Did you use the keyword 'brown' when queuing up your fireball on the lanky brown gith, then the figure in a brown tattered hooded cloak rode in and took it to the face? Resurrection.  Did you actually use the keyword 'brown.tattered'? No resurrection.

Everything, presumably, is logged.  Everyone has an e-mail address that their account mail goes to.  It shouldn't be that difficult to figure things out.  As new and peculiar situations arise, make a thread in staff announcements and sticky it, updating the particular circumstances that do and don't warrant resurrection.  I'm sure there's a wealth of examples that haven't been covered yet, and everything doesn't need to be defined in stone at the outset.

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:32:20 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:26:22 AM
This is nonsense. Whats hard to define about the situations brought up in this thread? There's no gray area with them. They're all right there, they all fucking blow and don't make sense. And all of them will not be addressed by current policy.

But there will be situations with gray areas. People, after losing their PCs  will want other, new situations should be added to the rules and conditions . After discussions with IMMs, some will think game treated unfairly to them.

All you're saying is that you can't please everyone. That's fine, but we can please more. And if the new situations make sense to be added, why shouldn't they be added? What you're failling to do is explain how adding exceptions to the resurrection policy will make things worse.

Nergal, what about situations where the universe doesn't reasonably respond to character's actions?

By "unreasonable", I would qualify it as "would get the offending NPC soldier (or otherwise) executed by player Templar".

There has been at least one instance where I have outlined how a situation was unreasonable and a failure of the code to respond to in-universe actions rationally, and I've been told no-go on it because the code is working as intended.

There's got to be some vast discrepancy between what players and staffers view as "reasonable" for this to happen. Which is a bad thing to have in any environment.

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 09:33:50 AM
- Players need to be excessively careful in combat situations. Combat is inherently dangerous, and there are ways to prevent accidental assistance or crimcode deaths (lowering hoods, knowing authority as a civilian/a recruit/a lifesworn soldier). Know how the world will reasonably respond to your character before doing an action that might end badly for you.
- If the server crashes and you reload with a mekillot on top of you, that is grounds for a resurrection, along with staff-caused accidents. Link-loss is when you disconnect from the game, not when the server goes down.
- We've recently worked to improve how players are alerted to holes. Leaders should meet us halfway and read room descriptions, and generally be attentive. It's possible that the follow code could be improved, but I'm not a coder so I can only suggest it.

The fact of the matter is, people die of accidents in real life and PCs could certainly die of accidents IG.  I don't think that loosening the resurrection policy is the right answer to those issues. I think the right answer is improving the code and raising player awareness of deadly situations so that the deaths don't happen in the first place.

I'm glad to know server crashes spawning mekillots on you are grounds for resurrection.

I don't think placing the burdens of the code on PC leaders is the right answer to the issues. And if you can admit that code should be addressed in certain areas because it's causing unwanted deaths, then why should resurrection policy not cover those instances until it's fixed? Raising player awareness and improving code is not mutually exclusive with changing resurrection policy. If anything they're synergistic.

Lemme present a scenario.

Let's say you were in a super spammy scene, and didn't notice that someone gave you a tube of spice. You logged off owing to a RL thing, and then came back a few hours later, and got Wayed to hurry down to Nak ASAP to meet up with everyone.

So you ride your ass down there, pass through the gates, and get savagely beaten to death by the gate guards for carrying spice. People ride by and see your corpse, laugh and loot your body. And this was even with nosave arrest on and not fighting back.

Would that be grounds for a rezz?

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:36:53 AM

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:32:20 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:26:22 AM
This is nonsense. Whats hard to define about the situations brought up in this thread? There's no gray area with them. They're all right there, they all fucking blow and don't make sense. And all of them will not be addressed by current policy.

But there will be situations with gray areas. People, after losing their PCs  will want other, new situations should be added to the rules and conditions . After discussions with IMMs, some will think game treated unfairly to them.

All you're saying is that you can't please everyone. That's fine, but we can please more. And if the new situations make sense to be added, why shouldn't they be added? What you're failling to do is explain how adding exceptions to the resurrection policy will make things worse.

Even this thread and posts show how people are emotional about the game and their characters. It's obvious some players are attached to their characters more then others. Even most rational and experienced of us can get sad after lost of a beloved PC.

When people lose their PCs in some stupid way, if there is no chance of ressuraction,  they know it's over. Players know their PCs are no-more, no matter how folish the situation of the death was. If there would be chances for resuraction, then there would be room for discussion and possible way of taking back their beloved PCs. This would create a lot of mails with Imms. A lot of talks, a lot of explanations, and obviously many whinning. That's worse then how it is now. Game would lose a lot, just because of those conversations full of emotions with IMMs.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 07:53:45 AM
So there have been numerous times where someone has died and I thought that person should be resurrected, but staff policy on this is very strict because... Well, I don't really know why.

I think it should be loosened up.

As this is a perma-death RPI, we often feel that death should be permanent.

When two admin+ staff members agree that a death occurs as a direct result of a bug or other exceptional circumstances, they can make the case for the resurrection of a character.  The reason this exists in vague fashion is because staff are expected to be objective and take a look at the whole picture.  Was the death caused directly by a bug?  If so, that is grounds for a resurrection.  Was the bug merely slightly related--the dead PC took damage from a script, but was going to die anyway?  If so, that is not probably not grounds for a resurrection.  At times, there are disagreements--usually between staff and player--over what a bug is, and that can lead to discontent.  It's up to us to detail as best we can what the code does (where applicable), what it is intended to do (where applicable), and how players are supposed to deal with it (whenever possible). 

In almost every area of the game, one can say "this isn't coded as well as it could be, and it could be improved."  Code that isn't as good as one wants it is not the same as buggy code.  This is largely where the arguments occur.  As Nergal says, better to improve the code.  Until then, better to provide that knowledge and make sure it is readily available to those that need it.

Quote from: Clearsighted on June 10, 2015, 09:49:00 AM
Lemme present a scenario.

Let's say you were in a super spammy scene, and didn't notice that someone gave you a tube of spice. You logged off owing to a RL thing, and then came back a few hours later, and got Wayed to hurry down to Nak ASAP to meet up with everyone.

So you ride your ass down there, pass through the gates, and get savagely beaten to death by the gate guards for carrying spice. People ride by and see your corpse, laugh and loot your body. And this was even with nosave arrest on and not fighting back.

Would that be grounds for a rezz?

if no save didn't work, this sounds like a bug to me, being covered under the current policy.

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 09:33:50 AM
I don't think that loosening the resurrection policy is the right answer to those issues. I think the right answer is improving the code and raising player awareness of deadly situations so that the deaths don't happen in the first place.

All for this is why I voted No.

I think better suggestions include:
1.  Mercy On NPC Enforcers equipped with Blunt weapons more likely to quickly KO a crim-flagged PC, instead of Current HGs with big swords.  No Code Change needed.  Just change the equipment.  So the criminal can be dragged off to serve their sentence.  Equals less "accidental" crim-code deaths and more RP opportunities in cases where there was no accident.
2. Code change to the follow code.  It's possible to stop people from following through the merchant's gate, that means there's some sort of mechanism available to make a room "No-Follow".  Fall rooms might want to follow that logic.  Some code change, but possibly not completely new code.

The above, to me, answers the really problematic situations that tend to result in threads like these.

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:52:16 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:36:53 AM

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:32:20 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:26:22 AM
This is nonsense. Whats hard to define about the situations brought up in this thread? There's no gray area with them. They're all right there, they all fucking blow and don't make sense. And all of them will not be addressed by current policy.

But there will be situations with gray areas. People, after losing their PCs  will want other, new situations should be added to the rules and conditions . After discussions with IMMs, some will think game treated unfairly to them.

All you're saying is that you can't please everyone. That's fine, but we can please more. And if the new situations make sense to be added, why shouldn't they be added? What you're failling to do is explain how adding exceptions to the resurrection policy will make things worse.

Even this thread and posts show how people are emotional about the game and their characters. It's obvious some players are attached to their characters more then others. Even most rational and experienced of us can get sad after lost of a beloved PC.

When people lose their PCs in some stupid way, if there is no chance of ressuraction,  they know it's over. Players know their PCs are no-more, no matter how folish the situation of the death was. If there would be chances for resuraction, then there would be room for discussion and possible way of taking back their beloved PCs. This would create a lot of mails with Imms. A lot of talks, a lot of explanations, and obviously many whinning. That's worse then how it is now. Game would lose a lot, just because of those conversations full of emotions with IMMs.

Generally agreed here.  Losing a character in a cheap/buggy/exploitive/whatever way leaves people in the worst Armageddon-related emotional state possible (short of being banned, maybe).  Adding more subjectivity to the resurrection process (by loosening the requirements) could greatly exacerbate the accusations of favoritism and dissatisfaction with staff interactions.  I think we could definitely lose players due to such a policy.

Fixing code is the better solution.  People just need to be patient, though.  Most of these code problem areas are well over a decade old, after all.

Quote from: Molten Heart on June 10, 2015, 09:57:50 AM

Quote from: Clearsighted on June 10, 2015, 09:49:00 AM
Lemme present a scenario.

Let's say you were in a super spammy scene, and didn't notice that someone gave you a tube of spice. You logged off owing to a RL thing, and then came back a few hours later, and got Wayed to hurry down to Nak ASAP to meet up with everyone.

So you ride your ass down there, pass through the gates, and get savagely beaten to death by the gate guards for carrying spice. People ride by and see your corpse, laugh and loot your body. And this was even with nosave arrest on and not fighting back.

Would that be grounds for a rezz?

if no save didn't work, this sounds like a bug to me, being covered under the current policy.

Crim code is set for where guards won't always try to arrest you. Non-citizens are usually hacked to death.

First of all not knowing someone gave you spice isn't even an excuse that would work in the real world.

Secondly it wouldn't happen, because if nosave arrest is on you wont get beaten to death. If it did happen then sure, that's a bug in the code, and you should probably be resurrected.

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:52:16 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:36:53 AM

Quote from: Gaare on June 10, 2015, 09:32:20 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:26:22 AM
This is nonsense. Whats hard to define about the situations brought up in this thread? There's no gray area with them. They're all right there, they all fucking blow and don't make sense. And all of them will not be addressed by current policy.

But there will be situations with gray areas. People, after losing their PCs  will want other, new situations should be added to the rules and conditions . After discussions with IMMs, some will think game treated unfairly to them.

All you're saying is that you can't please everyone. That's fine, but we can please more. And if the new situations make sense to be added, why shouldn't they be added? What you're failling to do is explain how adding exceptions to the resurrection policy will make things worse.

Even this thread and posts show how people are emotional about the game and their characters. It's obvious some players are attached to their characters more then others. Even most rational and experienced of us can get sad after lost of a beloved PC.

When people lose their PCs in some stupid way, if there is no chance of ressuraction,  they know it's over. Players know their PCs are no-more, no matter how folish the situation of the death was. If there would be chances for resuraction, then there would be room for discussion and possible way of taking back their beloved PCs. This would create a lot of mails with Imms. A lot of talks, a lot of explanations, and obviously many whinning. That's worse then how it is now. Game would lose a lot, just because of those conversations full of emotions with IMMs.

No offense, but that is all nonsense too. There are already chances for resurrection, staff are not swarmed with resurrection requests, and they wouldn't be by adding a few exceptions to the policy. You're seriously taking things to weird extremes to try and prove your point. Also people are a lot more emotional and get in arguments with staff when they don't get rezzed when it logically makes sense that they should be, than if they weren't rezzed for some gray area, off the wall obscure reason. You're treating the player-base like emotional children to try to make your point.

Quote from: Nyr on June 10, 2015, 09:56:34 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 07:53:45 AM
So there have been numerous times where someone has died and I thought that person should be resurrected, but staff policy on this is very strict because... Well, I don't really know why.

I think it should be loosened up.

As this is a perma-death RPI, we often feel that death should be permanent.

When two admin+ staff members agree that a death occurs as a direct result of a bug or other exceptional circumstances, they can make the case for the resurrection of a character.  The reason this exists in vague fashion is because staff are expected to be objective and take a look at the whole picture.  Was the death caused directly by a bug?  If so, that is grounds for a resurrection.  Was the bug merely slightly related--the dead PC took damage from a script, but was going to die anyway?  If so, that is not probably not grounds for a resurrection.  At times, there are disagreements--usually between staff and player--over what a bug is, and that can lead to discontent.  It's up to us to detail as best we can what the code does (where applicable), what it is intended to do (where applicable), and how players are supposed to deal with it (whenever possible). 

In almost every area of the game, one can say "this isn't coded as well as it could be, and it could be improved."  Code that isn't as good as one wants it is not the same as buggy code.  This is largely where the arguments occur.  As Nergal says, better to improve the code.  Until then, better to provide that knowledge and make sure it is readily available to those that need it.

Can you respond to my reply to Nergal, you've basically just repeated what he said.

Quote from: Clearsighted on June 10, 2015, 10:04:21 AM

Quote from: Molten Heart on June 10, 2015, 09:57:50 AM

Quote from: Clearsighted on June 10, 2015, 09:49:00 AM
Lemme present a scenario.

Let's say you were in a super spammy scene, and didn't notice that someone gave you a tube of spice. You logged off owing to a RL thing, and then came back a few hours later, and got Wayed to hurry down to Nak ASAP to meet up with everyone.

So you ride your ass down there, pass through the gates, and get savagely beaten to death by the gate guards for carrying spice. People ride by and see your corpse, laugh and loot your body. And this was even with nosave arrest on and not fighting back.

Would that be grounds for a rezz?

if no save didn't work, this sounds like a bug to me, being covered under the current policy.

Crim code is set for where guards won't always try to arrest you. Non-citizens are usually hacked to death.

What the fuck, why would it be like this? And are you sure?

Obviously, since there's only one city left right now, the solution is to create characters with an "origin" of Allanak. Then go live in whichever outpost you'd prefer. Since the crim codes in the outposts are "kill on sight" anyway, you aren't receiving any coded benefit by being "origin RSV/Luir's/etc". #workingasintended #gamingthegame

The one thing I'd like to see fixed is that any room that LEADS to a room that could kill someone, the TITLE of the room should indicate that.  There are plenty of these deathtraps that are only hinted at in the descriptions of the rooms.  If someone had brief room description on, they'd have no idea they're walking into a deathtrap that should be OBVIOUS.

It's easy to say this particular problem is the fault of the players for not reading those descriptions, moving too quickly, etc.  But the reality is the implementation teaches players to the contrary because many of these rooms DO have titles that indicate the incoming danger.

At the Edge of a Tall Gorge that'll totally kill you [NESW]

Those titles teach the player that's what they should look out for.  So when you have rooms like

A totally normal Desert [NESW]
This is the normal desert you've been walking through for the last twenty plus rooms,
but you should totally read every one of these descriptions because you might miss something!
Also nestled in this slightly different room description is a warning that if you walk west there's a
massive spiked pit that you should totally see, and you're going to look like a moron for walking
straight into it getting you and ten other people killed.

It runs contrary to what the player has been taught, which leads to a higher percentage of PC death than is likely necessary or realistic.

Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 10, 2015, 10:03:01 AM
Generally agreed here.  Losing a character in a cheap/buggy/exploitive/whatever way leaves people in the worst Armageddon-related emotional state possible (short of being banned, maybe).  Adding more subjectivity to the resurrection process (by loosening the requirements) could greatly exacerbate the accusations of favoritism and dissatisfaction with staff interactions.  I think we could definitely lose players due to such a policy.

Fixing code is the better solution.  People just need to be patient, though.  Most of these code problem areas are well over a decade old, after all.

LMAO at the last to statements. Just be patient guys, it should only take another decade to fix!

To the rest, how is adding more exceptions to what constitutes flawed code adding subjectivity?

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 10:06:20 AM
Can you respond to my reply to Nergal, you've basically just repeated what he said.

OK.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:44:05 AM
I don't think placing the burdens of the code on PC leaders is the right answer to the issues. And if you can admit that code should be addressed in certain areas because it's causing unwanted deaths, then why should resurrection policy not cover those instances until it's fixed? Raising player awareness and improving code is not mutually exclusive with changing resurrection policy. If anything they're synergistic.

I think on this case we will disagree, as you have pointed out.

Yeah, that was the response I was expecting.  :-\

Quote from: manonfire on June 10, 2015, 08:23:20 AM
It's clearly an unintended consequence of seriously ancient code, and it's happened twice recently.

Update the code, or resurrect the players who want it. It's a goddamn game.

I learned a long time ago nobody was ever going to give me a resurrection, even when my Templar came into the sparring ring, sparred me, killed me with their half-giant bodyguards, took my body, hid it, and requested a resurrection on my behalf.

No resurrection for me. After this, I just gave up on it even being an option of the game. The way it is I would almost see it removed entirely as opposed to made easier to get rez requests. It's a game right? I'm sure out there perhaps staff have resurrected someone for some ludicrous bullshit though at some point since the inception of this MUD so it remains.

As for spam city crim-code, i've been complaining about the harshness of it my entire game career mostly, but crim-code and resurrections are different discussions. I have been repeatedly refused for resurrections in this field.

For instance: Guarding a hurt person in streets (as a codedly brought in militia player): Suddenly guards come in to molly-whomp the dying guy, my guy jumps in front to rescue: I'm now dead by my own militia buddies. No resurrections, just a friendly reminder what I did is dumb.

Ok, i'll take that one, but it leads me to believe we could probably do away with the idea of bringing someone back to life entirely if we're willing to role play out that militia soldiers would have beaten their recruit to death in the streets for trying to do his job.

TLDR: I've given up on this being a part of the game. Do we really need it being a part of the game outside of just absolutely ridiculous scenarios?

Quote from: Nyr on June 10, 2015, 10:16:59 AM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 10:06:20 AM
Can you respond to my reply to Nergal, you've basically just repeated what he said.

OK.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 09:44:05 AM
I don't think placing the burdens of the code on PC leaders is the right answer to the issues. And if you can admit that code should be addressed in certain areas because it's causing unwanted deaths, then why should resurrection policy not cover those instances until it's fixed? Raising player awareness and improving code is not mutually exclusive with changing resurrection policy. If anything they're synergistic.

I think on this case we will disagree, as you have pointed out.

Care to explain or perhaps give some insight into why you would disagree?

Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 10, 2015, 10:03:01 AM
People just need to be patient, though.  Most of these code problem areas are well over a decade old, after all.

I got a kick out of this.

Most anyone who has played this game for a long period of time has lost a PC to some terrible luck, a typo, or a misunderstanding of how the code might react to doing <x> - particularly in regards to crim code or clanned NPCs assisting clannies code.

These deaths are hard, and suck for the player, and suck for his/her friends - but they're not "bugs."  They are "mistakes" made by players.  Is there opportunity to improve the code that handles X, Y, Z?  Sure.  That's a different discussion though.

Personally, I've lost more than one PC to the same sort of thing.  I've watched other staff members lose beloved PCs to mistakes too.  (and no, we don't get rezzed either)  People get attached to their PCs and an emotional response is understandable, but objectively, these sorts of situations cannot be grounds for a resurrection.  Otherwise, you can explain away nearly any death as an unintended mistake on the player's part, or a judgement call on how the NPC/VNPC world should react to a situation.

"I didn't mean to walk off the cliff.  I was starting to type 'say' but accidentally hit enter after 's'"
"I didn't mean to go east, I meant to go west."
"I meant to kill the drov beetle, not my own war beetle."  (This actually did happen to me - semi-recently, whoops!)
"I didn't know I had spice in my inventory, I shouldn't have been arrested."
"I know that my PC codedly broke the law, but there's no way that soldier NPC should have responded with lethal force."

If a rez were granted for the above situations, where do you draw the line?  The answer is you really can't - and this is where the accusations of favoritism would start flying.  It sucks, but them's the breaks.

As a player, take a deep breath and start a new adventure with a new PC, I assure you that there are cool things out there waiting to happen with the new PC too.  :)

Anytime there is a resurrection done, it's an administratively messy affair.  This is further incentive to limit them.  Take an example where someone dies, there are five other PC witnesses.  Invariably, these people tell their friends:  "Just saw Amos cut down in the streets earlier this week - a damn shame."  Now a couple dozen people know "Amos is dead."  Staff grants Amos' resurrection request, so he's back in-game.  Now you have people who both witnessed him die, or were told by (reliable?) sources that he died.  At this point, there's either a lot of OOC/IC handwaving to explain the situation or the playerbase will invent up something on their own and rumors will spread:  "Ya heard about Amos?  Cleaved in two by a giant but I seen him clear as Whira myself just yesterday.  They say he made a pact with the gith..."  And I'm not making this up, there's a significant faction of the playerbase who WILL do stuff like that - for better or worse, heh.  Anything that seems out of place OOCly to them = supernatural influences, which turns into an IC thing.  

Obviously the solution is to implement resurrections, but only by special NPCs that you only have access to if you join an appropriate clan and achieve a high-enough rank.  This will generate conflict by forcing people to fight over who has access to the limited number of resurrection-capable slots in the game.

Difficulty:  first-past-the-post will be resurrected until dying of old age.

The turning the OOC resurrection into an IC thing is only marginally better than the zone-send by admin, something to the effect:

"Please disregard the murder that occurred an hour ago, on the almost-universally-loathed character [name] who, if it weren't for code abuse, would've been whacked anyway but because it was code abuse, this (and the last 3 times someone whacked her) never happened. Carry on."

(and yes, something like that really did happen, many years ago, and we really were all given a zone-send telling us that this PC had once again escaped death.)

I am SO glad the staff is stricter now on resurrections than they were then. But I agree it's damned awkward to discover that someone you saw dead yesterday is walking around perfectly fine today.

Can roleplay being a huntress wielding obsidian swords in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Can't roleplay ignoring a buggy death.

::)

I'd just liked to point out the policy is inconsistent because I remember seeing an NPC rezzed that was acidentally killed by a new templar.

Shots fired.

Concerning the falling in holes part, characters should at least each get a saving throw against following the leader.

Leader goes in? Ok, it was an explicit command.
Second in line gets a saving throw and doesn't go in on success (everyone else following is then safe).
If the second goes in, the third in line gets a saving throw and doesn't go in on success.
Etc.

Want to be a lemming? Nosave it.

Maybe make the saving throw virtually 100% success on clear days and lower in sandstorms.

Quote from: Synthesis on June 10, 2015, 11:41:24 AM
Can roleplay being a huntress wielding obsidian swords in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Can't roleplay ignoring a buggy death.

::)

Or when a newbie dies within the death timer and repops.... People seem perfectly fine with that...

I don't mind when people disagree. I just wish they could put up a reason for why they disagree and be willing to follow that reasoning through with followup questions. I seriously thought this poll would be incredibly one-sided, but it's not and there hasn't be a single person who's been willing to respond to my questions in a way that would help me understand why. This is the first time I've seriously considered the argument that Armers are unreasonably against change. Unwilling to accept even just the idea that staff should look at their own policy... Not even to make changes, but just to consider them.  

I'll try to leave the thread by restating one of those questions: If staff and players recognize that certain aspects of code is killing players unfairly/OOCly, and that that code should be fixed. Then why should the players who suffer from those aspects of code not be worthy of a resurrection just like other bugs or flaws in the system currently warrant?

You've been given reasons.  You just don't like them.

Answer my last question to you Moe. Your reason (really the only attempt at one I've seen) didn't make sense to me and your refusal to answer the question is telling me that it doesn't really make sense to you either. The idea that suddenly a bunch of butthurt people are going to come flooding in and giving staff a hard time and more work is knee-jerk and unsubstantiated. I contest the opposite would happen. Youd have LESS buthurt people complaining to staff, becuase in the instances where it makes sense to give them resurrections, they would get it.

See how I explained my reasoning there? Now you try.

EDIT: *shrug* pointless to try.

I think it's kind of funny that people want code changes for something that can be addressed entirely by player behavior. Like... yeah, it's dumb to follow the leader off the cliff but... It's probably a lot easier for the leader to pay attention or the follower to unhitch than it is to redo code.


also friendly reminder that if we start insulting people who disagree with us the thread will probably be locked and everyone will be sad

Code should be fixed rather than resurrections. I'll probably believe it was Staff favored who hot resurrected.

I don't if this example is still accurate:

Noble aide Amos guarding Noble Fancypants. Smelly 'rinther attacks noble and Amos jumps in due to guard code. Amos gets killed by Soldiers for stopping someone from attacking his noble. It's little things like that which infuriate me. Shouldn't the one who initiated the attack get crim flagged?  Having to OOCly think I need to let them attack then rescue or I'll be killed because ?

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 12:04:09 PM
Answer my last question to you Moe. Your reason (really the only attempt at one I've seen) didn't make sense to me and your refusal to answer the question is telling me that it doesn't really make sense to you either. The idea that suddenly a bunch of butthurt people are going to come flooding in and giving staff a hard time and more work is knee-jerk and unsubstantiated. I contest the opposite would happen. Youd have LESS buthurt people complaining to staff, becuase in the instances where it makes sense to give them resurrections, they would get it.

See how I explained my reasoning there? Now you try.

No.

I think I'm better off exiting this thread.

Which is what I expect everyone defending that rationale to do. Give up. Because it's indefensible.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 12:14:06 PM
Which is what I expect everyone defending that rationale to do. Give up. Because it's indefensible.

Chill out dude.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 10:36:26 AM
It's not the game I'm taking too seriously, it's the argument. In my continual efforts to be more sane, I think I'll stop posting there and leave the discussion to others. So thanks for good advice.

Take your own advice and step back from this thread.

It's just not good for the discussion to state an opinion, be asked to explain it, and refuse. Sure that's your right to have an opinion, but it doesn't create the best discussion environment.

(http://assets.amuniversal.com/e1996ea0c0af0132d64a005056a9545d)

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 11:52:14 AM
If staff and players recognize that certain aspects of code is killing players unfairly/OOCly, and that that code should be fixed. Then why should the players who suffer from those aspects of code not be worthy of a resurrection just like other bugs or flaws in the system currently warrant?

For what it's worth, I did not say that the code is killing players unfairly/OOCly. I said that I feel that there is already quite a lot of information provided to players to avoid accidental deaths (which I consider to be completely IC, even if they are annoying/saddening), but if the code can be improved to prevent unrealistic situations, then it should be - and in the past, it's been the case that code that allows unrealistic situations gets improved.

If on the other hand, the code is working as intended, then other things could be added to prevent deaths - better documentation, better descriptors etc.

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 12:43:27 PM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 11:52:14 AM
If staff and players recognize that certain aspects of code is killing players unfairly/OOCly, and that that code should be fixed. Then why should the players who suffer from those aspects of code not be worthy of a resurrection just like other bugs or flaws in the system currently warrant?

For what it's worth, I did not say that the code is killing players unfairly/OOCly. I said that I feel that there is already quite a lot of information provided to players to avoid accidental deaths (which I consider to be completely IC, even if they are annoying/saddening), but if the code can be improved to prevent unrealistic situations, then it should be - and in the past, it's been the case that code that allows unrealistic situations gets improved.

If on the other hand, the code is working as intended, then other things could be added to prevent deaths - better documentation, better descriptors etc.

You could always create a FAQ entitled "How to avoid unrealistic deaths" and throw it in the help file.

This would actually help with two problems. It would decrease the number of unrealistic deaths, and it would be a list of things that /aren't/ exemptions for dying (and thus requesting resurrection). I know there's a few tricks that I really think people should know. Turning on "nosave combat" in Luirs for instance is something that everyone should know. Remembering to double check their mercy setting when they spar, and make sure their opponent did the same. For super paranoid players you could even mention the option of manually following leaders as opposed to letting the code handle it (though this requires you to have a good direction sense skill, so it's not a perfect fix).

I've been playing for six years and I didn't realize Luir's crimcode was that broken. Good thing I've never been killed by it. Being refused a resurrection and being told that my death was code working as intended would be a slap in the face.

The consensus in this thread is clearly that of all the kinds of silly deaths, fall deaths from inept leadership is the number one most hated.

The reason being that, though with sparring there are checks and balances such as, "In this clan we all say we're ready first before we spar," giving people ample time to LOOK at each other and check for sparring weapons, etc etc... with following people off cliffs, it's an instantaneous death that nobody had any real opportunity to react to.

I've follow self'd when leaders have gone to cliffs before, mind you, but only when they aren't going off into a cliff anyway. If that's the only defense we have against lemminghood, then it's just not adequate, because every deadly cliff-fall I've endured has come so out of nowhere that nobody could stop it. And that's exactly how it goes -- the whole group goes tumbling down.

I don't expect the monster of crim-code to be tackled even in the next 10 years, but I really hope the lemming code gets tackled in a few. It's been yelled about as a problem on the GDB for as long as I've been playing which is many years, and it has never felt fun or realistic. The idea of a saving throw against following people into climb checks seems pretty doable to me, codewise; there is already "nosave climb." There is already code in the Merchant's gate of Nak that forces people to go into a room one person at a time; etc etc.

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 12:43:27 PM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 11:52:14 AM
If staff and players recognize that certain aspects of code is killing players unfairly/OOCly, and that that code should be fixed. Then why should the players who suffer from those aspects of code not be worthy of a resurrection just like other bugs or flaws in the system currently warrant?

For what it's worth, I did not say that the code is killing players unfairly/OOCly. I said that I feel that there is already quite a lot of information provided to players to avoid accidental deaths (which I consider to be completely IC, even if they are annoying/saddening), but if the code can be improved to prevent unrealistic situations, then it should be - and in the past, it's been the case that code that allows unrealistic situations gets improved.

If on the other hand, the code is working as intended, then other things could be added to prevent deaths - better documentation, better descriptors etc.

Do you think players being killed by their NPC colleagues for not being in the proper clan is fair and IC? You think players who follow their leaders off of cliff is? What about if a templar mistargets an incrimination, or someone attacks you in Luirs in order to get the soldiers to stomp you down? Is that fair and IC? Why do you think these things are fair and IC? Is it because it's easy to make up an IC excuse to cover them? If that's the limiting factor then you could easily get rid of all rezzes because anything can be explained IC with enough imagination.


I suppose at this point I should state I've never asked for a resurrection, because I've never been in one of these situations over 100+ of character deaths. I've never even thought the fall-death parades were worthy of a rezz until this thread. But now it makes sense to me. It and a lot of other things. It's really just seeing newbies and other players die in stupid-ass ways that make me hate the current policy. It break immersion and feels tacky as hell to talk about in-game to the point where people completely avoid those topics IC.

I feel bad that people are calling the leadership in these cases "inept." People make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are large blunders that can really screw other people. That doesn't make them, in general, "inept." There's a lot of OOC pressure on IC leadership already and it kind of stings to see that people are willing to totally write off those leaders for a single mistake, even a big one. Even, in certain cases, a fatal one.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 01:16:41 PM

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 12:43:27 PM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 11:52:14 AM
If staff and players recognize that certain aspects of code is killing players unfairly/OOCly, and that that code should be fixed. Then why should the players who suffer from those aspects of code not be worthy of a resurrection just like other bugs or flaws in the system currently warrant?

For what it's worth, I did not say that the code is killing players unfairly/OOCly. I said that I feel that there is already quite a lot of information provided to players to avoid accidental deaths (which I consider to be completely IC, even if they are annoying/saddening), but if the code can be improved to prevent unrealistic situations, then it should be - and in the past, it's been the case that code that allows unrealistic situations gets improved.

If on the other hand, the code is working as intended, then other things could be added to prevent deaths - better documentation, better descriptors etc.

Do you think players being killed by their NPC colleagues for not being in the proper clan is fair and IC? You think players who follow their leaders off of cliff is? What about if a templar mistargets an incrimination, or someone attacks you in Luirs in order to get the soldiers to stomp you down? Is that fair and IC?

1) Not sure what you're referring to with this situation, because I can't think of a time where this has happened as-described. If an NPC of a clan attacks a PC within the clan, it's probably because that PC is outranked and did something they weren't supposed to do.
2) It certainly can be, if visibility is bad or depending on the position of the leader or followers. Whether the follow code can be improved or not is up for discussion.
3) That's on the templar or whoever else is triggering the crimcode. Deaths related to code abuse or typos are not that common and the player that caused it is held responsible. However, the death is still IC.

QuoteWhy do you think these things are fair and IC? Is it because it's easy to make up an IC excuse to cover them? If that's the limiting factor then you could easily get rid of all rezzes because anything can be explained IC with enough imagination.

I think they are IC because you can conceive of them happening realistically. IRL, the world doesn't stop and start again and cause an aggressive rhinoceros to appear next to a school bus - however, sometimes the server stops and starts again and puts a group next to a mekillot. On the other hand, IRL, people accidentally lead one another into dangerous situations, there are friendly fire incidents and the like. IG equivalents to these accidents are sad, distressing, but still valid.

Quote from: Beethoven on June 10, 2015, 01:30:56 PM
I feel bad that people are calling the leadership in these cases "inept." People make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are large blunders that can really screw other people. That doesn't make them, in general, "inept." There's a lot of OOC pressure on IC leadership already and it kind of stings to see that people are willing to totally write off those leaders for a single mistake, even a big one. Even, in certain cases, a fatal one.

(http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/187815.jpg)

Nergal, if you want to see (what I feel is) an example of #1, you can look at my request history regarding staff complaints.

Quote from: Beethoven on June 10, 2015, 01:30:56 PM
I feel bad that people are calling the leadership in these cases "inept." People make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are large blunders that can really screw other people. That doesn't make them, in general, "inept." There's a lot of OOC pressure on IC leadership already and it kind of stings to see that people are willing to totally write off those leaders for a single mistake, even a big one. Even, in certain cases, a fatal one.

Inept's the only word for it. Everyone who's played a leader has been there. Even good leaders can have moments of ineptness. I lost a 3 year leader PC (who I don't consider to have been a particularly good leader) because I didn't know what a spider's nest looked like and decided to check it out. Character ineptness is often driven by player ineptness. All we can do is live and learn from the experience (and laugh at how stupid we all were).

The above applies mostly, if not wholly, to death from falls where the point man has led a patrol off a cliff. My thoughts on NPC crimcoding are different.

For the record, if we're talking WARNING SIGNS, "completely dark" over there 2 rooms away ain't the best warning sign.

Wink wink I'm being round-about.  ;) ;) ;)

Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 10, 2015, 01:44:33 PM

Quote from: Beethoven on June 10, 2015, 01:30:56 PM
I feel bad that people are calling the leadership in these cases "inept." People make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are large blunders that can really screw other people. That doesn't make them, in general, "inept." There's a lot of OOC pressure on IC leadership already and it kind of stings to see that people are willing to totally write off those leaders for a single mistake, even a big one. Even, in certain cases, a fatal one.

Inept's the only word for it. Everyone who's played a leader has been there. Even good leaders can have moments of ineptness. I lost a 3 year leader PC (who I don't consider to have been a particularly good leader) because I didn't know what a spider's nest looked like and decided to check it out. Character ineptness is often driven by player ineptness. All we can do is live and learn from the experience (and laugh at how stupid we all were).

The above applies mostly, if not wholly, to death from falls where the point man has led a patrol off a cliff. My thoughts on NPC crimcoding are different.

I agree with this.

I approach Armageddon with dwarf fortress logic.

Quote from: Asanadas on June 10, 2015, 01:46:55 PM
For the record, if we're talking WARNING SIGNS, "completely dark" over there 2 rooms away ain't the best warning sign.

Wink wink I'm being round-about.  ;) ;) ;)

lol, no it ain't. I'd love for staff to do something about that (I was even reading room descriptions trying to figure out what the fuck it was!), but the game is what it is. Hopefully enough players in-game survived to learn from my mistake :D

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 01:35:33 PM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 01:16:41 PM

Quote from: Nergal on June 10, 2015, 12:43:27 PM

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 11:52:14 AM
If staff and players recognize that certain aspects of code is killing players unfairly/OOCly, and that that code should be fixed. Then why should the players who suffer from those aspects of code not be worthy of a resurrection just like other bugs or flaws in the system currently warrant?

For what it's worth, I did not say that the code is killing players unfairly/OOCly. I said that I feel that there is already quite a lot of information provided to players to avoid accidental deaths (which I consider to be completely IC, even if they are annoying/saddening), but if the code can be improved to prevent unrealistic situations, then it should be - and in the past, it's been the case that code that allows unrealistic situations gets improved.

If on the other hand, the code is working as intended, then other things could be added to prevent deaths - better documentation, better descriptors etc.

Do you think players being killed by their NPC colleagues for not being in the proper clan is fair and IC? You think players who follow their leaders off of cliff is? What about if a templar mistargets an incrimination, or someone attacks you in Luirs in order to get the soldiers to stomp you down? Is that fair and IC?

1) Not sure what you're referring to with this situation, because I can't think of a time where this has happened as-described. If an NPC of a clan attacks a PC within the clan, it's probably because that PC is outranked and did something they weren't supposed to do.
2) It certainly can be, if visibility is bad or depending on the position of the leader or followers. Whether the follow code can be improved or not is up for discussion.
3) That's on the templar or whoever else is triggering the crimcode. Deaths related to code abuse or typos are not that common and the player that caused it is held responsible. However, the death is still IC.

QuoteWhy do you think these things are fair and IC? Is it because it's easy to make up an IC excuse to cover them? If that's the limiting factor then you could easily get rid of all rezzes because anything can be explained IC with enough imagination.

I think they are IC because you can conceive of them happening realistically. IRL, the world doesn't stop and start again and cause an aggressive rhinoceros to appear next to a school bus - however, sometimes the server stops and starts again and puts a group next to a mekillot. On the other hand, IRL, people accidentally lead one another into dangerous situations, there are friendly fire incidents and the like. IG equivalents to these accidents are sad, distressing, but still valid.

I understand, thank you for responding and explaining yourself. Just for the sake of clarity the first example I took from when there were a couple inter-clan training accidents. Though I suppose I may be misremembering.

Quote from: whitt on June 10, 2015, 10:01:43 AMCode change to the follow code.  It's possible to stop people from following through the merchant's gate, that means there's some sort of mechanism available to make a room "No-Follow".  Fall rooms might want to follow that logic.  Some code change, but possibly not completely new code.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 08, 2015, 10:49:50 PM
I always type "look <direction>" around holes. Never "l <direction>"

Quote from: Malken on June 08, 2015, 11:50:56 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/3vPJUID.gif)

That sounds a good idea, it does seem a bit silly.

On a completely unrelated note, it's that "Near" room descriptor you want to be paying attention to.

I've decided to save my breath and not try and actually enter into this discussion.  It's a dead horse.  I will offer a description change suggestion to more accurately convey the danger of holes in the desert though.  See below.

(http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/20282/19782537_3.jpg?v=8D147F2BC4F6C50)

Quote from: Sorry on June 10, 2015, 02:23:02 PM

Quote from: whitt on June 10, 2015, 10:01:43 AMCode change to the follow code.  It's possible to stop people from following through the merchant's gate, that means there's some sort of mechanism available to make a room "No-Follow".  Fall rooms might want to follow that logic.  Some code change, but possibly not completely new code.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 08, 2015, 10:49:50 PM
I always type "look <direction>" around holes. Never "l <direction>"

Quote from: Malken on June 08, 2015, 11:50:56 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/3vPJUID.gif)

That sounds a good idea, it does seem a bit silly.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 10, 2015, 02:25:22 PMit's that "Near" room descriptor you want to be paying attention to.

I haven't seen this thing, from how they described it does seem obvious to me too actually, but I guess there's something about the format of it that can confuse people? In that case they had actually stopped, but then carried on going because they misunderstood what the text was trying to describe as what they are seeing it seems like!

Does it matter? The problem isn't that there are dangerous holes. It's that people follow leaders into holes. I have zero sympathy for someone who doesn't see warning signs and falls into a hole. The people tagging along though? That doesn't make any sense that they would fall in too. Are they all tied together and following in straight lines while spooning? Even then the weight of the people behind would suspend the idiot who fell.

Nevermind...  I'm staying away from this thread.  Nothing good will come of me lurking here.

Edited out a log of a conversation that happened IG. Please refrain from discussing recent events or IG conversations in detail. I realize that is tricky given the nature of the thread, but should be possible if we stick to the topic at hand.

People fall for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes people misinterpret the name of the "near" room. Sometimes people mean to "look west" but forget to type "look" or "l" and just type "West". Ride check fails, loss of direction, just having an off day...

If I think a room MIGHT be a fall room, I don't move in to it. If I feel like I have to, I've wished up to staff asking "If I move in to this room that may or may not be a volcanic caldera, will I die?" And I accept the fact that I might just fuck up some day and get myself killed.

That said, I agree with RGS that it's the followers who really get shafted. Support No-Follow-in-Climb/Fall-Rooms 100%.

Quote from: wizturbo on June 10, 2015, 02:43:24 PM
Just manually move everywhere.  Sure, your clan members will probably hate the delay that creates, but oh well.  It's realistic play.  Since there are no resurrections, it's better to play realistically than conveniently.

Is there a non-manual way of moving? ???

Did Sorry's post get edited because it had recent in-game information in it?

Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 10, 2015, 02:44:53 PM

Is there a non-manual way of moving? ???

I meant refuse to use the follow code.  Manually follow people.  But I deleted my comment because its was ripe with sarcasm.

Just make it default behavior for followers to automatically unhitch when the person they're following makes a climb check/enters a climb room. After all, you see them make the climb check before they enter that room. Then add nosave follow: "Your character will follow someone into a room with a climb check automatically."

Quote from: hyzhenhok on June 10, 2015, 02:46:45 PM
Just make it default behavior for followers to automatically unhitch when the person they're following enters a climb room. Then add nosave follow: "Your character will follow someone into a room with a climb check automatically."

That's a great idea.

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49544.0.html

I made a new thread for talking about how to fix the lemmings issue. Maybe we can turn this subject back to talking about the resurrection policy, since following into holes isn't the only half-buggy way to die that is technically not a bug.

Quote from: hyzhenhok on June 10, 2015, 02:46:45 PM
Just make it default behavior for followers to automatically unhitch when the person they're following makes a climb check/enters a climb room. After all, you see them make the climb check before they enter that room. Then add nosave follow: "Your character will follow someone into a room with a climb check automatically."

Excellent idea.  Doubt it'll be implemented because it sounds tricky to code.

Would also be AMAZING if there was a nosave crime that would outright prevent your character from taking an action that would trig crim-code unless you turned the nosave option off, or repeated your command to confirm it.

Those two fixes would probably prevent 80% of the resurrection requests from ever needing to be made.

I'll never forget the time I accidentally typed "kick clanmember" instead of "dump clanmember" because the echo for the dump command said something like "You kick soandso out of the clan" and wires got crossed in my brain. They got away, but didn't believe me that it was a mistake. Sorry, whoever you were.

I continue to be blown away by these poll results.  :-\

Quote from: wizturbo on June 10, 2015, 02:52:49 PM

Quote from: hyzhenhok on June 10, 2015, 02:46:45 PM
Just make it default behavior for followers to automatically unhitch when the person they're following makes a climb check/enters a climb room. After all, you see them make the climb check before they enter that room. Then add nosave follow: "Your character will follow someone into a room with a climb check automatically."

Excellent idea.  Doubt it'll be implemented because it sounds tricky to code.

Would also be AMAZING if there was a nosave crime that would outright prevent your character from taking an action that would trig crim-code unless you turned the nosave option off, or repeated your command to confirm it.

Those two fixes would probably prevent 80% of the resurrection requests from ever needing to be made.

The nosave crime thing would make it too easy for people to figure out the limits of the crime code.  E.g. what times of day are safe, what locations are safe, what other circumstances are safe, etc.

Quote from: Synthesis on June 10, 2015, 02:55:51 PM

The nosave crime thing would make it too easy for people to figure out the limits of the crime code.  E.g. what times of day are safe, what locations are safe, what other circumstances are safe, etc.

So?  Why is this a bad thing?  I can assess whether or not something I'm about to do in real life is a criminal act, why can't I do that in Zalanthas?  Only explanation would be if my character literally had no idea what they were going to do was criminal (i.e. different culture, etc)...

This is one of the situations where the good players are punished with stupid deaths, and the bad players who are looking for ways to test the code can make throwaway characters to test all this anyway.

I don't think people should get resurrections just because they don't like how the code handles x or y,I just don't feel strongly enough about it to get into an argument over it.

Quote from: valeria on June 10, 2015, 03:01:16 PM
I don't think people should get resurrections just because they don't like how the code handles x or y,I just don't feel strongly enough about it to get into an argument over it.

Doesn't that apply to quite a few of the currently acceptable cases for resurrections?

When I first started my bynner was always randomly attacking people.

I'd type 'Hi so and so. '

Quote from: valeria on June 10, 2015, 03:01:16 PM
I don't think people should get resurrections just because they don't like how the code handles x or y,I just don't feel strongly enough about it to get into an argument over it.

I don't think people should get resurrections at all, because even idiotic deaths build character, and the playerbase these days is suffering from a serious lack of bootstraps.

I once saw a newer player's character die of thirst in a room full of fellow NPC clan members that one might assume would give him water, because he didn't understand the concept of losing link and the from in question was a faintly confusing one to quit OOC in. Several experienced players suggested that he just lose link rather than quit.

I've always been pretty strict on permadeath as far as my opinions go, but I think that when even a portion of the player base disagrees with policy it needs a review and revision. Sometimes the game forces an OOC situation on your character, that leaves you unsatisfied because the code forced you to act/die a certain way. It's not so much the idea of dying stupidly that's upsetting, it's the idea that your character's death could only happen if your character was not acting like you played them. It makes pretty much every interaction beforehand feel meaningless.

I would be pro-resurrection reform, especially where code ends up in actions that would otherwise have not ICly occurred. (House guards beating their own nobles accidently, or crimcode wonkiness, mekillots spawning on top of your RPT group after a game crash,etc)

It's a game, and people invest a lot of time into their characters. I think it's worth investing time to figure out better ways to deal with it than just chalking it up and moving on. If you find yourself trying to justify ICly why Sergeant Githskull just got exploded by thirteen soldier NPCs...it might just make more sense to retcon and move along as though nothing ever happened.

My idiotic PKs and Deaths have only built character. I once accidentally backstabbed my best friend and was told by Staff 'Friendly Fire Happens'. It was definitely in the heat of the moment, I didn't mean to do it, but I didn't shit the bed over it. Sure, the game sucks sometimes and you lose a PC to something stupid (i've lost more than a few to Lemming Fall Death). It's also lead me to 'un follow' leaders or people I am following if I know I am nearing a dangerous area we are idling beside. It's easy enough to have a long-lived PC now-a-days. I'd rather not make it any easier. It kind of warms my heart when I hear about 'Long Lived PC X Died Today'. Sorry, it may be cruel, but it just makes me think 'Maybe they're happy they get to play a new PC now.'

Voted 'No' for reassessing the policy. I'm fine with it as it is, i've been on the short end of the stick more than a fair share of times, with PCs you wouldn't believe died to 'some bug' or 'link death'. I'd recommend taking a step back from the game, come back when you're ready, put the spike into your vein, and crackageddon.

This is a game, it's not a character-building project. We play to have fun. If something happens that doesn't make sense, and isn't fun, why would you condone it? Why admit something is cruel to players and then say you're fine with it? Yes, it's easier for you to now have long-lived PC's because you've built up this knowledge over years... Everyone who isn't a vet though, they have to die in those shitty, maddening ways. And you think it's fine because you've already dealt with it and learned from it?

Forcing players to learn obscure, deadly artifacts of code by killing their PC's in OOC ways just so that they can avoid those situations later, sounds like the very worst of ideas in game design. No matter how much your recommend someone step away and come back later, some are just going to step away and never come back.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 04:56:50 PM
This is a game, it's not a character-building project. We play to have fun. If something happens that doesn't make sense, and isn't fun, why would you condone it? Why admit something is cruel to players and then say you're fine with it? Yes, it's easier for you to now have long-lived PC's because you've built up this knowledge over years... Everyone who isn't a vet though, they have to die in those shitty, maddening ways. And you think it's fine because you've already dealt with it and learned from it?

Forcing players to learn obscure, deadly artifacts of code by killing their PC's in OOC ways just so that they can avoid those situations later, sounds like the very worst of ideas in game design.

BOOTSTRAPS

The closer we'd theoretically move towards a more lax resurrection policy, the further away we'd get from the RPI Perma-Death MUD I grew to love.

Forcing players to learn obscure, deadly artifacts of code -- Welcome to Zalanthas.

Quote from: Reiloth on June 10, 2015, 04:58:56 PM
The closer we'd theoretically move towards a more lax resurrection policy, the further away we'd get from the RPI Perma-Death MUD I grew to love.

Forcing players to learn obscure, deadly artifacts of code -- Welcome to Zalanthas.

HARD CORE

No John. You are the grognards.

I only voted 'yes' because I think the policy should be reviewed so that anyone who so much as requests a resurrection is immediately karma-docked to be allowed to play only human merchant/tinkers.

Quote from: Reiloth on June 10, 2015, 04:58:56 PM
The closer we'd theoretically move towards a more lax resurrection policy, the further away we'd get from the RPI Perma-Death MUD I grew to love.

Forcing players to learn obscure, deadly artifacts of code -- Welcome to Zalanthas.

I think the issue is that there are some cases where deaths have nothing to do with RP but have to do with you as a player learning certain 'gotchas' that don't make a lot of IC sense when they happen. Until I read this thread, I had no idea that if someone attacked me in Luirs, the NPCs would try to kill my PC as well. Okay, maybe the IC policy is 'we don't care who started it, peace disturbers get deaded now.' Fine.


I had a character over a year ago fall down that sinkhole, and now I have the nearby rooms highlighted in red.
Some of the approaches to the place, though, have a fairly minor change only in the long desc of the room, which I know people are not reading as they walk all over the dunes, because room after room is almost the same, like was pointed out earlier. I think on RAT Xalle mentioned that the warnings might have been amplified, which is a good thing in my opinion.

I agree with the suggestion that certain code gotcha's would be better posted in a FAQ if they're not intended to change, because you really can't "Find out IC" because there's nothing IC about them: they're OOC quirks. e.g. outposts apparently killing both attacker and defender so use nosave combat there, not using 'guard' on your noble but only 'rescue' because your 'guard' reply will trigger crim code if you successfully guard your noble against an attack, etc etc.

Edit: Whoops, wrong thread.

He understands that perfectly fine, Jack. He explained why he doesn't like change. He's a fan of the Armageddon he grew up with, where Mantis, Halflings and Elves all joked in the bars with humans, and roaming packs of gith killed anyone who stepped onto the street surrounding the city.  :D

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 05:25:18 PM
He understands that perfectly fine, Jack. He explained why he doesn't like change. He's a fan of the Armageddon he grew up with, where Mantis, Halflings and Elves all joked in the bars with humans, and roaming packs of gith killed anyone who stepped onto the street surrounding the city.  :D

Ah yes, Sadistic Dungeonmaster meets 'When I Was Your Age'  ;D

The harshness of Armageddon is a big part of what makes me want to come back and play again and again.
I just think there's some validity to the point that some of the quirks of the code you have to learn cost you IC lives when they're really OOC pieces of information, and then you have to kind of OOCly communicate them to your newbies since apparently the policy is that it's on clan leaders to explain these things (don't spar in the yard or NPCs will curbstomp you, use 'assist' rather than 'kill keyword' to avoid keyword overlap issues, etc etc). An official FAQ or something of quirks that cannot by definition be IC secrets since they're about coded things that don't make a whole ton of sense IC seems the way to go for me, inexperienced as I am.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 05:25:18 PM
He understands that perfectly fine, Jack. He explained why he doesn't like change. He's a fan of the Armageddon he grew up with, where Mantis, Halflings and Elves all joked in the bars with humans, and roaming packs of gith killed anyone who stepped onto the street surrounding the city.  :D

Belittling people who you disagree with is turning into your thing.

QuoteSome of the approaches to the place, though, have a fairly minor change only in the long desc of the room, which I know people are not reading as they walk all over the dunes, because room after room is almost the same, like was pointed out earlier. I think on RAT Xalle mentioned that the warnings might have been amplified, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Quotewhich I know people are not reading as they walk all over the dunes, because room after room is almost the same, like was pointed out earlier

Quotewhich I know people are not reading as they walk all over the dunes

I do not promote people treating the wilderness as spam-walking paradise.  It's a dangerous place where you pay attention, and stop trying to cross the known in fifteen minutes.  Pay attention, assess risks, take them when appropriate.  Otherwise risk death because it's a dangerous place that is out to get you.

Actually, I only started playing in 2002, so well after that phase of ArmageddonMUD.

I did actually play with people who perhaps understood they were playing a game that was incredibly unforgiving, harsh, and had permanent death.

Next thing you know NPCs will have question marks next to their sdesc because they're 'too difficult to discern from a PC'.

And yeah, i'm used to RGS being a small guy who belittles people who don't agree with them -- It's the new maxid 'unassailable position' of the GDB.

Why do you have to laser in on this facet of his argument? Why can't you address the entirety of the problem here, which is the fact that OOC issues cause unrealistic IC deaths, and that staff should change their policy to account for these issues?

Because i don't think anything has changed, or needs to change.

If it is an OOC issue (perceived or otherwise) i'd probably say 'file a resurrection request and see what Staff has to say about it'. I don't think the policy on resurrection needs to change, or the goal posts need to be moved one way or another. I've had very long lived PCs die to questionable circumstances, file a resurrection request, be denied, and move on. I think if it were an OOC snafu or bug, it would have been accepted. I trust Staff to make objective decisions when i'm obviously too close to the PC to even remotely be removed from it.

From Help Rules:

2. Life is hard. There are no free lunches on Zalanthas. There aren't even
   free drinks of water. It is likely that your character will die, and if
   you are not clever your character will die very fast. Only (and we mean
   only) the very fittest of all live long enough to retire in comfort at
   the end of their careers.

From Help Death:

Death                                                                (Newbie)

   When characters die in Armageddon MUD, there is no resurrection. Only if
at least two senior staff members agree that the death occurred directly as
the result of some major bug, or other exceptional circumstances, can the
character be resurrected.  Deaths caused by link-loss, lag, typos, the
callousness of other players, and rampant stupidity do NOT fall into the
category of exceptional circumstances.

Quote from: Asanadas on June 10, 2015, 05:50:28 PM
Why do you have to laser in on this facet of his argument? Why can't you address the entirety of the problem here, which is the fact that OOC issues cause unrealistic IC deaths, and that staff should change their policy to account for these issues?

OOC issues is too broad.  We don't give people resurrections for not knowing things, because...no one would ever lose a PC.  If you open up resurrections to such a broad thing, resurrections become an issue that is argued constantly.  Characters die in Armageddon.  People need to get used to that idea.  They are rarely truly satisfying deaths...you will likely be dissatisfied with almost every PC you have, because that is the nature of a permadeath game.

Code issues, where something is not working as intended, or where a bug has resulted in something is something they can look at.  People claiming lack of knowledge, or claiming that they wouldn't have done something if they knew this, is not okay.  Every...single...death...would have a resurrection request.  In this prominent case being discussed, I agree that some code modification could be looked at, but not that people deserve to come back from it...because it's IC consequences of someone's mistake.  Which also happens.

Aren't we talking about a code magnification / change that happened like...A month ago?

Reminds me of the Louis CK bit on WiFi on Airplanes.

"You're complaining about not having something that literally didn't exist ten minutes ago."

I haven't belittled you as a person. Your opinions however, are free game.  Isn't that how it works? How else can I try be silly while illustrating how someone's ideas are silly to me? Am I not allowed to joke around? I'm sure there'd be some helper in here telling me to moderate myself if I was actually belittling people.

Quote from: Armaddict on June 10, 2015, 05:57:21 PM

Quote from: Asanadas on June 10, 2015, 05:50:28 PM
Why do you have to laser in on this facet of his argument? Why can't you address the entirety of the problem here, which is the fact that OOC issues cause unrealistic IC deaths, and that staff should change their policy to account for these issues?

OOC issues is too broad.  We don't give people resurrections for not knowing things, because...no one would ever lose a PC.  If you open up resurrections to such a broad thing, resurrections become an issue that is argued constantly.  Characters die in Armageddon.  People need to get used to that idea.  They are rarely truly satisfying deaths...you will likely be dissatisfied with almost every PC you have, because that is the nature of a permadeath game.

Code issues, where something is not working as intended, or where a bug has resulted in something is something they can look at.  People claiming lack of knowledge, or claiming that they wouldn't have done something if they knew this, is not okay.  Every...single...death...would have a resurrection request.  In this prominent case being discussed, I agree that some code modification could be looked at, but not that people deserve to come back from it...because it's IC consequences of someone's mistake.  Which also happens.

Nobody is saying it has to be broad, take some of the instances people have talked about in this thread, and add them as exceptions. This doesn't need a whole restructuring of the policy from ground up. But there are frequent issues that arise, like the falling-following problem, where perhaps exceptions for resurrections should be made while the code is being fixed.

Quote from: Reiloth on June 10, 2015, 05:59:08 PM
Aren't we talking about a code magnification / change that happened like...A month ago?

No.

Sure, you can do whatever you want with my opinions. But if you want to be taken seriously and actually debate something, maybe try just having a conversation rather than reverting to baiting someone by belittling their opinion.

If all you want to accomplish is belittling their opinion to try and make your opinion 'look better' I guess you have won?

But you aren't going to change people's minds by being a dick.

Armageddon is ICly harsh -- that does not mean it has to be OOCly harsh.

Look at consent rules, look at the rape clause. If this were truly a ruff tumble OOC environment, there would be no limitations. However, there obviously exists a standard of playability and expectation from players to behave according to a certain set of rules.

What I'm talking about are anomalies within the code that only exist because the forefathers who wrote the thing didn't / weren't able to account for a situation in order to make it behave realistically. Why shouldn't we improve where this was left off, and fix these issues? And while we're fixing them, why should players who suffer from them have to deal with the anomaly in-universe that makes no sense?

This bootstraps trope has no place in a game unless it is explicitly designed not to be enjoyed, but to be experienced / stumbled through without any understanding of deeper meaning. (http://lfwb.ru/interzone/)

Quote from: Reiloth on June 10, 2015, 06:05:08 PM
Sure, you can do whatever you want with my opinions. But if you want to be taken seriously and actually debate something, maybe try just having a conversation rather than reverting to baiting someone by belittling their opinion.

If all you want to accomplish is belittling their opinion to try and make your opinion 'look better' I guess you have won?

But you aren't going to change people's minds by being a dick.

I'm not going to change peoples minds, period. The first half of this thread should make that pretty clear... Actually, I may have caused people to vote the other way entirely(but that probably just me being selfish). Also, someone without context might take that bit at the end of your post as harsh. But you and I know it's just true, and that stating true things that are harsh isn't insulting, it's character building.

Why is there a link to some Russian site in Asandas' post?

Because it's an example of a community these guys might want to check out if they're concrete on their OOC harshness idea.  :-*

Can't we start a thread that has a list of all the OOC death traps out there, so we can study and avoid them?

I'll start:

The "assist" command is exactly like kill, it just helps you target.  You will not avoid any consequences of using "kill" by using "assist" instead, unless you trust the guy your assisting to be less prone to targeting the wrong thing than you.

Quote from: wizturbo on June 10, 2015, 06:39:24 PM
Can't we start a thread that has a list of all the OOC death traps out there, so we can study and avoid them?

I'll start:

The "assist" command is exactly like kill, it just helps you target.  You will not avoid any consequences of using "kill" by using "assist" instead, unless you trust the guy your assisting to be less prone to targeting the wrong thing than you.

Question on this. What about the 'rescue' command? Someone just implied on the GDB recently that rescue does NOT incur crim code, whereas assist and kill do. Confirm/deny?

Also, from that link Asanadas provided, from the FAQ:

Quote from: Crazy Russians
> What's the point of this game?
To be a part of an exciting story. To suffer well.  It would never be a pleasant experience. The game is designed for mature and very specific audience, and it will never be player-friendly.

Here's another.

Fighting someone who is crime-code immune will get you crim-flagged. No exceptions (except a couple like sharing a clan).

By extension, assisting someone who is crime-code immune in fighting someone else who is crime-code immune will get you crim-flagged. Since you're fighting in that instance, that means that you will be immediately attacked without a chance of being arrested by NPCs.

This counts for any combination of PC vs PC, PC vs NPC, and NPC vs NPC conflict.

Is this IC knowledge? I hope not -- I hope this is an OOC extension of an understanding of a flawed implementation of the code, which is unable to discern who is guilty in these cases.

If it were IC knowledge, then it would be something that could be learned and understood ICly. However, this is an OOC bit of information you are only likely to learn after having lost your character to it, or having observed someone lose their character to it.

But! I'll not ignore the argument that this should be learned IC through flawed ramification, than warned of OOCly for being an obtuse caveat of the crime-code. Bootstraps, right?

If staff have the opinion that suffering from this obtuse caveat is player error, then I would insist that the players at least have the chance to be aware of this error before they perform it. Is this as common sense as "walking towards a death trap means you die"? Absolutely not; because of that, it needs to be expressed, in my opinion.

EDIT for Harmless: Rescue will not incur crim-code, unless the person you are going to be attacking due to the rescue is crim-code immune. This is because they won't have the flag and won't be "valid" for fighting within the system.

Rescuing someone from Allanaki soldiers? Definitely going to crim-code you.

Rescuing someone from some assassin who (by hijinks) isn't crim-coded for attacking that person? Probably going to crim-code you.

You need to be extremely careful.

I don't click Russian links on general principle.

I also think there is some benefit for IC harshness to be linked to OOC harshness. At least for me, it's encouraged more cautious and thoughtful behavior. Falls can be looked at, but I see little other room we need to soften up and grant more resurrections. Your foreigner PC got guard-ganked because foreigners aren't arrested in the City? Stop breaking the law you barbarian. The website warns you.

Quote from: http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Crime%20and%20JusticePenalties for crimes are generally much more severe for non-citizens than for citizens. It is thus a particularly bad idea to be caught committing a crime in somewhere other than your character's hometown.

I kind of like the Dwarf Fortress analogy. IC, it's a harsh, desperate game of survival. OOC, it's a clunky, non-intuitive interface that you have to fight against and learn; I would also say that in its current form it's TOO hard. A balance needs to be struck. In Dwarf Fortress you have strategy guides and no secret code (unless you want it to be). For Armageddon, I'd like to see more of the OOC harshness called out and made common knowledge, so that observant players are rewarded for paying attention.

Quote from: wizturbo on June 10, 2015, 06:39:24 PM
Can't we start a thread that has a list of all the OOC death traps out there, so we can study and avoid them?

I'll start:

The "assist" command is exactly like kill, it just helps you target.  You will not avoid any consequences of using "kill" by using "assist" instead, unless you trust the guy your assisting to be less prone to targeting the wrong thing than you.

I've accidentally killed people with the assist code and almost been killed myself. The guy I killed, I think he attacked the wrong NPC which I then assisted and helped gank him. I felt bad enough that I actually wished up to Staff asking if we can get him back, but fortunately they closed Tuluk a week later and made it a moot point.

Another time, a buddy got attacked by a spider and I immediately tried to assist him. However, there's some quirk in the code where the attacked PC doesn't seem to register as in combat until they hit back, or maybe he had nonsave combat on, or something. Whatever it was it wouldn't let me assist him. After typing "assist bro" so many times I got frustrated and switched to "Kill spider." Unfortunately I typed "Kill bro" instead (and promptly got my ass kicked cause that guy was stronk). Fled combat, came back, helped kill spider, laughed about it afterwards IC because mistakes happen in a fight.

Then there was the time at the HRPT when I was running after some desert elf sniper asshole, with a recruit in tow, spamming "kill elf" just in case we happened to get in the same room. Somehow "Kill elf" became "Kill recruit". Fled again and just explained, IC, sometimes my PC just gets a kill boner.

These were all examples caused by obtuse code meeting distracted/excited player(s). It would have really sucked if more deaths occurred, but combat is supposed to be scary and confusing. Just like the desert's supposed to be dangerous and worthy of respect.


The only time I've ever seen someone resurrected is when staff loaded in a bunch of slaves for us to hunt in the desert. Unfortunately, the slaves seemed to count as citiizens, so when someone hacked at them outside the city gate the Arm charged out to stomp them. That was fair, cause Staff made an honest mistake in what NPCs they chose (and you just can't account for crimcode, sometimes).

Edited out IC information.

That's really crossing into IC information (been less than a year).  :-X

Edited out IC information.

If admins green-light it, I'll post the series of complaints / interactions I had with them after a period of one IRL year from that incident.

I sincerely doubt it'll be allowed, however.

Quote from: Asanadas on June 10, 2015, 07:20:09 PM
That's really crossing into IC information (been less than a year).  :-X

It's not really IC information, because the situation was never explained ICly. It was an OOC fuckup. It was just left out there for interpretation and nobody, even when asked, was willing to give a narrative for it.

It was explained to me in a myriad of ways, all which were negatives on the appeal to have it ret-conned.

If you're going to insist on it then yeah that's something I feel should come under resurrection policy. It's a reaction that was an abortion of in-universe expectation.

Edited out IC information.

I once accidentally backstabbed an inix when I was trying to backstab a yompar lizard.

I once nearly died when someone tried to "shake me off their tail" (i.e. lose shadow) by launching themselves down the well in the 'rinth.  (I caught myself...they didn't.)

I got killed in sparring once because a noob typed 'kick <name>' instead of just 'kick,' (this was before the 'stop' command was implemented, as well), and I got knocked out just before his kick command went through...which apparently blew my head apart Gallagher-style.

I've planted spice on people at the gates of 'nak just for the lulz (sorry guys).

I'm pretty sure I've been shitmugged, but didn't die.

I've totes abused the crime-code while in the AoD to PK peeps.

I think all of those should (or should have) warrant a resurrection, honestly.

That being said, I have 0 resurrection requests in my recorded history.  I think I tried to get rezzed once when my first Elkrosian special-app walked into a death-trap room, a long, long time ago...no dice on that, though.  Learned my lesson.  HARDCORE MODE ONLY

Reiloth's insistence that code quirks that kill players are valid seems legit. Must means code quirks players use to help themselves buff up are legit too. Anyone know the turaal spawn room? Trying to get master chopping weapons

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 10, 2015, 07:23:02 PM

Quote from: Asanadas on June 10, 2015, 07:20:09 PM
That's really crossing into IC information (been less than a year).  :-X

It's not really IC information, because the situation was never explained ICly. It was an OOC fuckup. It was just left out there for interpretation and nobody, even when asked, was willing to give a narrative for it.

It actually is. You don't get to decide that something isn't IC information for some arbitrary reasons. What you described happened extremely recently and actually was explained by staff at the time (note that an explanation you don't like is still an explanation).

I am now locking this thread because I posted previously to ask people to avoid posting IC information and I found this request ignored.