Armageddon General Discussion Board

I've been playing ArmageddonMUD for a long time now. Granted, not as long as some of the veterans on here, but decently long enough to consider myself somewhat experienced with the game. As of the last three months, I've stopped feeling like I'm playing the gritty RP desert game I knew and loved, and more like I'm playing a new knock-off World of Warcraft expansion (without graphics).

There is a large proliferation of players playing karma races, or magick subguilds. I've recently departed from a character because everytime I decided to go out into the wilderness to try anything antagonistic, it's always a mul or a half-giant greeting me. Whilst I could've put in an immense amount of effort gathering poisons or shooting arrows at them like people have suggested, it simply wasn't worth the effort, and it wasn't worth spending all that time to be greeted with the typical 'mount and immediately flee into the void'. Then I was greeted with the recent weapon change that totally gimped the low damage I already did. Antagonism became more of a pointless 'haha' novelty and a passing thing, because I knew I couldn't actually do anything against these types of characters, due to how broken the combat system is - and is only showing itself to be more broken with all these massively high-strength characters around. So, I stored in frustration.

The roleplay has also been heavily lacking, and it seems the bulk of people care less for intricate scenes and plotlines, and more for blind and blunt 'kill man', preferably in a stack of buffed-up PCs. Maybe I'm just an elitist, maybe I just got a bad luck on the draw, but half the players I've seen as of late have not even been using basic English grammar, let alone an emote.

The recent war looked like a bone that was thrown into the game without any sort of build-up for flavor, events, or anything, only so the staff can point at it and say "look, the players can make their own direction in the game". The only truly notable event that seemed to come of it, was more dissatisfied people getting wiped from the game over a staff directed mistake (albeit, apologized-for staff mistake). I believe the staff had good intentions introducing new things at such a rapid rate, but it has lead to a complete derealization of the setting. Seeing lizard people running around with magickal half-giants and muls feels more like a mockery of the setting instead of the Armageddon I've known for a long time now. To add insult to injury, these new things are again, immensely powerful. There's little time to process lizard people from an IC or OOC way when they are given an NPC army, in addition to their large player count.

There has been alot of change as of late, some good, most bad. The staff have taken alot of suggestions which is a great thing, but I think alot of these implementations were incredibly ham-fisted and has only led to the deterioration of the game and IC world in general. I know someone could easily say "wow, these people are never happy" here. My only advice would be to try and improve the things you already have and are well and truly known for instead of adding new clans and new races willy-nilly.

I'm probably going to be taking a decently long break from ArmageddonMUD, but I wanted to post this not to announce that I'm leaving the game (I'm not that important), but more to air my frustrations and to see if anyone else carries similar thoughts and opinions. In the end, if I am the minority opinion and most others are having fun? Then this game and it's direction probably isn't for me and I'm only just now coming to realize that.

Perhaps this could also be mentioned during the upcoming Q&A ( https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58875.0.html ) Did staff anticipate on the significant change and impact these adjustments on weapons/magick/race?

I personally haven't experienced much in general since these adjustments, but I can imagine that, with the Bashurit, which are supposedly superior when it comes to physical prowess, along or in combination with magick, makes any mundane, 0-1 karma race player feel obsolete. Especially when their clan lacks the numbers.

Additionally, its unfortunate that people seem to immediately spamkill their target, instead of some initial "foreplay". It makes the deaths or want to interact in plot less pleasant or downright frustrating.

I think we need an urgent roll of poisons to the previous state that was working for so many years. Just until all the other issues with combat can be properly looked at.

I'm not going to say it was a total mistake, I think it was well-intentioned to address some specific situations (those people that use poison but then don't capitalise on the roleplay opportunities they can add, but the same problem exists for strength and magic and nothing was addressed for these - poison was actually better in that a lot of the time it encouraged roleplay by not being such an instant death thing, instead of the situation now where people are guided towards playing characters that inflict maximum damage fast, which is of course nearly always entirely lethal).

It affected most elf characters (both city and desert) who relied on it so much. And then that was piled on with a change to weapon damage that made it even more, well, sharp, that the poisons were changed so drastically - changes like that aren't in a vacuum, they have a knock-on effect on so many things, and I don't think it's been for the better.

I really don't want to see people not playing elves because of all these changes (or quitting the game because they feel it's not for them anymore which is how that post sounds), it's already a hard sell to get people brave enough to play them, since most people are not willing to deal with the pressures and explicit antagonism from most other characters because of the natural, and fair (not begrudged) IC culture. When people do play elves, I'm usually happy to see it, because they can be very intriguing characters!

I think the game should probably really start looking at the whole picture when doing stuff like this and stop experimenting with the balance in a live game, and have a proper test server, I know smaller MUDs that do this so the situation just seems bizarre really, even without comparing it to professional game design or anything like that. Just not change things bit by bit, but instead if such drastic changes are wanted, it'd be better to revamp combat entirely, and put it in one go after some testing, instead of this situation where we have tweaks that greatly affect one side of the game, while other characters that were already powerful get an even greater boost?

It does seem a bit jarring that the new faction seems to have ended up in a sort of situation that reminds in a few ways of the bad stories people have posted of the times of the Tan Muark, I was thinking its just like a running joke and we can all laugh about it, and that lessons were learned, but... Maybe not? ;)



edit: I think we should also roll back the karma change and bring back timers, it was a mistake. These characters should not be throwaways, it SHOULD be a big affect when one goes down to make them more memorable, and unique seeming, and for it to have an actual feeling like something has been accomplished instead of just making another giant/mul/magicker off the endless production line - it'd bring more people back to playing normal characters again occasionally!

Antagonism is definitely lopsided in favor of those who have one of the few things that make you a real threat, which are:

- High strength, either through HG/mul or a top-roll human/dwarf with bludgeoning
- Master backstab/sap (and they're really only great if you also have high strength)
- Non-mundane powers
- Regular access to high-end poisons

Without one of these things, the only way you can reliably antagonize anyone is if you have the crime code on your side. That's not to say that it's the only possible way to subject someone else to antagonism, but these methods are certainly the only way to realistically get away with antagonism on more than a 'once in a blue moon' basis. You're not utterly incapable of coming out ahead in an altercation if you don't have one of the above, but you can't really have PvP at the core of your character concept and expect good results. Like if you made a mundane human fighter without strength prioritized, and don't have peraine daggers at your disposal and are not in a clan that can simply arrest people, what options do you even have? Are you gonna lightly slash someone to death? Maybe if you can contrive to get them in a locked room, but otherwise, fat fucking chance. Even master ranged skills aren't reliable enough to make do.

It feels like the PvP environment is too reliant on this handful of gotcha mechanics. Conventional combat is largely worthless without them, even if you're very skilled. The weapons update didn't change it that much, although it did nerf the weapons that were overpowered and thus allowed characters without high strength to do meaningful damage. This has made it even more important to have high strength. If you previously had a weapon that did 1d8+2 damage and it has now been correctly nerfed to 1d8 like all other weapons of its kind, that's like going from extremely good to average strength on a human. Or, put another way, it allowed characters without high strength to perform as thought they had. It's a gigantic change for them, even if it was technically appropriate. It has highlighted how awful combat is without high strength or one of the other options listed above. Strength utterly dominates melee combat to an absurd extent.

I think this has, in turn, led to a situation where players feel compelled to approach things in a 'Hack & Slash' manner. Most of the aforementioned tricks require heavy knowledge of and engagement with the code. It's not enough to just have high strength, you also need to raise your skills so that you can leverage the stat. Same with poisons, they're no use if you can't inflict them. Magick needs to be trained up. Backstab and sap likewise, and doubly so if you have to branch them first--and these two skills have also suffered a massive nerf with the weapons update, to the point where I'm not convinced they're even worth it anymore. In any case, heavy codeplay is often the gateway to having a character that can't just be written off as harmless.

It feels a lot like being a schemer and influential character is not enough on its own. At the very least, you need the help of someone who has done the above--unless, of course, you're a templar or a soldier with authority to arrest. And then you're still limited to targets who are in the city (an ever-dwindling flock, it seems) and who you can justify arresting. Nobles seem like they might as well not even exist, having practically no presence or noticeable influence on anything, so political measures are usually futile. You or someone doing your bidding needs to check one of the aforementioned boxes in order to get anything done. You can't Little Finger your way into anything on your own. People will simply detect that you have no tangible clout.

And the easiest source of clout is to make a HG, a mul or a mage. It means you're guaranteed to have a gotcha mechanic. In fact, with one of those, you don't even need to spar for RL months in order to be a potential threat to most people, although it certainly helps if you can also do that. For everyone else, it's an uphill battle. Peraine used to be the great equalizer that allowed anyone to cheese a win against almost anybody, but while that's still technically possible, it has become a lot less practical. And if you don't even have that, there's a prohibitive series of hoops you have to jump through in order to show the world that you're capable. Then you almost have to play a sponsored character and live off of the fact that the documentation says you've got clout, and hope people agree.

That "meta" has a tendency to nudge meaningful roleplay to the side, for various reasons that can be read between the lines. I don't think any of this has cropped up in the last few months, as you insinuate. It has been there for as long as I've played, but the gravity of happenings in the world has generally determined how much players care about being deadly. If there's a wealth of story material to dive into, it's a lot easier to accept being potentially incapable of beating up Amos on a dune. If there isn't, suddenly that feud with Amos is the main thing to care about.

I've seen no lies thus far in this thread. There's a reason I checked out of Armageddon PVP years ago. It invariably devolves into locked-room ganks, karma-driven deathballs (of various flavors, from desert elves All Tribes All Stars to Hogwarts Hitsquads), or simple crimcode clubbing. And this isn't even getting in to why players pick fights to begin with. I think most of us who engage in it are just in it for the power trips or the adrenaline rush, which frankly I find better served in TTRPGs or fighting games.

I think this is a separate issue from a general infusion of high magick fappery into the game over the last couple years, though of course the potential of magick subguilds have made them enticing  to people dead set on being a general nuisance. Even if you rolled back recent changes that have made the current gameworld what it is, there isn't any better reason for characters to want to fight and PK each other aside from one player thinking they're being cool.

Armageddon's just not a very good PVP game, and people should maybe stop thinking of it as one.

Sorry you feel frustrated. I hope you can take a break and return as well as avoid the frustration you wrote about.

This is an RPI built on a hack and slash engine. It's always been this way, but gets better and worse from time to time. I hate the combat code in PVP. It's a huge challenge to balance gameplay vs emoting and all leveraged against typing speed and code delays.

I am going to double down and say I believe that extended death scenes would be the biggest improvement we could make to removing the frustrations of the beep. https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58887.0.html (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58887.0.html) or any of the hundred other threads. ANY way to extend a death scene beyond a beep or a your visions goes black...beep...would do far more for player contentment than ANY other code change, tweak, or adjustment.

The IC example brought up (some details should be viable to discuss here as it was posted as a rumor) the confident Tulukis rolled out with some untrained conscript, some half giants, and a templar who (OOC translate to IC?) was unprepared and caught of guard. They were run down and slaughtered by the mutant martial race no one has fought before. Are they worth 2-3 humans? Are the actually stronger than half giants and faster than muls because defilers haven't sucked the life out of them and the land they lived on?
-Why was it an IMM mistake? Did it suck for the players who died? Was it IC? Did they see any emotes, shouts, or imm echos?
-Would it have been better if they got to see a full scene? If that scene was basically the above, but lasted longer.

Half giant's are mimics...they can and will run around with anyone. You mentioned a magick half giant running around with the scary mutants....WHY THE FEKK WOULD YOU SHOOT ARROWS AT THAT???? If you were an elf I would go get your whole tribe. I would call to the tribe leaders to get some powerful spirit...

There is magic...wait...you don't just mean a witch you mean a half giant witch? That sounds like a monster. Does that feel more like a twinked out character (what is twinking again?) or a monster that's been growing in the gameworld?

A bigger problem than 'a group of mages' is that a number of them are long lived characters...long lived characters are not easily challenged by newer characters due to how the the skill system works. So the king of the hill can become nearly invincible until something unseats them...it's always been this way...because of that, mostly?

On another side rant I also think there should be less secrets in a psionically linked world...sure, your character can still keep a secret, but why aren't commoners in Red Storm and Luirs swapping rumors? And if more people were able to way their friends as they died or before they died (if their friends were offline) and share that information...well I think that makes more sense.
-Where that comes into play is that the Thryzn have been in game for ...a year? Which means 8 years ingame, which means up to nearly a half of the life of some min age characters. They've been around, in the desert, all over the known interacting with people, and being seen.

The "large player count" also means that a large counting of players are out playing and engaging with them, entertained and roleplaying...which is a huge note too...WHY are there so many players joining a group? WHY do they find it interesting?

There do seem to be a lot of muls and magickers around. Perhaps reinstating the karma timer would make witch hunting more effective?

Lizard people are virtually more superior in combat.

They are not, in fact superior in combat. They can, will, and have been shit on by human, dwarf, elf,  and mul PCs, but that's all I can say. They aren't actually codedly better.

I support rolling poisons back to the way they were, as it did level the playing field against long lived pcs.

The recent tuluk incident was the simple result of being vastly outnumbered, with vastly longer lived pcs. That's all. And they had considerable help per the northern rumours

First, on a positive note before I start whining, I have been having a blast lately. Maybe my corner of the world caught a knot of awesome roleplayers but yeah. Fun.

Next... I absolutely hate the new karma system. It seems like every pc is a hg, mul, or magicker. I get that people want to play the high karma races and classes because they are dope but if everyone is super special, no one is super special. If muls are a dime a dozen I don't feel nervous around them or thrilled to be involved with such radically dangerous characters and what I know are vetted, high-quality roleplayers. Unlike me.

Poison is trash. I have always hated it and recently it seems to be everywhere. Shit sandwich. I have never enjoyed a poison scene from either end of it. I don't know how to balance coded weakness against this issue but, for me, this ain't it at all.

Lizard folk have been consistently cool for flavor and quality but are obnoxiously and abruptly OP. Kill three quarters of them, hard cap the clan at a low number, get rid of the npcs.

Edited because my fingers are half frozen and typing is hard. :(

Quote from: WarriorPoet on January 24, 2023, 08:43:50 AM
Lizard folk have been consistently cool for flavor and quality but are obnoxiously and abruptly OP. Kill three quarters of them, hard cap the clan at a low number, get rid of the npcs.

I'm really optimistic about a 'third power' existing within the game world (let alone all the other factions and plots) as it's no longer just Tuluk VS Allanak and they have to be balanced in some manner because otherwise they would be one.

Now they can be unable to overexpose themselves etc etc. They could even pretend to be allies? Yeah...right....wait? what?

Badskeelz said it above "Arm is not a very good PVP  game and people need to stop thinking it is."

All these issues stated are problems revolving around something being too OP in the kill-or-be-killed world of PCs. Muls, HGs, and mages are awesome flavorwise. They stick out because they tend to kill people (whether defending themselves or being raiders). People then hate it and speak up.  How often do we hear the good things these races and classes have done? As a community,  we love to bring up what we hate and what sucks and why something is wrong. We've asked for a new race for years and finally got one.  Now they're a problem because they guerilla attacked another clan with God knows what happening to push them to do so.

I also don't agree with the karma timer change back. I don't want pcs just hiding until they're mega badasses. I want action and people will play far more freely with no timer. Have hardset limits to each race/role sure. But the time the way it was stunk for esg and race choices at 1 karma.

And the cities do feel very thin in population compared to what rumors say of the desert world. I don't know what killed the urge to play aide types, bards, or criminals but it's been a real thing feeling the lack of those. There are alot of things to speak about for sure in the player/staff meeting.

Quote from: tiny rainbow on January 24, 2023, 04:41:00 AM
I think we need an urgent roll of poisons to the previous state that was working for so many years. Just until all the other issues with combat can be properly looked at.

I'm not going to say it was a total mistake, I think it was well-intentioned to address some specific situations (those people that use poison but then don't capitalise on the roleplay opportunities they can add, but the same problem exists for strength and magic and nothing was addressed for these - poison was actually better in that a lot of the time it encouraged roleplay by not being such an instant death thing, instead of the situation now where people are guided towards playing characters that inflict maximum damage fast, which is of course nearly always entirely lethal).

It affected most elf characters (both city and desert) who relied on it so much. And then that was piled on with a change to weapon damage that made it even more, well, sharp, that the poisons were changed so drastically - changes like that aren't in a vacuum, they have a knock-on effect on so many things, and I don't think it's been for the better.

Poisons have been effectively removed from the game unless you have access to a PC whose entire concept is poison. Please change it back or keep working on it and remove the brew requirement which was introduced without adding brew to all the classes that relied on making poison and poisoning. In theory it encourages more PC interaction (guarding resources, finding, making, distributing, using) but in reality (from what I have seen interacting with typically poison-forward groups) it means poison is off limits to most of the game.

Quote from: HammerofJericho on January 24, 2023, 09:46:36 AM
I don't know what killed the urge to play aide types, bards, or criminals but it's been a real thing feeling the lack of those. There are alot of things to speak about for sure in the player/staff meeting.

Aides suffer from three things:

1) If you outlive your noble you are going to have a bad time. Not always true, but generally true.
2) If someone doesn't like your noble, you're going to have a bad time. Stop acting like you're invulnerable, you aren't.
3) If you don't do the seggs and someone's new aide does and desires to leapfrog your position, you're going to have a bad time.

Not to mention the catchall problems with full on cityfolk, if you get one bad apple in an interaction group it sucks the fun out of the role.

I think it's safe to say aides have some of the highest highs and some of the lowest lows.

I sympathize with the OP.   That said, I think this is an issue that would be better talked out with staff, than handled here. 

The long lived pcs I have seen die recently wouldnt have seen saved by less karma pcs or less poison.  I think they all died to good old fashioned politics.

I'd like to assert that any city vs city armed conflict is going to turn into rocket launcher tag.   Criminals and tribemen can go it it with shivs and slings.  Once you get organized militaries involved, we are on going to see 100+ day characters wield some might in a personal way.   Arm has always had a thin veneer over some very strong entrenched pcs, almost completely untouchable by the rest of the player base.  They havent all been karma pcs, either.

The current game dynamics is the natural fallout of some world building decisions:

a) Magickers are destroyed in Tuluk
b) Magickers are collared in Allanak
c) Magickers are "free" in certain wilderness areas
d) Muls are collared and restricted in Tuluk
e) Muls are collared and restricted in Allanak
f) Muls are "free" in certain wilderness areas.


Naturally, if a player wants to have agency in their play choices, they take their magicker or their mul to play areas that allow the players to have fun.
So, when you go to certain wilderness areas, you will see a lot of other characters that have migrated there because it's where their player gets enjoyment, because the rest of the game (and the rest of the /other players/) have prevented them from having fun.

Hi there.  I was one of the players that had my character wiped out due to the staff mistake that there was a public apology for.  Maybe you were also one of those players?  I don't know.

First, I'd just like to say that 1) staff reached out to me thoroughly to get feedback. Obviously there was an apology. I think current staff is genuinely interested in feedback which is why they left this thread up.  They put a roundabout solution in place.  It's far from perfect.  And, without going too into things my character was set up as antagonist that I think brought good conflict to the game and I was happy to see staff foster and support me on that and try to remedy the situation in a roundabout way. That being said I agree there were some things that failed some us.  We can only try to push forward on it.

2) Thanks for sharing your feedback.  I hope you won't leave the game and give it more tries.  I do feel the current staff is pivoting and learning from these situations all of the time.  I think the current plot is something they'll learn from.

3) I'd just like to say, despite being harmed unfairly (which staff apologized for) due to recent IG events I really, really don't want to discourage staff from running PVE events and plotlines.  I'm not gonna lie do I always think staff are running S tier plots?  No!  But do I appreciate them acting as game masters and stirring up a bunch of shit for us - I do!  And we know it helps the game.  We can see it in the numbers.

4) I think the failure that occurs is, as some have said, in the coded execution.  The game isn't set up for a fair take on mass combat much less individual combat.  It requires a lot of staff intervention to run smoothly, to even out odds, the loading of units etc.  The other thing it takes is...

5) Player trust.  It takes the players to not just spam combat and spam others to death.  Muls, magickers and HG are all karma trusted roles.  While they aren't sponsored roles they do have some level of responsibility for acknowledging OP situations, discussing them with staff and directing their underlings in proper RP.

As well, staff are in a bind because the feedback they've overwhelming received is -

We don't want to wait to use our karma
We want full magickers
We don't want the grind

I feel players are choosing these op races in part because it does help them subvert the grind my entering the game with some level of coded power.  I believe staff can balance this but it's going to take time.

Some suggestions I have -

Make mundane skills go up faster
Rework some of the main character guilds so that they're more synergistic
Reduce learning times on skills for incredibly physically powerful races
Take on more if a GM turn based kind of system for mass combat as needed
Give players more agency during large scale events
Staff don't be afraid to have a few PVE battles on behalf of the city state, let a crew of NPC characters get wreckt instead of people who have had their character a RL year

Obviously no one is going to agree more than me that there some failures here.  Some I can't talk about openly.  But staff knows that and they are trying to learn and I'd rather see them get involved than not at all.

Also as a heavy RP player I absolutely agree that things have taken a somewhat hack and slash turn and I would like staff to hold several IG factions much more accountable for RP related trade, diplomacy etc.

If a player were to see that the enemy outnumbered them 5-1 in heavy combat PCs and also outnumbered 2-1 in unit PCs. That PLAYER would be considered an imbecile if they attacked.  Then that is their reputation. Idiots who are 'overconfident', who fall into 'traps'.

Quote from: Dracul on January 24, 2023, 08:08:43 AM
Sorry you feel frustrated. I hope you can take a break and return as well as avoid the frustration you wrote about.

This is an RPI built on a hack and slash engine. It's always been this way, but gets better and worse from time to time. I hate the combat code in PVP. It's a huge challenge to balance gameplay vs emoting and all leveraged against typing speed and code delays.

I am going to double down and say I believe that extended death scenes would be the biggest improvement we could make to removing the frustrations of the beep. https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58887.0.html (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,58887.0.html) or any of the hundred other threads. ANY way to extend a death scene beyond a beep or a your visions goes black...beep...would do far more for player contentment than ANY other code change, tweak, or adjustment.

The IC example brought up (some details should be viable to discuss here as it was posted as a rumor) the confident Tulukis rolled out with some untrained conscript, some half giants, and a templar who (OOC translate to IC?) was unprepared and caught of guard. They were run down and slaughtered by the mutant martial race no one has fought before. Are they worth 2-3 humans? Are the actually stronger than half giants and faster than muls because defilers haven't sucked the life out of them and the land they lived on?
-Why was it an IMM mistake? Did it suck for the players who died? Was it IC? Did they see any emotes, shouts, or imm echos?
-Would it have been better if they got to see a full scene? If that scene was basically the above, but lasted longer.

I'm going to address this and staff can delete this if they want to, but I think if I don't speculation will perisist.  I'm going to go over coded things since there's already been things posted on the boards and people know something happened.

The PCs involved OOC and IC did not want to walk into the situation given.  They were forced by a staff animated leader.

The PCs involved were given literally under five RL min before being forced to engage.  AKA no time to prepare.

PCs were not given proper info on what they were being forced to walk into.

Staff loaded imbalanced NPC units that in addition to everything else tilted the scenario into unwinnable odds for the already under prepared and unwilling PCs.

Staff had a communication break down behind the scenes. The result?  Some long lived PCs walked into a situation they didn't want to, that they weren't prepared for and it was so slanted that staff had no time to even properly represent the city state presence and a coded slaughter occured.

It happens.  It completely sucks.  Staff has apologized and taken accountability.  Our characters aren't coming back.  It opens a lot of dialogue around this and I'm here for it.  I genuinely hope it can make the game better.  Mistakes happen.  I respect how staff handled things post mistake.

I hope we can all discuss how we can make the game better.

I want to clear up misconceptions because incorrect assumptions by players lead to rumors, rumors lead to people believing them as fact, which leads to everyone assuming it's the meta.

QuoteThe recent war looked like a bone that was thrown into the game without any sort of build-up for flavor

It definitely did have build-up, perhaps you just didn't see it?



In regards to the new thryzn race:

QuoteTo add insult to injury, these new things are again, immensely powerful

Not at all.  They are nearly identical to humans, and start with the same skills and classes as anyone else, with some restrictions on things they cannot play due to culture.  You may have met individuals who rolled good stats, or has been alive for a long time and grown powerful as an individual.

QuoteThere's little time to process lizard people from an IC or OOC way when they are given an NPC army, in addition to their large player count.

There are at least 4 other groups right now who have larger player counts.
I'm not sure how much time is appropriate to 'process' and realize they're part of the game, but they've been in game for about 11 months.  Thought admittedly, much of that only some groups have seen them, so maybe you just haven't run across them?

QuoteIt does seem a bit jarring that the new faction seems to have ended up in a sort of situation that reminds in a few ways of the bad stories people have posted of the times of the Tan Muark,

They are isolated, yes, but they are nothing like and having nothing like the TM of Ye Olde Days.  No waterslides!


On other topics:

QuoteI really don't want to see people not playing elves

Agreed, and that certainly is not the intention.  That said, there is no shortage at all of people playing elves, particularly desert elves.

I think what would help solve this is hard caps on certain races/classes/Magick subclasses.

We already do it with Sorcerers and Psionicists, both of which CAN be pretty powerful (let's be honest? That's mostly sorcerers). Still, they are also meant to above all be RARE. This limit accomplishes rarity.

As well, there should be caps on Gemmed, caps on non-Gemmed. Caps on types of elements even. Sorry, ELKROSIANS aren't available in either aspect. Is there another magicker you want to try?

Same with karma restricted races. Make it a cap of 2 or 3 for each. Make them more rare.

Add a caveat that someone can always Special Apply for a role that is full. Staff can then decide if the game can take another Voldemort. If it can't, and they like the concept, they waitlist them and let them know when it is appropriate.

Alongside this — It really depends what we want out of the game. The sentiment that is most true is "If I could play a mildly skilled PC out of the gates, I would be more risky or realistic in playing my PC". That's not good. People should be playing to the hilt regardless of the grind. BUT — it gets tricky when you know your chances of surviving a Combat RPT or even PvP is limited at best, and rigged from the start at worst.

Then it doesn't feel good to engage with those aspects of the game. Which leads to insulation. And safe play.

We either need to make it super easy to jump into new roles and concepts that can handle themselves Day 0, or we will have more and more safe playing, less and less hardcore RP and risk taking, and vanilla plots.

This will be long and I have two man points. Also on my phone so sorry in advance if I typo.
One concerning rp and the other the combat system.

I don't normally weigh in much anymore but this isn't about race or class. Every now again there is a combat and beloved pc's die. In war situation often times it feels like a slaughter you had no way out of. I have been on both sides of that many times in 20ish years I have been playing. The way Armageddon's combat system is set up kinda forces you to hit hard and fast so the person you're attacking dies because if you don't "the way" is gonna get you. When you rp in a death scene often the other person flees. I have been both ends of this too. It makes nearly all deaths more about ambush and surprising the other player in my humble opinion. And that is JARRING in a game focusing on heavy RP.

I recently lost a pc I adored while in the process of storage and I felt horribly cheated. What's worse is I attempted to RP instead of just running and was unaware a code issue in the area I just happen to be in wasn't going send in the calvery like it likely should had the AI acted like real security would have. Furthermore it felt out of the blue I had no idea why this person attacked. I was really gutted by this death and I thought about taking a long break... but then something amazing happened. I got a huge outreach from staff with wonderful kuddos about the profound impact my pc had made on the game.

I never got to see any of it but I know my character was mourned deeply and by many. Her death was NOT how I wanted to shelf her but ended up being a like a greek tragedy that made her story better. I am still upset my death had zero rp to it but I learned there are so many, many things we just don't get to see that happens in the orbit of our PC's lives that make for these complex and beautiful stories.

I am sorry to hear about your experience Tranquil but I wouldn't chalk it up to lack of good rp. There are amazing things going on in the game world right now. Any PC with enough time and the luck of draw of AI stats is gonna look broken as fuck to any player that spends most of their in game time rping. That has nothing to do with class and race. Also just FYI the the Thryzn are NOT OP. I suggest playing one before you make a judgement.
 
Combat:
Now to the elephant in the room..instead of pointing out the flaws we know are there. I am going talk about a system I saw in another mud that I fucking loved. The Mud was absolutely garage but their combat was the coolest I have ever seen. Even if we just had this for big scenes it would be so much better. I also feel more inline with our HEAVY on ROLEPLAY focus.

So in this game they really tried to simulate grid based combat. When combat started in the typical fashion a grid would pop up. The grid had x,y,z coordinate. The size of the grid was assigned to the room tile (i think). Outdoor rooms were pretty big like football fields. Indoor spaces were closed quarters. Where you were on the field depended on the direction from which you entered. So if I walked in from the east and someone tailing me came in behind me to backstab me with a knife we would both be next to each other on the grid. If he shot me with arrow he would be at base range for that bow behind me. If I was coming from one east and the other guy the west we would be at opposite ends of the map. If I had been in that room for a while I would end up middle map. There was initiative order  based on speed, class skills and any boost you got to speed from race. It made agility matter. It made being mounted matter a lot. The person that started the combat would obviously go first. You had a 12 second turn in which you could move or attack both if you had the right skills. If you didn't take your turn in 12 seconds it went to the next player. The game had skills that you learn to get more movement in combat or have a better chance to flee. Fighter types had a charge ability to cover more ground to close. If you got to the edge of the map you could flee out unless someone was in your face then they had a chance to stop.

This was AMAZING in big combat even though it slowed shit down. It let good planning rule the day. You could emote and shout twice a round too. That let pc leaders make real troop movements in mob combats.

Each players in the combat had an assigned number.  Guys attacking you were red. Yellow was players that hadn't acted against anyone (like bystanders) green was anyone defending you. At any time you punch the combat code to pull up InT order and the combat map. The number assigned to the combatants was next to their l desc in order of Int.

Backstab still hurt like a bitch and they had a buggy thing where you could try to hide in combat if you weren't in direct melee but it never seemed to work properly.

It let mounts matter, archers had to think a lot about whether to move or try and get off one last shot before the fighter was in your face. It was amazing.

Flaws? Combat was slow in big fights and it got weird if someone walked in late. They could join but it felt a little unfair when that happened because of the time for them to get to the combat vs time it took to get through a few round of combat was wonky. You have 10 players in a combat it took 120 seconds to get through a round. But I never felt like I got the rug pulled out from under me or I was punished for being afk.

Death didn't feel like a sudden shock. If my hp was low I could say some last words and that helps give players a fraction of closure. The person attacking me could emote standing over me and saying some evil one liners. It just made combat better and more fun to be in. Because you got 2 dialog/emote a round and it wasn't connect to your 12s turn you had time to say stuff without it being a jumble of typos.

Also because of the grid people didn't dog pile one player. They tended to end up fighting in a more realistic looking way. Flanking came into play. It was so cool I wish I code

p.s. I really agree with comments that the *beep* death is a big part of why players take death hard. Closure matters.

PPS if we ever did move to a grid combat system range on bows and spells would be so much more immersive. You could add combat manuvers like lassoing, harpooning and grappling hooks to leverage against flying combatants. It would make combat more about tactiics, gear, and creative thinking. It would also give you time to try and just surrender and see how that played out.

To OP, I do not know which era you are comparing the current one with, but it feels almost opposite to me. Back in 2000's, amount of hack & slash, mindless PK'ing, supernatural ridiculousness, etc. was 2-3 times higher than it is currently.

make threaten a skill everyone starts with at master

you shouldn't need a specific skill set to not be at a disvantage when trying to rp antgaonism

Quote from: Lutagar on January 24, 2023, 02:44:17 PM
make threaten a skill everyone starts with at master

you shouldn't need a specific skill set to not be at a disvantage when trying to rp antgaonism

I would not say master, per se. But quite a few classes get it to a point where you can make it pretty serious.

I would be fine with and maybe even love a cap on certain types in game like we do with specs but I am also not a big magick or mul player.  But I'd be down.

The PK seems way lower than back in the day, and the willingness to roleplay higher. I definately do not want a rollback of poisons though. I usually play assassin type pcs and from what I have seen of the poison it is less guaranteed one hit kill but still very dangerous. And more interesting.

Quote from: Halaster on January 24, 2023, 12:40:48 PM
-snip-

Don't want to really argue or go into it too much on here anymore, but I never meant that the thryzn are race-coded powerful, but rather that they have gotten alot of favoritism, and alot of players. For example, any other tribe or clan that's been tried to start up in a similar way was shut down or otherwise turned into a flop. A tribe having more then 5 PCs would get something animated on them to thin them out, especially if they're magickers.

The Thryzn are allowed to have 10+ PCs, along with another clan side-by-side with them having 10+ PCs.

From what I can tell, the Thryzn have ready access to any material they might want, barring some small things to 'balance' them, and they have access to a special part of the gameworld that a large majority of players don't know about or know how to get to. It's hard to get there, even if you do. This means they're allowed to mess around in there, store anything they want without risk, spar every hour, and so on. Basically another city, if lacking the templars.

They are also not bound to cultural or racial dislikes like every other 'large' clan is. Even a desert-elf tribe has alot of dislikes towards magickers, muls, HGs. A thryzn has no hate towards a free mul, or an HG compared to an average Allanaki. And yet, the Thryzn Tribes still have access to city-tier amounts of virtual and IG force. Hence their inate power.

My main complaint is not even the Thryzn being powerful, it's mainly just the massive proliferation of things that are meant to be rare or sparse in the world, becoming the majority, or the mainly-seen minority. Combining this with the new lizard-people race only makes the game's setting seem completely insanely different to what it was before. And hence, all my immersion being lost.

I would stop trying to make the special 'Armageddon Race', and start trying to improve what's truly Armageddon about.. well, Armageddon.

Also worth mentioning that it's very easy to have a skewed perspective as a staffer. As a person who's played in the cities and tribes for the last 11 months, I have seen a Thryzn or mention of a Thryzn only under 5 times.

You need to be in a very specific sphere to hear, see them, or process their existence as a new 'thing' in Arm. Seeing them come out with a force to supposedly match Allanak out of nowhere was extremely jarring.

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
The Thryzn are allowed to have 10+ PCs, along with another clan side-by-side with them having 10+ PCs.

Nope.  They are limited the same as other tribes of around 6.

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
From what I can tell, the Thryzn have ready access to any material they might want, barring some small things to 'balance' them,

Not any more than any delf tribe.  And that's the issue:  "from what I can tell".  You're doing what a lot of people are doing and making assumptions based on limited facts.  I don't mean to blame you or call you out, it's human nature to do that as pattern seekers.  But it's so very often incorrect.

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
I would stop trying to make the special 'Armageddon Race', and start trying to improve what's truly Armageddon about.. well, Armageddon.

That's a nice thing to say and I don't mean to sound rude, but is a completely meaningless statement.  That's like saying "Hey, this thing is broken, fix it!".  One, it doesn't really tell me the problem and two, you're just expecting someone else to come up with solutions for you.  In other words, I'd be more inclined to listen to specific problems, with specific suggestions, than "make it more like Armageddon!".  I mean, in truth, I've been around this game since 93, and the thryzn have existed (albeit in most obscurity) since about 95.  They are absolutely one of the things that makes Armageddon what it is.

I don't know enough about the lizard people to say what they need or don't other than it seems odd to me that they don't -seem- subject to any sort of racial antipathy.

The karma timer being abolished was both a good and a bad thing. It brought people back who had been waiting between playing what they wanted but now the proliferation of high powered races and classes has become fairly ridiculous. Hard cap them. Also, while the muls I have run into have largely been RPed well and by the docs, HGs are usually not anywhere near the docs. Besides a hard cap, they likely also need some kind of serious disadvantages like muls have - and coded at that. The existing ones they have are easily circumvented, either they need to be fixed or need more along with a hard cap. Anything that can one shot another player with no RP should be seriously controlled.

Same with gicks. Make a hard cap. It's kind of weird to find out every Amos you talk to at the bar is a secret gick. At this point I'm thinking a secret handshake to the society of rogue gicks is in order.

Poison...the changes are a headache. Finding someone with poison AND brew who can make a poison that doesn't suck now AND will sell it to you has reached a quest for the Holy Grail level proportions. While I agree it should be difficult, it's gotten to be exasperating.

Just my two sids.

Quote from: Halaster on January 24, 2023, 04:44:27 PM

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
The Thryzn are allowed to have 10+ PCs, along with another clan side-by-side with them having 10+ PCs.

Nope.  They are limited the same as other tribes of around 6.

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
From what I can tell, the Thryzn have ready access to any material they might want, barring some small things to 'balance' them,

Not any more than any delf tribe.  And that's the issue:  "from what I can tell".  You're doing what a lot of people are doing and making assumptions based on limited facts.  I don't mean to blame you or call you out, it's human nature to do that as pattern seekers.  But it's so very often incorrect.

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
I would stop trying to make the special 'Armageddon Race', and start trying to improve what's truly Armageddon about.. well, Armageddon.

That's a nice thing to say and I don't mean to sound rude, but is a completely meaningless statement.  That's like saying "Hey, this thing is broken, fix it!".  One, it doesn't really tell me the problem and two, you're just expecting someone else to come up with solutions for you.  In other words, I'd be more inclined to listen to specific problems, with specific suggestions, than "make it more like Armageddon!".  I mean, in truth, I've been around this game since 93, and the thryzn have existed (albeit in most obscurity) since about 95.  They are absolutely one of the things that makes Armageddon what it is.

The first two points are probably right; I'm not a staffer, just a player. I'm just extrapolating from recent events and what I have indeed seen myself over the last while. That's the impression I got.

As for the third point.. what I meant by it is to put more attention what makes Armageddon uniquely Armageddon. When I think of the mud and try to explain it to someone new in a summary, I don't talk about the lizard people and the half-giant peace commune, I talk about the cities and the cool backstabbing plots done between that noble and the other noble over elaborate revenge storylines. I talk about the Allanak - Tuluk conflict and the Copper War/the war before this one, not some other third faction coming in out of nowhere on a brand spanking new war that was only publicly announced 5 days before it ended, and them promptly wrecking both sides without elaboration. I talk about the Byn's escapades, and not how they were neutered to be this neutral wagon-courier service, and so on.

And yes, the Thryzn were a thing for a long time, but they were just some small flavor in a really isolated place, and maybe a subtle old-Tuluk plot here and there.

My point is that the staff should focus on the core part of Armageddon, instead of trying to blindly expand outwards to create new races and tribes that ultimately only please the people playing in the new races and tribes. The core of Armageddon is what brought us all here to play the game - and I think it's been heavily neglected. Try to focus more on the cities and the areas directly surrounding them, instead of the isolated corners of the world.

My two sids.

Quote from: tiny rainbow on January 24, 2023, 04:41:00 AM
It does seem a bit jarring that the new faction seems to have ended up in a sort of situation that reminds in a few ways of the bad stories people have posted of the times of the Tan Muark, I was thinking its just like a running joke and we can all laugh about it, and that lessons were learned, but... Maybe not? ;)

There have been three or four Thryzn that have died just in their home turf to NPCs.  Outside of the specific natural resources they have, it is fairly easy to tune what they have available through NPCs which is fairly limited, but for Tan Muark was basically "everything".  So yeah, lessons were learned.

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 05:20:05 PM

Quote from: Halaster on January 24, 2023, 04:44:27 PM

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:29:05 PM
The Thryzn (yaddayadda)

The first two points aren't probably anything --- they're confirmable and verifiable facts. 

I'm honestly uncertain how you mean we should focus on the Core of Armageddon.  The Core of Armageddon is just fine--- those cities still exist, and in fact, are being expanded on as we speak.  New features, new places, new things have been added to both cities (both due to player clan additions, which is an assumed natural fact, but also due to player effort outside of pclans as well as staff saying "Well wait, these people don't have this, and it makes sense for them to, lets add it") and are readily available to new and old players.

Can you expand on this?  What do you mean precisely by we should focus on the Core of Armageddon, and most importantly, how have we actually worked to damage this by adding things that Exploration style players might really enjoy?

Quote from: Tranquil on January 24, 2023, 04:38:24 PM
Also worth mentioning that it's very easy to have a skewed perspective as a staffer. As a person who's played in the cities and tribes for the last 11 months, I have seen a Thryzn or mention of a Thryzn only under 5 times.

You need to be in a very specific sphere to hear, see them, or process their existence as a new 'thing' in Arm. Seeing them come out with a force to supposedly match Allanak out of nowhere was extremely jarring.

It's also very easy to have a skewed perspective as a player as you literally can't see all the facts.  Yes, this may have been jarring, but to those in game who know why and how it happened it made complete sense.

The problem isn't the new stuff getting added, I think it's all various flavors of fine.

The problem is that player-player conflict is a complete shit show and always has been. This is a problem that's barely acknowledged by players and staff while mature players that don't want any part of the toxic garbage dump that is armageddon pvp will just wither away.

I will say that the cities are pretty moribund, especially when you put them in direct competition with literally anyone. I certainly wouldn't want to be playing a soldier PC in a clan of 3 when my chief opponents are a dozen-plus karma boosted roles, on top of the usual opposition of criminals and super-rogues.

Though as a flipside to that, it's also very hard to compete with certain city roles unless they step (or are forced) outside their crimcode-shielded comfort zone.

PVP is a shitshow.

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 06:40:53 PM
The problem isn't the new stuff getting added, I think it's all various flavors of fine.

The problem is that player-player conflict is a complete shit show and always has been. This is a problem that's barely acknowledged by players and staff while mature players that don't want any part of the toxic garbage dump that is armageddon pvp will just wither away.

This is another meaningless comment without actual suggestions and pointing out -what- you think is wrong.  "PvP is a shit show" does nothing to help staff understand what you think the issue is.  If you genuinely want it to change, then explain the issue and even offer suggestions for fixes if you have any.

I really think we have this exact same conversation every time there is a big combat and one side gets wiped.  It's just the nature of the way combat works on Arm. I know it's hard to try and be objective when you're on the losing side or when you don't understand why things may have turned out like you want but this current group of staff is, in my opinion, one of the best groups of ST's up to admin and producers we have ever had. They are tremendously fair and have been trying very hard to be as open and honest with the player base. They see a lot we will never be aware of. Maybe just trust them to run the game without bias?  Maybe ask if you think the situation was unfair or
If you're hurt because it wasn't the victory you were hoping for?

I for one think most of my big feelings with the deaths that bothered me come from the combat system just not being good at facilitating rp.. but I posted about that already. It's okay to take a break too, if you need one. Also remember some players enjoy tribal play more than city play.  Their enjoyment is just as valuable as yours. Their goals for their characters matter to them as much as yours do to you. Playing nobles, or GMH leaders, or Templar don't make your objectives  more important than other groups even if your PC might feel they are indeed more important than everyone else. That doesn't extend to the player on the other side of the computer screen.

Quote from: Halaster on January 24, 2023, 07:17:02 PM

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 06:40:53 PM
The problem isn't the new stuff getting added, I think it's all various flavors of fine.

The problem is that player-player conflict is a complete shit show and always has been. This is a problem that's barely acknowledged by players and staff while mature players that don't want any part of the toxic garbage dump that is armageddon pvp will just wither away.

This is another meaningless comment without actual suggestions and pointing out -what- you think is wrong.  "PvP is a shit show" does nothing to help staff understand what you think the issue is.  If you genuinely want it to change, then explain the issue and even offer suggestions for fixes if you have any.

I'm not talking about any recent events or RPT happenings or whatever. Large scale RPT combat is a different sort of shit show.

To put it succinctly I think there is a cultural problem among players and staff where low-faith, low-effort player killings are rewarded with little care or attention given to players who engaged their role in good faith and who keep losing because of it.

A bit of the game dies every time I witness a locked room murder, a myopic templar just offs someone for some inexplicable reason, someone getting hands of winded into a pit or just plain getting ganked while semi afk and foraging.

This culture leads to a number of problems including:

1. Player passivity for fear of getting murdered the moment they switch lanes.
2. Low interactivity among players outside of their cliques.
3. Skill grinding and fishing for crazy stat rolls to absurd degrees.
4. PvP tricks that defy any sense of realism such as ye olde shitmug.
5. Me screaming into an uncaring void about this issue for 10+ years.

Bast; Not necessarily true. The 'Battle of Ten Serak' where like 30 PCs died, people were SCREAMING FOR JOY and happy they died, for the most part. It was that fun, and that crazy.

I don't know anything about this most recent IC Stuff. My guess is based on Staff Apology and what went down, it was a bit rigged from the start, Staff communication breakdown and some PCs walked into a death trap, people were upset by that (probably rightfully so) and now there is some biased discussion.

As an outsider looking in and knowing nothing of what happened, I can definitely say Mass Combat RPTs are pretty bonkers, the game isn't really designed to handle them well, and it's been an ongoing issue for as long as I can remember. It's hard to navigate people being able to do things like 'kill templar' in a war-field, and all gang up on one target, unit NPCs, combat spam, and so on.

I wouldn't say PvP is a shit-show. It's a text-based game. There's only so much elegance we can expect. But I am sure combat/PvP/PvE can be improved, it's just a matter of considering options, coding what makes sense, etc. I don't think it's helpful to just say 'it sucks it broken bye'.

Combat and even mass combat is reasonable, at the minimum, when there aren't massive strength PCs around.

My main complaint was never the Thryzn as the thread kinda derailed into, though I do have minor complaints there as I've said, but the large amounts of karma races and subguilds around which makes playing a Mundane make you feel like a chump.

Unfortunately I've been very fed up playing a chump, as I don't enjoy karma races/subguilds very much.

But to continue with the derail..

Quote from: Shalooonsh on January 24, 2023, 05:46:04 PM
I'm honestly uncertain how you mean we should focus on the Core of Armageddon.  The Core of Armageddon is just fine--- those cities still exist, and in fact, are being expanded on as we speak.  New features, new places, new things have been added to both cities (both due to player clan additions, which is an assumed natural fact, but also due to player effort outside of pclans as well as staff saying "Well wait, these people don't have this, and it makes sense for them to, lets add it") and are readily available to new and old players.

Can you expand on this?  What do you mean precisely by we should focus on the Core of Armageddon, and most importantly, how have we actually worked to damage this by adding things that Exploration style players might really enjoy?

I think BadSkeelz put it best. The cities are the 'main' part of Armageddon, and if you're in a city you're constantly getting shit on. Now, that's a right and proper theme, but I mean, even the Templars get shat on. There's a reason why so many players prefer tribal play nowadays, because city play has become genuinely unpleasurable. Simply adding 'new things' doesn't mean they're getting fixed. A player clan is often not very complex past a simple hunting company. It's what I was saying earlier -- slapping new things onto something that is rotten from the inside won't fix anything, it'll just make the problem more complex and seem 'active' in the short-term. When in reality, it's just not fun.

If you are keen on knowing what I would change regarding that, here's a small summary:

I would probably start with the mainstay clans such as the AoD/Legion, or the Byn. That's usually where the bulk of players often are, and barring this recent war that ended in a week, you usually have absolutely nothing to do unless you are incredibly creative or satisfied with the smallest bits of mundane solo-rp. Prioritize animating things for them, give them freedom to do more things on their own, create coded things to occupy them. For one example: the Templarate/AoD used to have a small mission they could do that would add flavor to their patrols. This being, escorting 'groups of slaves' from one point to another. This is removed now, for reasons I don't know.

The Byn (the gritty mercenary clan) have suffered most from being neutered. The last time I played a Byn character, 90% of the contracts were escorting a wagon back and forth. When the Sergeant wanted to do anything outside of these mundane patrols and escorts, they would get slapped by 'the Brass' and told to keep to the neutral, boring contracts instead of daring to side with anything as gritty mercenaries tend to do.

I would also consider removing the limits on everything mundane and in the city. Let a noble hire fifty servants (if they can somehow find fifty servants), let them hire into their sub-clans like the Scorpions, let the Templars promote and demote the soldiers, stop putting a boot on every GMH Merchant's throat, and so on. Giving leaders freedom instead of rail-roading them into every decision will create more unique plots and interactions that will shake up city play. I guarantee, the Templars would be too occupied to harass random people for little reason.

Finally, I would give city clans more advantages over desert clans. One has been already implemented with the NPC trainers, great, but they should be allowed to take out some limited NPCs (especially the Templars), perhaps consider giving city clans special abilities or skills, and so on. Let the desert people have their own quirks and boons, instead of being undeniably better in every way.

Quote from: Yelinak on January 24, 2023, 04:49:11 AM
It feels a lot like being a schemer and influential character is not enough on its own. At the very least, you need the help of someone who has done the above--unless, of course, you're a templar or a soldier with authority to arrest. And then you're still limited to targets who are in the city (an ever-dwindling flock, it seems) and who you can justify arresting. Nobles seem like they might as well not even exist, having practically no presence or noticeable influence on anything, so political measures are usually futile. You or someone doing your bidding needs to check one of the aforementioned boxes in order to get anything done. You can't Little Finger your way into anything on your own. People will simply detect that you have no tangible clout.

I feel for some of the ails people are describing, but I just cannot let this sit without saying, this... the above quoted, is just utterly false from top the bottom.

Broad, sweeping, wide-ranging impacts are being made by politics, schemers, and schemes. It's creating roleplay, conflict, and situations across literally the entire world and its playerbase if you're interacting with almost anyone.

Some people aren't seeing what strings are being pulled because that's the nature of these things, but  you're seeing the results. You just don't know they're the results.

You Don't Have All the Facts(tm).

Quote from: Bast on January 24, 2023, 07:21:30 PM
Stuff

I think this kind of invalidates that what happened IG recently with this clan warranted a staff apology.  Also a new clan that was on the cusp of being wiped out being given an npc military force to rival a city-state that has the largest army is more than questionable. 

What happened was a failure on a few levels and in order to fix that from happening again we have to engage with what the problems were slash are.

These aren't just big feelings from losing established PCs.  It's a lot more than that and deserves a serious look.  Reducing it to hurt feelings is a touch condescending.  There's a reason there was a staff apology.  Ignoring that and sti excusing it away as fine isn't fine.

Let's be real an in game war should not be over in under thirty seconds.  Among the other issues I posted before.  This warrants a serious look at many angles.

And some of the people complaining here weren't even in "that" engagement.  I'm not interested in pointing fingers but just dismissing clear issues isn't going to fix um.

Quote from: Bebop on January 24, 2023, 08:09:14 PM
Let's be real an in game war should not be over in under thirty seconds.  This warrants a serious look at many angles.

And some of the people complaining here weren't even in "that" engagement.

I can confirm. I have not been involved in that at all.

Infact, I've been getting fed up about all this since before this war even came. The "war" was really just insult to injury.

I think players whining about the outcome of RPT's is about as Armageddon as gith.

As is conversations spiraling in to saltiness and "too soon" territory and forcing a thread lockage. There's a lot I can say about recent events and how they've highlighted some problems I've observed with the game, but give some of us some time to articulate our response to Halaster for why we think PVP is a shitshow and what we might be able to suggest to change it.

I sure was expecting the war to drag on like he last war when Tuluk reopened. That was a big ol' war. But what happened (apart from the one mistake) including the de-escalation was all player driven and I kudos imms for allowing players to do things.

I know the larger side in that skirmish was expecting their opponents to be NPCs and there must have been a genuine human error somewhere. If you weren't there you need to stop commenting on it. People make mistakes.

Even the mistake was probably for the best, since it removed some big impediments to player interaction (not the least of which was the war itself).

Quote from: Bebop on January 24, 2023, 08:09:14 PM

Quote from: Bast on January 24, 2023, 07:21:30 PM
Stuff

And some of the people complaining here weren't even in "that" engagement.  I'm not interested in pointing fingers but just dismissing clear issues isn't going to fix um.

Exactly. I wasn't anywhere near it but as facts started to leak out about it it broke the dam that had been holding back a number of issues recently festering in my mind.

Quote from: Inks on January 24, 2023, 08:24:20 PM
I sure was expecting the war to drag on like he last war when Tuluk reopened. That was a big ol' war. But what happened (apart from the one mistake) including the de-escalation was all player driven and I kudos imms for allowing players to do things.

I know the larger side in that skirmish was expecting their opponents to be NPCs and there must have been a genuine human error somewhere. If you weren't there you need to stop commenting on it. People make mistakes.

I was going to say similar. Staff admitted to making some mistakes in communication. Both sides thought they were fighting NPCs.

There was an apology about the whole thing. I know I'M not dismissing anything, but it was noted that there was a mistake made, and concessions offered.

PVP is shit because of some group-dynamic issues, and a prevalence for "three karma characters" not knowing as much about the code and combat of Arm as 1k people.

Quote from: Halaster on January 24, 2023, 07:17:02 PM

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 06:40:53 PM
The problem isn't the new stuff getting added, I think it's all various flavors of fine.

The problem is that player-player conflict is a complete shit show and always has been. This is a problem that's barely acknowledged by players and staff while mature players that don't want any part of the toxic garbage dump that is armageddon pvp will just wither away.

This is another meaningless comment without actual suggestions and pointing out -what- you think is wrong.  "PvP is a shit show" does nothing to help staff understand what you think the issue is.  If you genuinely want it to change, then explain the issue and even offer suggestions for fixes if you have any.

The principle problem with Armageddon PVP is that advantages in it derive overwhelmingly from two sources: character generation and grinding. Most of the simple code advantages that make it easier to Kill a PC - ability scores, skills and the values of them, magick, crimcode access - are determined by what we choose at character generation. Some of them can be accessed via skill grinding, which requires time and metaknowledge to properly leverage, both of which are out of the reach of many players. The end result of either are PCs that are largely untouchable on their favored terrains, unless they run in to someone who happened to roll better or grind harder or is just a bit less scrupulous with the code than them.

Engaging in PVP without one of the above advantages is tantamount to suicide. People who want to be antagonists know this, and typically fall back on punching down at player characters with even less advantages than them. PCs who don't even want to do that have little recourse but to engage in avoidance tactics and wait for the advantage to die or store from boredom. This drives down player interaction and eventually makes the gameworld a state patchwork of PVP fiefs.

I think one potential solution is to smooth out the advantages available to PCs. Raise the floor of ability scores, so that everyone feels sturdy enough to maybe survive and flee a couple of hits. Reduce the "onboarding" time of new characters, so that the sting of losing them is lessened by their replaceability. Reduce the number of mechanically advantaged roles both magickal and racial, or reduce their mechanical advantage over baseline mundane (human and elven) characters.

Seriously reconsider the role and value-add of Templars to the game. I've been skeptical of them for a long time, and am increasingly convinced that Templars and the power they wield over their particular turfs and the PCs in them have been detrimental to player engagement in the traditional hubs. They might as well be Staff PCs for all the handholding and supervision a good Templar requires. They should be more readily killable, particularly when we get a hamfisted badly played one (as most of them have been for the last decade or so).

The same can be said for Sorcerers in the hands of players. Any role that can virtually guarantee PC death within a 1 room radius is not one I would trust to players, even if players are a little more vulnerable than staff avatars because they can be found AFK more often.

Maybe look in to how many characters can engage with a given target at a time, and whether some characters should be better or worse at defending against multiple opponents.

After everyone has been buffed or nerfed, remove crimcode. Raise the stakes of sponsored roles making enemies in the game world and make city guard roles valuable and necessary. Make it so that even staff avatars have to be worried about starting a fight, because anyone can be killed anywhere by anyone.

Rework the world into a level-field death match arena where strength comes more from who you know and where you are (And you are not invulnerable in any one place), rather than what code you know and how long you've ground away at it.

And all this said, I still don't know if I'd be satisfied with Armageddon as a PVP game. If I want to sword fight or wargame, there are much more satisfying venues. I killed at least twenty PCs on my first character. I've seen what hamfisted Templars or Raiders or Tribes can do to tank an area's playability and interaction opportunities. These days I'd rather work with players towards some shared goal that wasn't showing off how high or skills and stats were at the expense of another's time.

Crimcode as it is is make pc guards neccesary. But the role needs to be more appealing. Make those roles 10 year tours of duty instead of lifesworn, like a toned down roman legionary. Then they can re-join with a much higher pay if they so choose, if they live through that 10 years.

Quote from: Inks on January 24, 2023, 09:41:15 PM
Crimcode as it is is make pc guards neccesary. But the role needs to be more appealing. Make those roles 10 year tours of duty instead of lifesworn, like a toned down roman legionary. Then they can re-join with a much higher pay if they so choose, if they live through that 10 years.

The legionnaire documents already implemented something similar

The changes to the military clans would make my old PCs roll over in their spider-infested graves, but they are definitely good ones for playability... doesn't change the fact that ten years is basically a PC life sentence (equal to what, 1.5 RL years?) nor help you be at any less disadvantage than most other serious combat roles.

The real fun of the military clans is in PVE dungeon-crawls, monster fights, and city-based RPTs. That's about all you can hope to succeed at as a mundane combat character.

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 07:40:17 PM
Something something, culture problems:

1. Player passivity for fear of getting murdered the moment they switch lanes.
2. Low interactivity among players outside of their cliques.
3. Skill grinding and fishing for crazy stat rolls to absurd degrees.
4. PvP tricks that defy any sense of realism such as ye olde shitmug.
5. Me screaming into an uncaring void about this issue for 10+ years.

To be cleaaaar: player passivity and only playing within their own cliques is sort of a player problem and exists everywhere, everywhere there is roleplay. If a player is the kind to be risk-averse and cliqueish, I'm not sure there's a game state that's ever going to solve it!

Some people want to mostly play and exist in a very grounded comfort zone. Others enjoy the unknown, the risk, the feeling of exploring the unknown - even if that means danger and a risk of betrayal.

Nothing about the culture here uniquely creates that.

Quote from: Windstorm on January 24, 2023, 10:15:17 PM

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 07:40:17 PM
Something something, culture problems:

1. Player passivity for fear of getting murdered the moment they switch lanes.
2. Low interactivity among players outside of their cliques.
3. Skill grinding and fishing for crazy stat rolls to absurd degrees.
4. PvP tricks that defy any sense of realism such as ye olde shitmug.
5. Me screaming into an uncaring void about this issue for 10+ years.

To be cleaaaar: player passivity and only playing within their own cliques is sort of a player problem and exists everywhere, everywhere there is roleplay. If a player is the kind to be risk-averse and cliqueish, I'm not sure there's a game state that's ever going to solve it!

Some people want to mostly play and exist in a very grounded comfort zone. Others enjoy the unknown, the risk, the feeling of exploring the unknown - even if that means danger and a risk of betrayal.

Nothing about the culture here uniquely creates that.

Speaking for my own experience, all of the above is true. I can plainly state that as my trust in the playerbase diminished, I began to avoid other players, I began to seek skill gain to be less vulnarable, I focused on my ooc friends clique because they weren't gonna backroom me over something stupid etc.

I know I'm not speaking just for myself.

Quote from: Bebop on January 24, 2023, 08:09:14 PM

Quote from: Bast on January 24, 2023, 07:21:30 PM
Stuff

Let's be real an in game war should not be over in under thirty seconds.  Among the other issues I posted before.  This warrants a serious look at many angles.

Oh I agree, Did you read my first post in the thread I know it was long? Also genuinely not trying to sound condescending I know text doesn't aways convey intent well.

Quote from: Windstorm on January 24, 2023, 07:53:21 PM

Quote from: Yelinak on January 24, 2023, 04:49:11 AM
It feels a lot like being a schemer and influential character is not enough on its own. At the very least, you need the help of someone who has done the above--unless, of course, you're a templar or a soldier with authority to arrest. And then you're still limited to targets who are in the city (an ever-dwindling flock, it seems) and who you can justify arresting. Nobles seem like they might as well not even exist, having practically no presence or noticeable influence on anything, so political measures are usually futile. You or someone doing your bidding needs to check one of the aforementioned boxes in order to get anything done. You can't Little Finger your way into anything on your own. People will simply detect that you have no tangible clout.

I feel for some of the ails people are describing, but I just cannot let this sit without saying, this... the above quoted, is just utterly false from top the bottom.

Broad, sweeping, wide-ranging impacts are being made by politics, schemers, and schemes. It's creating roleplay, conflict, and situations across literally the entire world and its playerbase if you're interacting with almost anyone.

Some people aren't seeing what strings are being pulled because that's the nature of these things, but  you're seeing the results. You just don't know they're the results.

You Don't Have All the Facts(tm).

This is deeply true.



The character I'm currently playing doesn't *do* a lot.  In fact, most of the time I sit in a single room and Rp with whoever walks in to hang out with me.

You've heard of things they've put together.  You're *aware* of events they've set into motion.  I guarantee, if you're logging in, you know of at least one thing they've done.

And you're going to know more as time goes on, because plotting and scheming and setting up the dominoes, then letting people knock them down is the biggest net effect a PC can have.  They're codedly middling in combat, but its about the relationships I've maintained and the Rp I've put in to their story and the stories of the people around them that are making the waves.

If you treat Arm like a hack and slash mud, you're going to get a hack and slash mud.

If you treat Arm like an RPI, you're going to get an RPI.

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 10:34:48 PM
Speaking for my own experience, all of the above is true. I can plainly state that as my trust in the playerbase diminished, I began to avoid other players, I began to seek skill gain to be less vulnarable, I focused on my ooc friends clique because they weren't gonna backroom me over something stupid etc.

I know I'm not speaking just for myself.

Politely, I have to suggest that it's a problem you and your clique are having, then.

I talk to no one from Arm outside of Arm. I risk and enjoy interaction with the unknown every time I play. It's not impossible. My PCs don't die daily. They live their lives. I don't know the players of any of their friends, lovers, or acquaintances. and I don't desire to.

If someone tries to backroom them or give them a mug with shit in it I'll have to fight through it.

And I like that.

That's Armageddon to me.

Quote from: Windstorm on January 24, 2023, 11:50:57 PM

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 10:34:48 PM
Speaking for my own experience, all of the above is true. I can plainly state that as my trust in the playerbase diminished, I began to avoid other players, I began to seek skill gain to be less vulnarable, I focused on my ooc friends clique because they weren't gonna backroom me over something stupid etc.

I know I'm not speaking just for myself.

Politely, I have to suggest that it's a problem you and your clique are having, then.

Yeah, the only other player I consistently talk to is the one I married before I ever started playing this game.

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 10:34:48 PM
Speaking for my own experience, all of the above is true. I can plainly state that as my trust in the playerbase diminished, I began to avoid other players, I began to seek skill gain to be less vulnarable, I focused on my ooc friends clique because they weren't gonna backroom me over something stupid etc.

Are you straight up saying that you have a group of OOC friends who you know the in-game characters of, and who you intentionally seek out in-game to play around because you feel you can trust them due to your OOC friendship and out of game communication? Am I missing something here?

Quote from: Windstorm on January 24, 2023, 11:50:57 PM

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 10:34:48 PM
Speaking for my own experience, all of the above is true. I can plainly state that as my trust in the playerbase diminished, I began to avoid other players, I began to seek skill gain to be less vulnarable, I focused on my ooc friends clique because they weren't gonna backroom me over something stupid etc.

I know I'm not speaking just for myself.

Politely, I have to suggest that it's a problem you and your clique are having, then.

I talk to no one from Arm outside of Arm. I risk and enjoy interaction with the unknown every time I play. It's not impossible. My PCs don't die daily. They live their lives. I don't know the players of any of their friends, lovers, or acquaintances. and I don't desire to.

If someone tries to backroom them or give them a mug with shit in it I'll have to fight through it.

And I like that.

That's Armageddon to me.

And this is what I get when I try to talk about the problems this game has. "The game has no problems, you are the problem."

I'm not saying you're a bad player or trying to rile up a witch hunt here, but I'm saying, you're choosing to play in a certain way that's maybe counterintuitive to the experience Armageddon, at least to me, is supposed to be, and then sort of blaming it on game culture that's not really affecting the experience of at least myself at all.

Have you tried playing without these sort of.. guardrails? Just role playing and playing your PC to interact with other PCs organically?

I honestly sort of respect your being upfront about it myself but I feel like you're maybe self-creating a problem and assuming it's everyone's experience.

Quote from: Windstorm on January 25, 2023, 12:44:32 AM
Have you tried playing without these sort of.. guardrails? Just role playing and playing your PC to interact with other PCs organically?

I have and it wasn't always a bad deal. But I've been burned enough to know not even to waste my time.

Here. Let me put it another way.

If I could play in a way in which I could go on a dungeon crawl and fight some npc nasty magickers and maybe die to something cool? I would play every night.

If I'm playing in a way that's mostly about tiptoeing around other players, I'm just not interested. I'd rather waste my time on Genshin Impact.

I think your somewhat paranoid overreaction is coloring your view of the game.

Just play the video game, you'll have fun.

Nevermind.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on January 24, 2023, 10:07:43 PM
The changes to the military clans would make my old PCs roll over in their spider-infested graves, but they are definitely good ones for playability.

Well, two of them. The remaining military clan in the Byn.

Who shouldn't be concerned with anything other than completing contracts.

Actually, I think I missed a bit of context here, was this in relation to law enforcement? If not my apologies.

On the subject of PC bodyguards, your bodyguards are not there to prevent you getting Player Killed, they are there to provide depth of authority and assistance if you get attacked, need something carried (NPC bodyguards should be last resort porters) and a number of other things not related to 'guard mans'. Yes, they can protect you and it might actually make a difference, but in general an assassination attempt carried out with serious intentions (and preparation) will almost always take your noble out regardless of what you do to prevent it at the time.

Although not fanatically, I tend to be okay with most of OP's suggestions.

QuoteCombat and even mass combat is reasonable, at the minimum, when there aren't massive strength PCs around.

- Problem is not Strength, but Strength's association with a specific type of weapon wielding style, which is breaking the balance. This has been addressed many times before.

QuoteMy main complaint was never the Thryzn as the thread kinda derailed into, though I do have minor complaints there as I've said, but the large amounts of karma races and subguilds around which makes playing a Mundane make you feel like a chump. Unfortunately I've been very fed up playing a chump, as I don't enjoy karma races/subguilds very much.

- I have also seen a heavy shift towards magick culture being normalized. When 1/2 of player population are magickers, this is the unfortunate reality we should expect. Coded penalties do not work, but benefits to mundanes might. Give them higher caps on non magicker subguilds like Mansa suggested in another post. It would be a great balancer improvement.

QuoteI think BadSkeelz put it best. The cities are the 'main' part of Armageddon, and if you're in a city you're constantly getting shit on. Now, that's a right and proper theme, but I mean, even the Templars get shat on. There's a reason why so many players prefer tribal play nowadays, because city play has become genuinely unpleasurable. Simply adding 'new things' doesn't mean they're getting fixed. A player clan is often not very complex past a simple hunting company. It's what I was saying earlier -- slapping new things onto something that is rotten from the inside won't fix anything, it'll just make the problem more complex and seem 'active' in the short-term. When in reality, it's just not fun.

- To the same extend, closing of Tuluk would serve towards the same goal as you suggest, but it did not. What you address might be a problem, but solutions are not penalizing desert roles, but giving benefits to city codes. Just like instead of nerfing some classes a year ago or so, staff did a great job by improving others. And everyone was happy. You can make things like regeneration / hunger / thirst / security / job opportunities / npc benefits (like if a citizen, you can get training from Mercenary Amos on slashing weapons). These kind of benefits would have a positive shift towards cities, at least for me.

QuoteI would probably start with the mainstay clans such as the AoD/Legion, or the Byn. That's usually where the bulk of players often are, and barring this recent war that ended in a week, you usually have absolutely nothing to do unless you are incredibly creative or satisfied with the smallest bits of mundane solo-rp. Prioritize animating things for them, give them freedom to do more things on their own, create coded things to occupy them. For one example: the Templarate/AoD used to have a small mission they could do that would add flavor to their patrols. This being, escorting 'groups of slaves' from one point to another. This is removed now, for reasons I don't know.

- Similarly, this could be another aspect of benefits as I mentioned above. Having more imm animation towards city would be sweet -if- that is the goal.

QuoteThe Byn (the gritty mercenary clan) have suffered most from being neutered. The last time I played a Byn character, 90% of the contracts were escorting a wagon back and forth. When the Sergeant wanted to do anything outside of these mundane patrols and escorts, they would get slapped by 'the Brass' and told to keep to the neutral, boring contracts instead of daring to side with anything as gritty mercenaries tend to do.

- Giving Byn a Levy like flexibility with a less strict following guidelines would be my solution. You want to go out and travel to the other end of the known? Sure, you can do that, we don't care. Just be here when you want. Whoever wants to hang in barracks should do. It should serve more like a veteran soldier's socialization club.

QuoteFinally, I would give city clans more advantages over desert clans. One has been already implemented with the NPC trainers, great, but they should be allowed to take out some limited NPCs (especially the Templars), perhaps consider giving city clans special abilities or skills, and so on. Let the desert people have their own quirks and boons, instead of being undeniably better in every way.

- Yes, I didn't see this when I wrote above. This and other benefits, once inclined, one can find many solutions. Another I can think of is a straight +2 to wisdom for citizens. "You have been enlightened by the presence of city culture". There you go.

Maybe if we didn't try to zip past the GRIND and used that time in character to build up. Conflicts would seem more balanced, We may if got involved more in game and plots we all know who and why things went on. Or make sense and not seem overly clan powerful?

I am not saying the players are not doing that!  I don't know your characters!  Just saying we have a ton of stuff in game now. So much new things we can add to our characters to really flesh them out.  I feel it is more fun to grow into the character before just starting out as the SLAYER, but as I read the GDB seems like no matter what is done we want to flip flop codes and bypass the build up of characters.

Get out there and build your characters and have fun! If PVP is your thing that is great!  Make it one of the best stories you can not just a body count.  If you focus on your story the game world really does come alive with fears and happiness.

Quote from: Shalooonsh on January 24, 2023, 05:46:04 PM

I'm honestly uncertain how you mean we should focus on the Core of Armageddon.  The Core of Armageddon is just fine--- those cities still exist, and in fact, are being expanded on as we speak.  New features, new places, new things have been added to both cities (both due to player clan additions, which is an assumed natural fact, but also due to player effort outside of pclans as well as staff saying "Well wait, these people don't have this, and it makes sense for them to, lets add it") and are readily available to new and old players.

I haven't read all the comments because I'm a bad reader, and my opinion will likely be the complete opposite of someone elses.

But some suggestions to focus on some "Core Armageddon" things:

* Luir's is still in shambles after Krath knows how long since the war. PC's have tried to restore it but either died, stored or whatever happened that kept Luir's in ruins. Have the Merchant Houses clean the rubble, update the tavern, which in turn can provide for PC's to create an event to celebrate the "new Luir's".
* Focus more on public "events" in Allanak and Tuluk, not only driven by PC's. In example the Senate meeting which, back in the days, allowed for Red Robes to mingle, do business and bribe their way up the social ladder and involve PC's in it. This can involve any kind of PC, high or low status.
* Have small NPC criminals engage more with PC's - have a hunt to sniff out the perpetrator, involve PC's
* The Grind. Its just very, very tedious and unmotivating to start a new PC from scratch. Give Players the opportunity to gain... I don't know... XP with long lived characters and use those XP to add a dot here and there on their new skill sheet.
* Focus on existing clans, such as Jaxa Pah (sadly closed), human tribal clans, smaller elven clans
* Initiate RPT's outside of Tuluk/Allanak, with a planned herd of raptors/gortok/scrab/gith where people can show up and do their hack&slash, which admittedly CAN be fun at times. RP can happen before, after and maybe even in between.

Example: Staff posts Mini RPT outside Allanak at so and so time, brief rumor board post about culling of the scrabs. New PC's can join the older ones and get some skills up, hunters can practice their skinning, gicks can get their gick on, PC's can engage with each other (positive or negative), because no clan needs to be excluded.
Let it be a weekly thing. It doesn't always need to be staff run, it could also be an automated spawn thingy at a certain spot.

Also, I have seen.... no mutants in cities, despite the options being there thanks to Shalooonsh amazingly... lets say.. colorful descriptions. No thryzn in cities. When will we see them?

I guess I'm just rambling at this point, but there are so many little things that could make Arm even more appealing and less frustrating, when focusing a bit more on what currently exists and with a little TLC can grow into so much more.

Quote from: Halaster on January 24, 2023, 07:17:02 PM

Quote from: Master Color on January 24, 2023, 06:40:53 PM
The problem isn't the new stuff getting added, I think it's all various flavors of fine.

The problem is that player-player conflict is a complete shit show and always has been. This is a problem that's barely acknowledged by players and staff while mature players that don't want any part of the toxic garbage dump that is armageddon pvp will just wither away.

This is another meaningless comment without actual suggestions and pointing out -what- you think is wrong.  "PvP is a shit show" does nothing to help staff understand what you think the issue is.  If you genuinely want it to change, then explain the issue and even offer suggestions for fixes if you have any.

While I'm not the original poster, I am a long-time player, if somewhat on and off, with very particular views on this. Personally, I hate PvP. I have successfully managed to avoid it for the most part.

PvP in cities comes down to a few types. The most common seems to be getting templar'ed. Templars are a great motivation not to play commoners in cities. I agree with another poster that the game would be better off without PC templars but I won't dig further into that.

Thiefy sorts are basically inventory elementalists. Being on the receiving end of that isn't ever really fun or engaging. For some characters, it's a nuisance, for others, it means hours of grind to regain lost stuff.

Assassins mostly seem to come down to trapping people in a locked apartment and stabbing them there, using the skills they have taken enough time to grind.

Another aspect to PvP is that, outside of the city politicking, such as it is, wilderness PvP, and gameplay in general, heavily rewards people who commit a great deal of time to grinding. That grind is by far the worst aspect of Armageddon - I don't even try to keep up with it. The idea of spending weeks and months grinding a character only to have them be beat up by someone who did the grind for even longer and rolled absolutely incredible strength isn't much fun either.

Besides all this are people's apparent motivations: killing people is sometimes a first recourse for some over any sort of slight or perhaps just because they felt like it. Yeah, sure, life is cheap on Zalanthas, but players' time isn't.

Anyway, my two cents. It's obviously not an aspect of the game I participate in if I can help it at all, but that's why and my view as, if nothing else, an observer and sometime third party.

Quote from: Inks on January 24, 2023, 03:55:32 PM
The PK seems way lower than back in the day, and the willingness to roleplay higher. I definately do not want a rollback of poisons though. I usually play assassin type pcs and from what I have seen of the poison it is less guaranteed one hit kill but still very dangerous. And more interesting.

I am supportive of this feedback thread.

I don't play as often as I used to at all, mostly because real life (the dreaded R.L.) continues to dominate my life more and more each year, not less. There however was thrown out there in a few posts things about poison, and as someone who has played both on the "magickal" side of the conflict and the "mundane" side (which does really benefit from poison to achieve the goals of PvP conflict), I also want to say I do not want to roll back the new poison code, but I will say I think it needs some significant future tweaks to help players understand it better.

I think the reason the poison/mundane side is underpowered in this conflict right now is the disjuncted release of it in development after new poison capable classes were designed. the poison/brew skill combo is only available to a few classes, and now with shorter lasting poisons, the synergy between poison and brew is more important than ever. The spoilage of poison cures means if you don't brew you're highly dependent on your brewing buddies to be a good poisoner, and poisoning is harder with poison spoilage on top of it. Two essential nerfs to the mechanics, and no real way to reconcile that if your brewing buddies aren't available when you need them or if they die. Meanwhile, a solo witch has their kit ready to go at all times and their magickal components don't degrade, and their abilities are perfectly predictable. The poisoner has to be a hardcore player of the game (trust me, I am aggressively beta testing this new poison system), to get shit done. It feels like the dial was turned back too far as a retaliation to the dominance of poisoning assassins for the longest time in this game's history, making certain origins that used to really benefit from the poisoning mechanic really struggle to dominate in this era of the game's changes.

That may be harkening to the original post, that the pace of development means there are unintended consequences left and right in the game. Yes, Badskeelz is right, this is not a great PvP mechanics wise game. It is an RPI, and I enjoy the possibilities of PvP, but most of PvP now requires "logging on" and they who log on regularly will inevitably still win. I thought it was cool in the old days that you might be some old, wrinkled assassin type who barely logs in, but then shows up now and then to ice someone and then disappear for a long time. Someone though must have really hated that capacity, and inevitably that was nixed. It could come back though, if they account for the casual login style more in their code mechanics and allow someone who doesn't have time to constantly restock and reapply poisons to still have some impact someday when that conflict moment finally comes. my 2 sids.

Quote from: Harmless on January 30, 2023, 10:06:07 AMI thought it was cool in the old days that you might be some old, wrinkled assassin type who barely logs in, but then shows up now and then to ice someone and then disappear for a long time.

I would be kind of glad for this not being a thing.

If I was around and some assassin PC that almost never exists only appeared to get some uberpoison and murder an active PC that was in the middle of a dozen plots and driving roleplay, and then assassin PC just casually disappared and rarely logged on after(conveniently preventing things like related roleplay, revenge, retaliation or investigation), I think that would really suck for both the game and a lot of the players and activity that PC was connected to.

If that's a side effect of the new poison code I hope it stays just like it is, personally.

Quote from: Harmless on January 30, 2023, 10:06:07 AM
I thought it was cool in the old days that you might be some old, wrinkled assassin type who barely logs in, but then shows up now and then to ice someone and then disappear for a long time.

That actually sounds awful and unfun to me.

Quote
PvP now requires "logging on" and they who log on regularly will inevitably still win.

If you want to be a good assassin you have to log on to train your skills, gather poisons, etc.  Being able to assassinate someone should require work.

Alternatively, you could pay someone for the poisons, and let them do all the work for you.

I would like poison murder to be an 'event' that the whole crew gets involved in (gathering, brewing, striking, etc) rather than "let me pull a leaf out of my bag that some desert elf gave my clan in 2015 and I found in a bag in the HQ."

There are, like, three people online when I play, and five of those people are not gonna like me very much. 'The whole crew' is maybe me and one other guy and I absolutely hate how much has been gated around playing at 3 am over the years.

Quote from: Patuk on January 30, 2023, 01:03:40 PM
There are, like, three people online when I play, and five of those people are not gonna like me very much. 'The whole crew' is maybe me and one other guy and I absolutely hate how much has been gated around playing at 3 am over the years.

I concede that is an issue, but I don't know what the solution for off-peakers is.

As a former off-peaker.

We could stop designing systems that punish offpeak play. That'd be nice.

Quote from: Patuk on January 30, 2023, 01:45:08 PM
We could stop designing systems that punish offpeak play. That'd be nice.

Is this a reference to poisons losing their power?

Any change requiring multiple PCs to do something we are use to being able to do ourselves.

While I am not normally an off-peaker, I DO often play solo roles and enjoy such RP.

It doesn't have to take multiple PC's to get poisons/cures.  What's different now is that you have to specialize in order to "be the best" in terms of poison/cure.  And there are two classes than can do both brew and poisoning (Stalker and Miscreant).

I'm not an offpeak player, but occasionally try and play solo desert skyrim.
Not identical to off-peak play, but I assume I run into a couple of the same issues.

My preferred class is raider, it doesn't get skinning. Gathering from hunting is nearly pointless for that character, need to bring along someone else. If there's nobody else, sucks to suck.
For reference even the old guild Warrior got like high apprentice skinning. Also if you don't have a skill, items that provide +skill don't work, so there's nothing you can really do about it.

Brew changes mean finding cures on dead bodies is nearly pointless, no idea what poison that tablet actually works on. Or it could actually be a poison pill.
Even if you do put together a set of cures, you got a finite amount of time to use them before they turn to dust. Hopefully the person who made you the first set is still alive,
otherwise offpeak player will need to log in at 4am to find the only brewer in the area. Hopefully they get them the first time, or they'll need to try again the next day.

Poison changes don't effect me much, was never very interested in poisoning. But needing a second character with brew to make your potent poisons would really suck.
Especially if you're one of five people online, and none of the others even have brew.

Combat changes that made fighting things with lower off/def than you much less viable. Want to be a badass? You need to find a PC to train you. Or join one of the clans that offers NPC sparring to help alleviate this issue.

For better or worse it seems like the immortals are pushing the game towards forced interactions. On the one hand it's good for roleplay to pull others into your play.
On the other hand if you can't   because you're one of five people online and they're incapable/uninterested in helping you, well, I guess you just don't get to interact with those systems.

I think it's a reference to a number of potential off-peak problems, and I'm sure there are more, but the glaring ones are below:

1. You can't get cures that aren't on an NPC because you have no allies with the brew skill and you yourself don't have the brew skill.
2. You can't get poisons above base level because while you have the poison skill, you don't have brew. Meanwhile, you ALSO don't have an ally with brew to help you in this regard.
3.Using high level poisons without high level cures is a potential disaster.

Solutions to this problem currently are: Select a class/subclass combo with both skills.

If you want to play something outside of that, you may run into difficulties off-peak, but obviously this depends a lot on if you have allies whose play times align with yours and can fill these potential skill gaps.

Edit: The conversation went on while I was typing this, so it may seem redundant.

I'm a fan of the new poison system, but acknowledge it can be really hard for someone who doesn't have brew and poison in their skill list.

As a guy who plays (almost exclusively) stalkers who get brew and poison.

The problem is that to make a stronger poison, you have to figure out the taste of the poison, which isn't intuitive in my opinion, then say that bloodburn is part mountain dew and part coca cola for the mash.  You then need to get a native poison object, say a gland since that's pretty much the most known of type of poison in the game.

So if you want to make bloodburn "Good" poison, you sometimes have to travel the WORLD to find Mountain Dew and then travel across the world to find Coca Cola due to the set fountain drink locations.

So where before it was just rub the gland on the blade, voila poison, now it's a whole world jaunting endeavor to make the "possibility" of really good bloodburn, that more than not due to RNG and just my shit luck, will slip and poison myself at Master poisoner.

So with all the above, I do see how folks who used poison versus just pure combat skills of kill homie can be dismayed by the system.

I still think the system is sweet as hell, but till they fix the location of herbs or lack there of in certain areas of the world.  Plus the fact that one player (sometimes me) can harvest oodles of it by pure playtime and knowing their locations, making it harder for others to find that mountain dew flavor.

So I see both their sides, those who love the new system and those who hate it.

Quote from: FantasyWriter on January 30, 2023, 02:31:43 PM
Any change requiring multiple PCs to do something we are use to being able to do ourselves.

While I am not normally an off-peaker, I DO often play solo roles and enjoy such RP.

As a new player, this in particular has been a bit of a sticking point for me. I'm an off-peak player, and I play in the less-populated city. Perhaps a mistake on my part but It's not really something I can change right now. But a big issue i've had is finding people with stuff to do with, sometimes I'll go an entire irl day without seeing another player, let alone finding players that are also interested in doing the same things as me. This severely limits what I can and can't do. Even if I wanted to travel somewhere else to find people to interact with and rp with, travel itself is something that you cannot really do on your own unless you have an incredibly high-skilled combat character, which is also something that's hard to achieve when you don't have other people to spar with.

I understand wanting to make it so there's more interaction between players, but usually the veeery peak of players that I see when I'm playing is between 20-30 players. Now this is 25 players that are spread out between four settlements, tribes, wilderness characters and criminals. So the inability to find people to accompany people on my exploits mixed with how lethal the world is and how slow it is to train your combat stats solo has put a severe limit on my options as a player.

And to also go along with one point Famous Amos said, the grind is incredibly tedious, feeling like I have to day in, day out do the same actions over and over again for months before I can really 'play' the game is a tad bit disheartening.

Just to check, in the thread dedicated to discussing the negatives of a perceived descent toward hack and slash we're now saying that having to interact with other people is an unnecessary burden to you being able to hack and slash your way to perfect skills?

Quote from: Brisket on January 30, 2023, 06:09:15 PM
Just to check, in the thread dedicated to discussing the negatives of a perceived descent toward hack and slash we're now saying that having to interact with other people is an unnecessary burden to you being able to hack and slash your way to perfect skills?

I'm not sure if this is directed at me but It's more that I do kinda need a certain level of combat skills in order to experience a lot of the game. And the issue is more that I haven't had many opportunities to interact with people, and having better combat skills makes it easier to go to places where the people are.

Having to interact with other people is a painful burden for such fabulous and legendary exploits as 'crossing the Red Desert/Tablelands at all because angk are everywhere' and 'cutting up a dead body because the heavy combat classes can't do it' or even just 'get hired as part of an organisation, because staff keeps pointing out in Announcements they prefer Americans'.

On the subject of swaying slightly off topic.

I think that in a game this complex code wise and theme wise, with so many different types of players (murderhobo types, crafters, mages and the various racial types even if you take karma races outta the mix plus everything else) you're always gonna have some deviation or points brought up that might perhaps be better suited for an altogether different subject but do have plausible reasoning to exist in the thread because something in the OP or the following posts brought that feeling to the forefront.

I like to look at it that way at least with a bit of an assume positive intent vibe versus a "you're not supposed to do that!" One.

I have no power here in this forum, but I will just ask as a courtesy if we can be a little more kind to each other and less critical.

Would it be viable to have an NPC that could 'identify' a pill function for an exorbitant fee and a chance to destroy the pill they identify?

Quote from: Dar on January 31, 2023, 03:09:19 AM
Would it be viable to have an NPC that could 'identify' a pill function for an exorbitant fee and a chance to destroy the pill they identify?

jUsT uSe PcS

This would be a nice little service. Brewers aren't all that common even for peak players.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on January 31, 2023, 03:15:11 AM

Quote from: Dar on January 31, 2023, 03:09:19 AM
Would it be viable to have an NPC that could 'identify' a pill function for an exorbitant fee and a chance to destroy the pill they identify?

jUsT uSe PcS

This would be a nice little service. Brewers aren't all that common even for peak players.

The way I'm reading this, it feels like you said two things, each opposite of the other.


Way I imagine it, using PCs would always be better because they might be cheaper and they wont destroy the item. They just just lie to you and get you killed someday :).

While an NPC would likely be trusted, but the fee would be so high that regular use would be prevented to all, but the ones dripping with coin. And due to temporary nature of cures, it would be a service consistently needed.  Everything encourages you from creating a good association with another PC, but an alternative option to the off-peakers exist nonetheless.

The first line is sarcastic, yes.

Maybe it's just time to do away with lethal poison npc's? Make the poisons all sub lethal to like 25% max hp so that anyone that plays the game offpeak is not gated by their ability to find cures. Or just take them out if it's easier.

Same deal as the robo raptor. The game doesn't need to be so harsh that a single mob will track you down to the ends of the earth. Same way we don't need a poison that takes all of your hp.

wish cures just degraded slower so you could buy a set then not have to worry about it for a while

a cure shouldn't need to be replaced so often

Quote from: Pariah on January 30, 2023, 08:22:15 PM

I like to look at it that way at least with a bit of an assume positive intent vibe versus a "you're not supposed to do that!" One.

I have no power here in this forum, but I will just ask as a courtesy if we can be a little more kind to each other and less critical.

I don't think anyone is being unkind.  I was just pointing out that the thread about pushing for interaction and roleplay is being derailed by 'just let me do everything because I play off peak' chat.  Neither argument is invalid at all - offpeakers have a real struggle if they don't have offpeak PC friends, but 'I can do it all!' is a H&S attitude. 

It's amusing, and nobody is saying anything that isn't reasonable.  It's just difficult to balance those two things, with our offpeak populations where they are.

Quote from: Miradus on January 30, 2023, 12:58:21 PM
I would like poison murder to be an 'event' that the whole crew gets involved in (gathering, brewing, striking, etc) rather than "let me pull a leaf out of my bag that some desert elf gave my clan in 2015 and I found in a bag in the HQ."

counterpoints are that the person who played that assassin did have to play quite a bit, like the typical lonery mage, to get to the point of being able to poison someone, and that the entire crew tends to be dead.

I think some leaf some elf gave you in 2015 should be rotted, and nobody means that, but as things stand, the leaf you went out to gather on a trip a couple weeks back when you had a crew together is going to be rotten before the month's end normally. That's no good and is the opposite extreme.

Anyway sorry for the derail and the beginnings of a derail about being offpeak, but the amount of time played is = to amount of success in game, yes, and the "popular" areas of the game will always tend to be dominatin the PvP sphere as the OP said, and lately the pendulum has swung in popularity generally to areas that the OP was relating to (the new race, therefore the areas that interact with said race are getting popular). The group PvP dynamic has always been a peak player driven, peak popularity contest winning contest, not a "skill" based dynamic, and the OP also is annoyed with staff driven PKs, and I agree that the playerbase has been ornery over staff PKs often over the years and that staff also seem to want to avoid that.

What disrupts that balance of power (which can be tipped too far into the latest, greatest trendy place of Zalanthas) IS the assassin dynamic. The assassin dynamic is what makes players and their characters cautious, and plan around the potential for loss of any individual at any time, and the assassin dynamic still often requires politics in advance (let's face it; if you have a high profile mark, that kill had better have been ordered or condoned by someone of equal rank, or else inevitably it catches up to the assassin). All of this IS zalanthas, or was, because now I know for a fact it is going to be that rare on-peak and active every week assassin alone who would be feared; the rest of the assassins are nearly poisonless or have a tiny supply and can't use them in combinations that are more deadly at this point unless staff roll back a bit of their update.

Quote from: Harmless on January 31, 2023, 09:06:38 AM

Quote from: Miradus on January 30, 2023, 12:58:21 PM
I would like poison murder to be an 'event' that the whole crew gets involved in (gathering, brewing, striking, etc) rather than "let me pull a leaf out of my bag that some desert elf gave my clan in 2015 and I found in a bag in the HQ."

Begs the question if a few of the above commenters have actually been playing poisoning classes and using poisons regularly or not.

The problem as I see it with poison on a dude who plays nearly all stalkers, is that it's too hard to acquire more than basic burn, and till you hit the level of being able to use archery well enough and poison well enough to use poison on super dangerous critters, it's only real use before that point is PVP.

I tend to be a pretty much PVE guy, I think I can count how many players I've killed on two hands in two decades or more.

So I feel the people freaking out about it are majorily PVP slanted, so for them, it's a major deal.

As a counterpoint, I like "playing outside" with all the pve that entails.   I recently had a pc get bloodburned crossing the Red Desert.   It took six tablets to cure the bloodburn, at dubious levels of freshness, before my pc got to lead others around for a while at 40 hp.   That felt pretty harsh, and will certainly curtail my PvE activities.

Quote from: Halcyon on January 31, 2023, 09:32:26 AM
As a counterpoint, I like "playing outside" with all the pve that entails.   I recently had a pc get bloodburned crossing the Red Desert.   It took six tablets to cure the bloodburn, at dubious levels of freshness, before my pc got to lead others around for a while at 40 hp.   That felt pretty harsh, and will certainly curtail my PvE activities.

Yeah, I've always felt the store bought tablets need to be of higher quality.  I had similar experiences on a few characters ago.  Random snake would ruin my dude for days and force him to eat one and half small of cures.

Quote from: Harmless on January 31, 2023, 09:06:38 AM
..the leaf you went out to gather on a trip a couple weeks back when you had a crew together is going to be rotten before the month's end normally.

That's not how it is now.  It's more like 4-6 Real Life months for herbs to decay.

Quote from: Brisket on January 30, 2023, 06:09:15 PM
Just to check, in the thread dedicated to discussing the negatives of a perceived descent toward hack and slash we're now saying that having to interact with other people is an unnecessary burden to you being able to hack and slash your way to perfect skills?

We want to interact, we really do. There wouldn't be so many complaints about low numbers if we didn't.

But interaction is not the same as 'find that one specific PC'. Pretty often, you just end up surrounded by all combat classes, or all city classes, and just without that specific thing you need. It can be pretty absurd, like being unable to find a miscreant in the Guild. I don't think this is just an off peak problem, either. When you need something done that requires utility skills, but all you have is five heavy combat classes, it's not happening and everyone is left twiddling their thumbs. When something needs a perfect storm, chances are it's just not happening at all. You'll get less interaction, not more.

As a player of utility classes, I suggest also making it worthwhile that these skillsets do the work you need for them.

Do you NEED cures?
Do you only want to spent 50 coins on them?
Is this PC the only source of them? Pay them 75 each. Bring them herbs. Do something for them.

One thing I've noticed about utility and crafter types is they want to be part of your story, but you just want them for their master brew. Fine. But let them set some rules, or negotiate.

Don't want to descend into HnS mentality? Don't just tell someone they should have cheaper prices or your Jman chopping skill will negotiate for you.

Quote from: Riev on January 31, 2023, 05:10:17 PM
As a player of utility classes, I suggest also making it worthwhile that these skillsets do the work you need for them.

Do you NEED cures?
Do you only want to spent 50 coins on them?
Is this PC the only source of them? Pay them 75 each. Bring them herbs. Do something for them.

One thing I've noticed about utility and crafter types is they want to be part of your story, but you just want them for their master brew. Fine. But let them set some rules, or negotiate.

Don't want to descend into HnS mentality? Don't just tell someone they should have cheaper prices or your Jman chopping skill will negotiate for you.

Whatever you do is going to fail if you just can't find one, or if that person logs on twice a week at 3am.

You can get all the combat benefits of a high strength character with spice use.

Quote from: Riev on January 31, 2023, 05:10:17 PM
As a player of utility classes, I suggest also making it worthwhile that these skillsets do the work you need for them.

Do you NEED cures?
Do you only want to spent 50 coins on them?
Is this PC the only source of them? Pay them 75 each. Bring them herbs. Do something for them.

One thing I've noticed about utility and crafter types is they want to be part of your story, but you just want them for their master brew. Fine. But let them set some rules, or negotiate.

Don't want to descend into HnS mentality? Don't just tell someone they should have cheaper prices or your Jman chopping skill will negotiate for you.

It's this from what I've seen.  I play all over the clock and regularly have an 'off peak' schedule.  I play utility classes.  Perhaps its just what I've personally encountered, but the majority of the 'rp' I've gotten has been a Raider/Fighter demanding a cure that took me 2 hours to forage and make for 40 coins and won't negotiate.

Maybe there's an even more off off peak that I'm unaware of, which again I accept is a struggle.  But the key can't be 'just let everyone do everything'. 

It might be a good idea to run some numbers and have areas 'highlighted' as populated during off peak, or potentially to have some other method of helping gather players together during low pop times?

I might also suggest throwing a few coins at a local barkeep and putting out simple rumors again.

"people around the Gaj, even Vennant himself, have been heard spreading word that a roughneck named Riev has been looking for an herbalist to trade with. Riev only comes around the Gaj early in the week, but is willing to pay for a concierge herbalist"

I haven't been in a city in a while, but if you don't ask, you'll never find.

Quote from: Halaster on January 31, 2023, 09:52:16 AM

Quote from: Harmless on January 31, 2023, 09:06:38 AM
..the leaf you went out to gather on a trip a couple weeks back when you had a crew together is going to be rotten before the month's end normally.

That's not how it is now.  It's more like 4-6 Real Life months for herbs to decay.

I'll submit bug reports when I can prove this statement inaccurate, Halaster. Thanks for pointing out what seems to be a lack of awareness of rot times for poisons. (I was discussing poison objects, not herbs in my post).

Quote from: Harmless on February 01, 2023, 10:45:40 AM

Quote from: Halaster on January 31, 2023, 09:52:16 AM

Quote from: Harmless on January 31, 2023, 09:06:38 AM
..the leaf you went out to gather on a trip a couple weeks back when you had a crew together is going to be rotten before the month's end normally.

That's not how it is now.  It's more like 4-6 Real Life months for herbs to decay.

I'll submit bug reports when I can prove this statement inaccurate, Halaster. Thanks for pointing out what seems to be a lack of awareness of rot times for poisons. (I was discussing poison objects, not herbs in my post).

This was written in a way that comes across kind of sharp and antagonistic.  Let's try to focus on Pariah's idea of approaching each other from a place a empathy at least in this thread.

Pardon me, but the purpose of my post was that the player side experience is different from an assertion by staff and that I will be handling it in game. Didn't mean to come off antagonistically.

Together, from the players submitting information about the game and pointing out bugs, along with the efforts staff make to develop new systems, the game will improve. In the meantime, it's going through some growing pains.

There, is that better worded? I never meant to be 'antagonistic.' Unless I'm stabbing someone in the game that is.

If it was a high end poison object, like peraine or heramide, there had been a script in place that decayed them for awhile now, which came before and was independent and on top of the general poison object decay.  I only removed that script inside the last month.  That script would have decayed them faster than the overall system, in many cases, I believe.

My observation is that the incredibly common but weak poisons, like iunno random animal gland #1, decay to inert in less than a week. This makes them annoying to trade in any capacity, even more annoying than trying to smuggle something like spice grains in a player-to-player system.

Just wanted to chime in on the jist of the op's sentiment - I've done pvp in Arm since the early 2000's to now, sporadically.  Anything from when Borsail was staggeringly prevalent and southern nobles wore masks in a tavern now destroyed and roving mantis death squads were coming to you while gith npc's ran up and chucked spears, to everyone gets mutations in chargen.  Your realization isn't about a change in the players and the game, just how you saw it.  There have been people who treat Arm as hack and slash, and got away with it for reasons I don't know, since I first left the gates of Allanak.  There have been great players who do PvP masterfully and make it feel like an interaction, not a contest of scripted reactions.  I am only very recently coming back so I can't say how it is 'right now', but for the 20 odd years before:  yep, HG, Muls, dwarves and gickers twinking up skillz to go pk newbs and power gaming all done and acceptable.  And so were interactions like trying to hunt down Kust.

But it isn't just Armageddon.  Any game with PvP, especially games with PvP that bring about consequences, will attract those types.  Staff's unenviable job is to put the thumb on them.  And for what its worth, my quick looking around has me presently leaning slightly optimistic, but we'll see.

Quote from: Riev on January 31, 2023, 07:13:44 PM
I might also suggest throwing a few coins at a local barkeep and putting out simple rumors again.

"people around the Gaj, even Vennant himself, have been heard spreading word that a roughneck named Riev has been looking for an herbalist to trade with. Riev only comes around the Gaj early in the week, but is willing to pay for a concierge herbalist"

I haven't been in a city in a while, but if you don't ask, you'll never find.

I completely agree with using rumors as a driving force for more character interactions, even in the smallest of scales, especially for toons who either just haven't gotten in with a clan yet or simply prefer solo play.

I haven't been around for long— account just turned one year old a few days ago, actually— but throughout the handful of characters I've enjoyed heavy RP with in that year, I found the RP from typing up vague rumors here and there that prompted others to seek out my toon out of either need, curiosity, or even the want to end me.

And even if they didn't seek MY toon after hearing the rumors, I've heard that some have sought OTHERS to share the rumors with because it was either one that they felt the other person needed to know, or it was just some neat little thing they wanted to talk to them about.

And nothing I've experienced in the game yet has made me as happy as a player as seeing something I put out into the world being what made other players interact as well. Those little IC interactions where someone goes, "Oh yeah, I know you; Amos told me there was some weirdo visiting the tavern lots lately!"? Golden. Love them.