I am just asking from the perspective of someone who's been at this game for years and I am starting to wonder if anything I thought I knew about PVP is right.
If the only time you're realistically going to face PVP is when someone is coming at you with lethal poisons like perraine with a backstab action, how are you going to realistically improve your odds of surviving and still playing through your character's storyline once the political turns of the game have decided that your character is a target?
We want this to feel like a game where we have some control over what happens to our character, but when it comes to being PKed I wonder if that's really a thing.
So, the point of this thread is, arm us with the knowledge that our character would have, ICly, having lived in this horrifying world where death can happen at any second, would know. For instance, people would probably share stories, like, 'Amos survived another attempt on his life. How did he pull it off?' 'He did /this/ and /that,/ you know, everyone works on that so that they aren't next to be a dead headless body in the street.'
So, what is it? Here are my thoughts below, having gone through >50 characters over about a decade of playing armageddon:
1.) spamwalk so nobody can backstab you, forget pausing at intersections to emote or talk or think, just keep going, unless a NPC templar/soldier or two is in the same room as you
2.) Walk around, weapons +/- shield out at all times even if it makes no sense
3.) don't bother with scan alone -- scan, and type >look shadow constantly, I mean constantly, at all times
4.) walk in groups -- witnesses are a bad thing for murderers
5.) maybe train and practice? But this doesn't seem to matter at all, if you train your character 100 hours, as long as they trained for 500 hours, you need to train another 400 hours -- effectively -- for it to matter
6.) maybe have a bodyguard, but then you can be thrown at with poison or shot at, and also training guarding is weird, and takes a long long time and a lot of repetitive RP
7.) hire assassins to kill everyone else who could possibly be a threat to you, to continue the cycle of constant backstabbing murder chains (this is a reality)
8.) don't sit down at bars, just stand with your weapon out, you know, like everyone has their drinks
9.) don't go to bars at all, just really, why would you be stationary for any given period of time
10.) act very strangely in apartments, you know, with the assumption that 2 knife-bearing creepos are invisibly inside with you despite you having a high degree of practice scanning for hidden people, looking explicitly around you for threats before entering (see #3), and so on. Then, never relax in an apartment, because seriously, who the fuck does that -- don't bother to pursue a family storyline in an apartment (why would you raise a family in a death-trap?) And don't bother to leave the keyboard and screen behind, no, this isn't that kind of game, you may as well be 360-noscoping in whatever pub-g game you like here, this is armageddon, or does it even matter if you're at keyboard? Well, carry a poisoned blade and shield at all times, then we can have a nice apartment RP scene.
11.) Don't quit out in an apartment, FTB your scenes with anyone else, then say it's now the 'next day', go to a tavern and quit out there. (real practice IG)
12.) When in an apartment, wear your key on your wrist. It's a lot harder to steal something attached to someone's wrist or equipment than it is to steal it from their inventory.
the above are all for city PKs. I haven't been PKed in the deserts for a long time so I don't know how it goes lately but I hear arrows are still popular.
Any other ways we can not lose our storylines?
also, you may read into every single point I make above as a massive criticism of other people (ahem ahem, the PKing community) if you want, I don't care. I just am kind of tired of watching the status quo shift more and more towards an inane practice of PVP in my RPI and I am going to start a rant. Also if I were on the PK-delivering side I would probably use similar tactics. I don't really mean to criticize that -- I mean to say, 'this is the reality of the PK practice, so how do you as a player survive it?' Not everyone is do-or-die about their plots, some people are in it for the long game and actually want to survive and aren't just seeking to pile up bodies.
gee, I kinda wish I could play a role I didn't care about and could just play high-risk without worry! But that isn't my style..
finally, here are some ideas:
auto-draw. With a specific skill in a weapon, being attacked causes your character to try and automatically arm themselves before the first blow is landed or soon after the first blow is landed, depending on the degree of success with the skill. You're AFK? no problem, your character is not a fucking idiot so the first thing they will do if attacked is try and draw a weapon.
wimpy-flee. Yep, bring in this time-tested feature. When you're AFK, the enemy must go against an AI controlled you that is trying to just survive at a basic level. Maybe make it so the AI is smart enough to not run intentionally off a cliff, trying to flee s or e or n if it knows the west is a cliff-drop.
auto-quit option. If the game detects you went AFK for 20 mins, and that isn't what you usually do, then it logs you off with a quit ooc. Will help if you get disconnected and can't log back in due to a storm also.
virtualize the apartment setting a lot more. Have people check on rooms, have the doors act like doors do when you enter them, be able to codedly put a big, jingly, ringy bell that would tell you if the fucking door was unlatched and opened discreetly, rethink lockpicking in a few ways, especially how the game handles failed attempts. (ahem, just a delay of the inevitable)
and other stuff, which gets more into combat mechanics.
Thank you Harmless for outlining why Armageddon PVP is so shitty, if actual fighting is what you're after.
12) Always talk to everyone everywhere you go! be a mouthpiece, an audible scene. When you're engaging, ppl (attackers) will be far less likely to strike you down mid-conversation. (not true always, I just wish it was) But if nothing else you'll make them feel stooopid for attacking you while you keep a conversation going.
I'm sorry for your loss of a loved character, we've all been there.
These notes you touched on however; might cause more death than help...
You correctly identified the fact that PvP almost invariably takes the form of inescapable ganks. Peraine, backstab, 5v1, templar execution, or the time-honored apartment fandango. This is because if you try to kill someone and fail, there's a 90% chance that your days are numbered, unless that someone was a total nobody--and even then, you might just have given them a lifelong goal of ending your ass. Anyone who's relevant enough to give you a reason to kill them better be dead when you try or your character has a guaranteed expiration date.
In a game like this, which is effectively a tiny village where everyone knows everyone, you can't usually survive having someone around whose life's mission is to kill you, unless your character is a templar with protective spells and HG guards 24/7 or something. If you attempt to murder someone and fail, it's a complete certainty that their sole focus for the rest of time is to kill you back--not that that's particularly strange or anything, but given the fact that anonymity and laying low is next to impossible in this game, it presents a problem: you come at Amos, you best not miss because Amos will find you. It's really hard to make long-term enemies unless you're both looking for that very thing for the sake of RP, which is rare. Maybe having a second city-state again would help.
Part of the issue is that conventional combat is close to useless for the purpose of murder. If you walk up to a dude with your sword and attack him the normal way, odds of landing a kill are pretty much nil. Take away the usual PKing strategies and you might end up with a game that barely has PvP because it's just too easy flee or to stay around the legions of NPC soldiers milling about every settlement. If you want someone dead, you pretty much have to do it in one of those cheesy ways. The fact that you codedly operate at 100% capacity until fully incapacitated means that merely hurting someone accomplishes nothing.
At the end of the day, I think the frequency of PKing could be reduced if the game had more of a storyline. PKing often happens because there's no other way for players to feel relevant and powerful. When you've played the same character for months and nothing big has really happened the whole time, your mind begins to see every little controversy as an opportunity to make something happen, and there are very few things you can do to someone that they can't just ignore. Taking their stuff is kind of whatever, every veteran player knows how to effortlessly make more money than they could possibly need. Ruining someone's reputation is nearly impossible in a game where most players know eachother OOC. Maiming is highly frowned upon and will quickly earn you a reputation as a griefer that noone wants to RP with. So people end up PKing. It's the only conflict action that you know will work if carried out succesfully. Stealing someone's couch just doesn't have the same kind of "fuck you" factor.
I don't think PvP is a bad thing. The game needs to have some of it, otherwise the whole premise becomes an illusion. Zalanthas should be unsafe, and character lives should be finite--but there are definitely things that routinely get in the way of good PvP or turn it into bad PvP. The main one is that if you can't kill someone before they can type 'flee,' or at least prevent the command from resolving via bash or locked door or whatever, you probably can't kill them, and that kind of death is pretty unsatisfying to most people.
What I miss most of all is conflict that doesn't end in death; but that seems to be a pipe dream. If you cut someone, they'll be scared of the various ways you could instakill them and will endeavor to do that to you just to protect themselves. Having enemies is too dangerous. It's a shame that there's so little room for it. Over the years I've come to learn that if you instigate conflict with someone, even if it's fairly minor at first, you better be prepared for when they attempt to murder you, because they usually will. Often they're starved for things to do and are delighted at the opportunity, so they accidentally escalate the conflict to milk it for all it's worth. Happens time after time because there's not a whole lot else going on. Armageddon's story has really ground to a halt.
Quote from: Greve on November 04, 2019, 07:11:01 AM
If you attempt to murder someone and fail, it's a complete certainty that their sole focus for the rest of time is to kill you back--not that that's particularly strange or anything, but given the fact that anonymity and laying low is next to impossible in this game, it presents a problem: you come at Amos, you best not miss because Amos will find you.
I think its also pertinent to mention that its not just Amos who will find you. Any friends he has will likely be elated at the idea of having an "enemy" to chase, or someone to "go after". Not only did you fail the kill, likely pissing off your own boss or person who paid you, but now you have 1 + X number of people coming after you, who will stop at nothing because its their 'quest'.
To fail in PvP is to say "I don't care about the rest of my PCs life". We all want to play in a game where that isn't true. A game where you can attempt to kill someone, they got the upper hand and you had to run away, but its okay. You'll bring two friends next time, and wait for things to cool down.
Except that person knows someone who is mudsexing the local AoD Militia, who complains to a bored Templar who wants to 'root out malcontents" and suddenly the fucking Ministry of the Mind is scoping out your hideout, and the Trade Ministry has assassins holding knives to 'rinthi fences and anyone who deal with them, because Sally SucksAtCombat didn't finish the job.
Do we have any examples of games that do this any better in terms of actual mechanics we can implement? I'm super interested in this kind of stuff.
I agree with the general "there's nothing better to do" reasoning. I've ran into plenty of people IG who go straight for the pk. I even know a few players who all they do is hide/have some evasion and never leave that safety because either a) they've pk'd alot and now everyone wants them dead or b) they're a nasty, horrible 3k option that so many want to put the feather in their cap of. Pk seems to be an almost defining concept of plots and the game as a whole at the moment.
Makes me mucho mucho sad.
Quote from: deskoft on November 04, 2019, 10:09:47 AM
Do we have any examples of games that do this any better in terms of actual mechanics we can implement? I'm super interested in this kind of stuff.
There's been a number of muds built on the RPI Codebase which stems from the original Shadows of Isildur (which in turn stems from Harshlands, I think) where there are none of the instagib mechanics that Arm has. No backstab, no miracle insta-paralysis poisons, no 120 stun damage club swings to the head, etc. Instead fleeing takes time and is proportionally harder the more people are attacking you. It also has wounds code and bleeding, so you aren't just totally saved the moment you get out of combat, and recovery from injury takes more than five minutes so you actually care if someone hurt you. These games still had plenty of PvP, it just didn't always lead to death; and when it did, it was death in battle, not "hum di dum, weather's nice toda--MANTISHEAD!"
Better ranged combat code would be nice, too. Holding aim when someone moves, for instance, so your target can't just step south and disappear form sight in the cardinal directions grid. It just always felt like those games matched up more closely with what I think combat in such a setting would really be like, instead of Armageddon's combat which is crazily polarized between 'I kill you with one instant command' and 'I have to hit you sixteen times with a longsword for you to die because I didn't roll insane strength.' Anime assassins who kill with a single stab should not be such a commonplace thing, and conventional battle should not be such a rarity. It's a setting shaped by armies and warlords, but the actual gameplay ends up feeling more like text-based Skyrim.
Codedly, the RPI system was kind of alright for regular combat. Elves and archery make a lot of things unplayable.
Arm-related, though, I think we need to focus more on the consequences of a failure. With room for people going against the grain, a failed assassination will result in:
- The assassin being killed by the person who bankrolled them in indie OR The assassin being killed by their boss to save face from the person who bankrolled it
- The person attacked summoning every available force to combat this plague of 'some guy with a knife'
- Templars and AoD PCs being summoned to root out this threat to civilization
- The assassin will have their entire description and mdesc Way'd to every person capable of killing a scrab, with a 10,000 bounty
- An arena event will occur where someone, usually the assassin, will be killed in combat after being found by someone's pet magicker
I mean... or... just peraine one-hit kill the guy because holy shit the nuclear response.
And the response is valid, don't get me wrong, but its way too cumbersome and commonplace. You were able to type "flee", and now the whole city of PCs wants me dead and people are demanding Virtual Resources to chase me down. Its ridiculous.
Please try and keep the discussion here relevant and respectful to all parties. I have deleted a post that was toeing the line.
Something to consider is definitely less lethal methods of retribution.
It's partly the result of a systemic issue where code is valued over roleplay.
People who value story-focused gameplay get picked off and picked on by those who value and abuse coded strength and especially by those who enjoy engineering conflict for the sake of it. Coded strength and story-based roleplay can coexist, but the simple fact of the matter is when an abusive PC starts throwing their weight around, they either a) complain when a realistic world response happens, or b) get away with it with little to no repercussion. In scenario B, most PCs who enjoy story-focused gameplay will either play less or vacate the premises and play elsewhere.
Instead of finding ways to include others and pursue goals, portions of the playerbase seem to wait for something interesting to happen, and when that something interesting is "I got stabbed" ... the rest follows. Or they shit-stir for the sake of shit-stirring, force conflict that is just tiresome and annoying, and wonder why nobody wants to play along.
Work on building stories and bringing the gameworld to life and the rest happens naturally, including conflict that escalates believably. Be willing to give another player a scene and let stories evolve. But...
There is also the fact that this game was built on a hack and slash framework but is now an RPI, so coded realities occasionally still cause burps where roleplay and code are supposed to meet and support each other. That has improved dramatically over the years, but could likely still use some attention. The strength stat has a ridiculous range in PCs, and narrowing that range to more closely match original Dark Sun stats would likely do wonders for abuses there.
There is also a general lack of overarching story and goal. Tuluk is an awkward white elephant looming to the north. When left to their own devices, most players either do not feel empowered to, are unable to, or do not have the time/position/ability to start truly world-encompassing plots, leaving them spinning their wheels with smaller stuff. That smaller stuff can certainly be interesting, but it shouldn't be on player shoulders to keep the larger narrative afloat.
I could go on. There is no one simple cause & effect or solution. Encouraging story-focused gameplay and teaching players how to consider the gameworld, how to create and be involved in plots, and how to play believable characters and plots is one step, but it's an uphill battle when you have OOC mentors teaching you that to survive you have to do x, y, and z code-focused thing.
It's an uphill battle when really the only sense of progression a lot of players get is to Get Gud and kill characters who annoy theirs. It's an uphill battle when petty schoolroom drama takes precedence over slow-burn plots because it's easier and accessible, but too often devolves into ridiculousness and ultimately drives players away.
There is amazing roleplay to be found in this game, but it does require that you have patience and be willing to inhabit the world. Not just look at it as a collection of skills and coded survival strategies. You have to be willing to lose.
I'm sorry someone PK'd you. I don't see anything really constructive in the original post, though. Literally none of the ideas presented have anything to do with 'every PK is a perraine backstab,' so it seems pretty sarcastic, but assuming it's not: it's a PK game, and when it's do or die when it comes to killing, it follows that people will try to do it quickly and quietly.
Make fleeing a one shot try, or make it hard to run away, and then people don't need to try to one-shot as often. But it's a PK game. People will die. People will kill one another. There's perma-death. I've seen a hell of a lot more spam fleeing than I've seen people using deadly poisons in-game.
It's the usual circle of horseshit.
One player post points out how player killing abjectly retards any sort of story focused roleplay. Then the next handful of posts will wax on and on about how the game is supposed to be about pk while flying overhead of the past post's observations. And then staff will proclaim loudly that there isn't a problem.
But for those story driven players; the only real solution is to always inhabit a meta perspective where anyone (that you don't know oocly) will ratfuck you out of your character via the most efficient means at their disposal.
Is this bad roleplay? Is it bad for the game? Of fucking course it is. But hey, you'll at least be able to enjoy your character without getting ratfucked.
thanks to those who had thoughtful replies to my rant.
for those who think I died
You have been playing for 73 days and 10 hours.
If nobody discusses these issues then they fester, player feelings are hurt and issues are not brought up. If reading this thread helps someone who enjoy the game more (ahem, longer) then this thread has succeeded imo. I am interested in telling stories, I AM willing to lose, and I have been PKed before, yes, several times, and yes it was with perraine or heramide backstabs, but now is not one of those times, it is me commenting on a trend I know to be real. When I died I took it and moved on without a peep on the GDB. After I could confidently say there was a sustained pattern of things ending in a way that didn't satisfy me, I decided to start a post.
The fact that perraine poison was recently nerfed for its rotting code is kinda proof that staff sees the balance the same way I do and has already taken actions to stem some of the tide, but this thread is meant to help players like me, who are not good at minmaxing the code, don't suicide when we land a bad strength roll, and who want to still have a shot at surviving long enough to tell a compelling story.
He says after a skimming of the thread:
I remember a time when we had a Templar or two (and maybe an active House Tor) who would open the Arena up for duels in Allanak. If people had a simmering grudge they could get their fight to the death sanctioned and have it out on the Arena floor. Maybe some sort of culture of dueling could be an answer to the question in the OP.
Quote from: slipshod on November 04, 2019, 10:18:19 PM
He says after a skimming of the thread:
I remember a time when we had a Templar or two (and maybe an active House Tor) who would open the Arena up for duels in Allanak. If people had a simmering grudge they could get their fight to the death sanctioned and have it out on the Arena floor. Maybe some sort of culture of dueling could be an answer to the question in the OP.
I dig it. Or even a duel of dishonor. The loser gets banished to the Labyrinth, regardless of station. It fits the mercurial sort of darkness of Allanak.
It doesn't have to be just an Allanak thing. There's a fighting pit in Luirs, and every wilderness room outside the settlements is a poor man's duel ground. The coded infrastructure is there; what we'd need is the culture.... being called out... public shaming for refusing, etc.
People who argue that PK is almost always a surprise and those who argue that there is too much PK are kind of arguing opposite points.
The requirement for PKs to be sudden, brutal, quick, or require certain maneuvering (ie luring into locked apartments) means that PKs are rarer and more complicated. They require either overwhelming force (multiple people), unusual materials like poisons (buying them off others), or locked apartments (trickery, deceit, betrayal). All of this involves roleplay, involving of other people, or significant expenditures.
This makes PKing 'more' rarer, because it's so expensive and convoluted. If you make PKs possible without all that, then they will become easier and more common place. Which would only encourage using PKing as the one and only solution to all of your problems.
Remember Godfather? Professional Mafiosi, for whom murder is their stock and trade. They either use exactly the same tactics we do in Zalanthas to assure certain victory, or ... or they are sacrificing their own lives for the glory of their family.
Arena, duels, etc. While nice, is very anti Zalanthan in theme. When you're eeking out the living, enduring insults and debasements from those in higher position then you, starving, and periodically struggling with the dilemma of whether, or not you should partake of cannibalism. It is strange to assume that you will put your life on the line when someone says, "You too jozhalshit to go outside the gates and fight it out?"
To the surprise of no one, I feel like PK is broken in this game due to reasons that are heavily due to lack of social reinforcement but also code. I know and see the staff are taking steps to try and fix some issues we players have brought up, but those solution attempts are also creating other survivability issues and even as a long time vet (or especially because of being a long time vet?) I find the grind so taxing and reward non-existent that at present I'm experiencing total burnout after less than a year and a half of being back. I am definitely a social player, but even when I focus on code I just CAN'T out grind a player that is code based and has more play times. My RP experience has pretty consistently been ruined since I returned to this game by code god and PK heavy play with little respect for game lore. The reward for being an RPer just hasn't been there for me.
Everybody is constantly screaming and shitting themselves and killing eachother every single moment for little actual reason, and as a player and as a character I find it annoying and boring. Everyone has such a murderboner that they'd rather not think of inventive solutions to their problems.
What happened? Why wasn't this a problem previously? Is it purely to do with the code/class changes or is there a bit of a culture shift occurring as well with the playerbase? Any ideas?
Quote from: Nile on November 05, 2019, 03:33:08 AM
What happened? Why wasn't this a problem previously? Is it purely to do with the code/class changes or is there a bit of a culture shift occurring as well with the playerbase? Any ideas?
It has always been a problem, but talking about code and deaths has been loosened significantly over the years.
I'd argue that the average age of the playerbase has skewed upwards, which comes with it less time to play as more responsibilities roll into life. Its no longer easy to just no-life a new PC, we all have a few hours a week to dedicate to this hobby. Then someone who can nolife turaals all day that we've never heard of, gets picked up by a Templar, given top-tier armor and weapons, and they become an elite 1-hit assassin.
Its always been this way, but dying was accepted. Lately, its less accepted because we have this great divide between "its an RP game" and "but its still a MUD".
In the defense of twinks (of which I am one), I've met very few that twinked just to get one over on another player. Most of them do it because they feel they have to be 1-hit wonders. If you assassinate a popular person, noble or not, you've got an entire city coming after you.
In regards to RP I kind of have a feeling the slew of changes to both classes and game world mechanics has more people dabbling/testing/experimenting to re-learn how things are and establish a new "normal" from a functional perspective. I recall a lot of players scored pretty high on the explorer side of things in that Bartle test post.
As for PK I think PK has always kind of been like this. Backstab apartment peraine etc. It might be more prevalent now that some things that used to be super dangerous like full branched full mage guilds are no longer, so you don't get those omg moments with a bunch of fireworks quite so often.
Then of course there is the 'what is the alternative' issue. I've seen at least one alternative to murder and quite frankly would have preferred if assassins had been chasing me all the time. That being absolute and total social suicide/isolation or 'reputation ruining' as its called, which for me just leads to apathy because of seriously reduced opportunity to role play at all, since everyone hates you because X Y Z. In those cases I usually end up dying to a scrab or something stupid out of boredom.
That all being said I have seen some restraint in PK lately in a few situations that played out well. So not all hope is lost.
QuoteIt has always been a problem, but talking about code and deaths has been loosened significantly over the years.
I don't particularly agree with this. Depending on how far back you go, violence without advantage seemed far more prevalent to me. Alley fights with no poison where you were likely to get away. Raids where you really did have to be in a particularly bad position to get caught. There were a lot more instances of combat with other people without death...and I say without death even though I had far less knowledge of code.
The thing is...so did most other people. Poisons were there, but the deadly ones were much more rare, because of a much lower emphasis on longevity and a far more hostile environment. There was a lot less overreaction and justice-seeking, i.e. Shooting an arrow at someone outside the gates did not result in byn units and templars coming to secure the desert and make it safe. Death in early periods of characters was easier due to more random baddies in unpredictable locations and less demand from the playerbase that every death be meaningful.
(Edit: As an addition pertaining to dogpiling and justice-seeking...overall, my general impression is that there is a starvation for conflict when I was playing antagonists in the last few years. People seemed to really -want- bad guys to hunt down, but it made for banding together to make that low risk, whereas in my first 6-8 years of the game, I was struggling, trying, so hard to stay out of the way of conflict just to try and survive longer. People wouldn't band together much, but it just made a lot more constant, low-level conflict that could always explode. Inter-house intrigue, north vs south, raiders, criminals, personal grudges, overarching villains and sorcerers...half the time, I got swept up into risk and near death without even understanding what was going on, it turned into pure fight and flight.)
It wasn't a lawless game, it wasn't just a game of griefers, but there was a lot more of an expectation that character loss was just part of it.
I feel that some of those points contribute to why things are as they are. Some of those are just my exposure to older states of the game (our experiences might just be wildly different, entirely possible). But particularly the fact that most of us know the game pretty well, and have easy access to longevity and a general idea of 'how good' we are...of course the ambush is more common.
Armageddon Special Forces is like 3/4 of the playerbase now. XD
There was a lot less overreaction and justice-seeking, i.e. Shooting an arrow at someone outside the gates did not result in byn units and templars coming to secure the desert and make it safe.
[/quote]
This really depends on who you are shooting at. Templars and byn aren't going to give a shit if the person you shot at is some nobody. Someone in this thread touched on it earlier. If you wanna be a raider and attack 'important' people, be prepared for the shitstorm that follows.
That being said, everyone nowadays is important to atleast one high power pc except Breedo Suave. So as a raider, not attacking important people means going and killing npc humanoids that don't exist in the southern deserts or sitting around.
I concur with Armaddict. Just anecdotally, there used to be a lot more face to face violence. People would try to kill you by typing <kill you>. There would still be poisoning, apartment kills or compound kills were still highly prevalent, but now the bar seems there is a high hesitance to engage unless you can be sure of killing someone. This comes about I think because of all the aforementioned factors. People are highly invested in their characters and time/karma spent, and conflict seems to devolve to blood-feuds until both ally PC groups are put down. It's also much tougher to gain distance from conflict without a second large in game area - if your PC dies to Allanak or Storm conflict, there isn't a major area to go play in without being immediately back in the same PC arena.
Things I don't know - is it minor infractions people tend to inflate? "Oh, you insulted me, to maintain un-shame now you get killed?" Is it the intolerance of players for rivals with the fear that - if you let a rival stew or sit, they'll just be able to ace you out if you don't get to them first?
I still think that the #1 conflict improvement in the game would be to allow Mdesc hiding and anonymity. Because right now - people lean on remaining anonymous by 1) achieving master+ hide/sneak and being completely invisible or 2) dead PCs tell no tales.
Quote from: Bogre on November 06, 2019, 10:17:11 AM
Things I don't know - is it minor infractions people tend to inflate? "Oh, you insulted me, to maintain un-shame now you get killed?" Is it the intolerance of players for rivals with the fear that - if you let a rival stew or sit, they'll just be able to ace you out if you don't get to them first?
In my experience, it's not based so much on the size of the infraction. It's more about the fact that a lot of players are so starved for story and character purpose that they'll leap at any opportunity to "make something happen," but with the limited tools available to the common player, PKing is one of the very few things you can do that actually matters to others. Nobles barely exist anymore for all intents and purposes, compared to the days when they were a common sight around both cities and had much more freedom to do things other than sign their names on this year's cookie-cutter festival, so political retaliation was more feasible in the past. There was large-scale conflict where you could betray people and switch sides. There were many more important items floating around, like magic or metal equipment, which could be stolen. Apartments were actually usable since there weren't thirty active burglars in the city, so people kept stuff there that was worth robbing. Over the years, the game has gradually shifted toward a state where there's not a whole lot to do, so killing becomes one of the few ways that you can make others care about your existence, and most other forms of instigation/retaliation have become futile due to the erosion of game depth.
QuoteI still think that the #1 conflict improvement in the game would be to allow Mdesc hiding and anonymity. Because right now - people lean on remaining anonymous by 1) achieving master+ hide/sneak and being completely invisible or 2) dead PCs tell no tales.
I think spicing up the story aspect of the game would go a lot further than things like mdesc masks. On the list of things that foster and improve conflict, masks would be somewhere down the middle, below plot and character purpose and meaningful clan goals. Give players things to care about other than having the biggest coded dick on the block and I think we'll see less of the hair-trigger PKing that Armageddon has become known for in recent years. I don't believe most players really want to go around murdering all the time, but if that's the only way they can feel like their PCs are relevant and noticeable at all, they will. If the game had something resembling an actual story, something to sink your teeth into and make a name for yourself, people would be less prone to PKing at the drop of a hat.
When there are folks who are win at all costs and they get into positions of power or coded power, it becomes a race to the bottom.
Comparison to the 'old days'
- Apartments didn't exist, then when they did, were more rare
- Regular poison used to be more lethal, because there were way fewer cures
- Less ornate and custom items
- Much less focus on 'building up' and most emphasis on story
Not that building is a bad thing, but characters have a lot more to lose now. Warehouses, player started clans, cutom items, staff sponsorship, etc.
I don't remember any of that stuff 15+ years ago.
Quote from: Twilight on November 06, 2019, 11:54:37 AM
When there are folks who are win at all costs and they get into positions of power or coded power, it becomes a race to the bottom.
Just as relevant: When there are folks who view character progression for ambitious characters with other characters as obstacles as 'win at all costs', you're not going to have a particularly high bar either. Sure, you may write out lots of fantastic things, but if your conflicts don't make you feel that small bit of fear, just like your character, of 'What if they get an elf to knife me in an alley, I should be careful', you've made a pretty shallow Armageddon story.
Cutthroat actions, conniving, plotting, and ambushing are part of the Armageddon world. This is not a statement of some dude justifying his actions, it's a statement that the 'win vs roleplay' facet does not really exist: characters do very harsh things in Armageddon for a variety of reasons, whether those characters are played by humans or they are just part of the story.
Quote from: roughneck on November 06, 2019, 11:59:41 AM
Comparison to the 'old days'
- Apartments didn't exist, then when they did, were more rare
- Regular poison used to be more lethal, because there were way fewer cures
- Less ornate and custom items
- Much less focus on 'building up' and most emphasis on story
Not that building is a bad thing, but characters have a lot more to lose now. Warehouses, player started clans, cutom items, staff sponsorship, etc.
I don't remember any of that stuff 15+ years ago.
Sorry, I'm not sure why you brought this up but my assumption is that you read my post as a 'good ol' days' post. It wasn't, I was saying, anecdotally, that there seem to be some factors between then and now that changed the face of player vs player conflict, with particular emphasis on when that conflict is combat-focused. Some of those things can't really be helped (i.e. Player experience; we have all gotten pretty good at recognizing opportunity vs folley in many scenarios), and some might be able to be helped (i.e. What's being done now with code to try to make poisons less available despite more access). Some things shifted that made it easier to survive for seriously long periods of time, which increased bandwagon approaches and availability of hard-to-get things whether via wealth or direct skills, etc etc. There's just a lot of things that contribute to why violence between players has become -significantly- more lethal. Again, anecdotally speaking.
I am in no way against building and progression of the game, with the only caveat being that sometimes, after a period of time, re-examining changes to see if they had the desired effect first, and unforeseen bad effects after, is a good thing.
It is a valid concern, though, that players have 'more to lose' for their investments than before. And the acquisition of these new things requires a lot more ... I don't know the word... tenacity and survivability on behalf of the player. I'm not saying it used to be that you collect 100 blocky stone and you built a wall, but changes were more prevalent. Staff were more "If you RP it, it shall be" and it has now become "If we feel like working on it, and 2 admins approve of the building, we will send it along to a builder".
So my Byn Sergeant who is looking to, one day, own his own instrument shop has a LOT more up against him, and requires a longer period of 'survivability' and 'proof to staff that they can survive (in terms of RL days played)' that I have to kill my enemies. I can't leave someone alive who can ruin their plans.
In the before times, I was a Byn Sergeant because... well. Nobody else was. Lets go raid a spider nest, make 1500 coins per surviving member, buy a new sword from Salarr and drink the rest of it. Now we have so many more PCs who have goals and IC dreams that we can't risk it. If I want a warehouse, I have to be alive for what... 6 RL months or something? Plus make enough coin on the now dry-as-the-Vrun market every IC month (5000 coins every 2 weeks? Seems right.)
It's a double sided thing. Not only do we have players consistently gaining a lot more investment-time to lose...we also have a lot more unrelated characters looking to nose their way into conflict that they need to break the monotony. In other words, your admittedly sloppy attempt that -could- have worked but didn't...usually doesn't just make you one enemy anymore.
Hell, you used to be able to try to knife someone in an alley, go sit near them at the bar, and listen to them try to rally people to arrest you or help them get you, usually to no avail. This is what I mean by the justice seeking...there is a lot more prevalence of 'right the wrongs', even if it's a fringe party.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 06, 2019, 12:28:52 PM
Sorry, I'm not sure why you brought this up but my assumption is that you read my post as a 'good ol' days' post.
More sharing a personal sentiment than trying to call you out for yours! All good my man.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 06, 2019, 01:03:28 PM
It's a double sided thing. Not only do we have players consistently gaining a lot more investment-time to lose...we also have a lot more unrelated characters looking to nose their way into conflict that they need to break the monotony. In other words, your admittedly sloppy attempt that -could- have worked but didn't...usually doesn't just make you one enemy anymore.
Hell, you used to be able to try to knife someone in an alley, go sit near them at the bar, and listen to them try to rally people to arrest you or help them get you, usually to no avail. This is what I mean by the justice seeking...there is a lot more prevalence of 'right the wrongs', even if it's a fringe party.
Seriously. I remember having a lot of PVP like 10 years ago that was nothing like today. I remember spending two fucking hours on and off fighting with several other PCs in the 'rinth, chasing each other down etc. Nobody died and it was a lot of fun. Same for the PK characters that came along (Moogan back in Shorty's day.....amen to Shorty btw. dude got me hooked) who would hassle and fuck with people, jumping you, mugging you etc, but I don't remember much insta-ganking going on except for those high level assassinations.
Learn your heirachy spot, and stay in your lane. Pay your dues and don't grumble.
Stop acting like a hero.
I want to agree with Mansa. But I'm playing less so it's hard to say. Is there really some gamut of sudden PKing going on right now? Is it really a big problem? This used to be something you'd only see people complaining about when they recently lost a PC and needed to vent.
Compared to even 10 years ago RGS, I would say...no. Very little PVP comparably and the actual PK's are abysmally small in number. Ignoring run ins with the law/Templars of course. To the point where I have been thinking of suggesting the motto be changed to "Skinned knees, Slightly crooked and sometimes rude people."
The number of long lived, really long lived and ancient PCs is crazy high, proof in and of itself I would say.
The changes to the mud in classes and magick make it harder then ever to PK other then surprise attacks, large groups or tricking or trapping one way or another.
Quote from: X-D on November 06, 2019, 07:19:13 PM
Compared to even 10 years ago RGS, I would say...no. Very little PVP comparably and the actual PK's are abysmally small in number. Ignoring run ins with the law/Templars of course. To the point where I have been thinking of suggesting the motto be changed to "Skinned knees, Slightly crooked and sometimes rude people."
The number of long lived, really long lived and ancient PCs is crazy high, proof in and of itself I would say.
The changes to the mud in classes and magick make it harder then ever to PK other then surprise attacks, large groups or tricking or trapping one way or another.
Hard to say. I've had similar experiences with other people it seems, in which a PC was PK'd for literally no reason. This has happened multiple times. Other PKs were deserved, some I think were way overboard for the grievance; but that's cool, it's Zalanthas. It's when someone hunts down my obviously chargen PCs for no reason with no emotes/says/shouts/anything and kills them. One guy I even escaped from and he found me later. Same deal even though I would have obviously given up my chargen gear to live. Died like I was in a hack and slash game instead.
[redacted by Brokkr] Dude you seriously need to stop the vaguebook griping about that incident.
The quantity of pvp deaths is roughly the same. The strategy most often used has changed a lot, driven by many factors as said. A desire not to get caught, more familiarity with effective approaches, and more retaliation plots.
Haphazard PK attempts are definitely more rare. Usually when I get to 20+ days played I had at least one pvp scrap that I survived. Now, if I am targeted by a pk attempt at all, I will probably die.
People are disappearing a lot more. Yeah I can't say they were stored vs PKed vs PvE'ed. But mysterious absences have gotten more common than bodies ending up found outside or on the pile.
This is not necessarily a bad thing! I say that literally in the subject line for a reason. I didn't just die, but I have noticed a trend and it does seem like some vets are noticing differences also.
Some vets commented on my prior chats that the majority style of PvP in Nak has shifted to cloaks and daggers and disappearances. I agree.
The thing is, that if we want to enjoy our deaths, we really want more of the buildup. The buildup includes recognizing a threat, recognizing what you are doing or not doing to deal with it, and creating storyline and participation to involve others in the outcome. With open quarrels and disputes, you get more involvement. With a sudden apartment death, there may be little to no involvement in others, buildup or intrigue.
My goal here was not even hidden. I want to even the playing field. I don't need nerfs or code changes. I just want people to get why my character is yelling at them about being out at night or having no means to survive an attack. This is Zalanthas. It is a cruel world. Welcome to it. Be ready for its upsides and downsides. It isn't too hard to be long lived. I am not a twitchy pro twink at all. But I hit 20days plus on almost every role. I get to start my characters lives with my past failures behind me powering my decisions. My stat rolls have nearly universally sucked for years and years but I still play and live. You can do it, tell stories, be involved, have fun. It does take handling some code features which I am GLAD staff are finally becoming more open about. Then we can all better enjoy our harsh world simulation RPI.
But if staff felt like tweaking things further, that can work also.
There are a ton of factors to this so it's kind of a complex thing to tackle. I honestly don't know how I'd handle it. The three things I'd think of on a very -shallow- level (i.e. There may be serious issues with them under deeper inspection or in practice):
1) Sorry, Brokkr, I know this is beating a dead horse. The new classes really need a separation between stealthiest and deadliest. Miscreant can have all the stealth and best poison...but infiltrators, while obviously less stealthy, should be the effective 'defense' or 'hunter' of the stealth approach. Edit: For clarity, no scan for miscreants. Bigger scan on infiltrators. Even if it's at the cost of one of their virtually useless weapon skills.
2) Continue the work on poison availability. It's early to see the effect of the new poison degradation, but honestly, I'd just move some of the sources and make the ones you can't really move far more risky. Players are incredibly risk averse right now, and making it so that the market for the truly uncommon poisons is much smaller makes for more easily botched attempts.
3) This is for the players.
Once, I played a character that received a report of a guy doing some bad thing or another against my noble's associate. I tricked them, I got them to follow me outside the gates, I attacked them, they escaped after a few good hits. I didn't find a place to lock them in, I didn't run them down, I didn't poison weapons...I just let my character be the badass he was with very little care about if someone found him later.
Good on them, they went back roleplaying their wounds...a messed up knee, a blood stream, and they were calling me out on my failed murder attempt as I walked back in. "Ha! You failed, I still live." Before I could even respond, someone else said with amusement while looking them over. "It certainly looks like a failure, that man isn't a raider. Was there a lesson?"
They ended up limping away, amid appreciation given to my character over delivering a well deserved beating.
So in summary: Sometimes a beating is good enough. Sometimes, a beating doesn't need punishment. Sometimes, we can take it as a notion of 'the way things are' vs 'Vendetta for the rest of my character's life'. I know this can be difficult, but this honestly may be the best way for us all to get around it. It does require that templars, nobles, merchants, thugs, and innocents all acknowledge that justice is a very different thing on this world, and we all don't need to build huge enemyships over character pride.
Edit: And after writing that story, another idea of a % value argument for mercy so that you can fully intend on this sort of beating to various degrees. Bonus is that crimflag types can have different mercy values for soldiers in the future.
So, reading the first post in this thread was pretty cringe-worthy. As I continued to read, I wasn't sure if it was sarcasm or not, so I continued reading through it, hoping for a punchline that I never found. It seems the OP was seriously suggesting those behaviors in game, when they don't make any sense from an IC perspective.
It's complete metagaming. Yes, kills in the game are generally surprises for a lot of reasons. But adopting those "safeguards" to extend the life of your PC makes your PC intolerable to RP with. Romantically involved characters that are so deathly afraid of "apartments" that they'd prefer to go mudsex their romantic interest in the bakery are just ridiculous.
It's not the "assassin" characters that you turn off by behaving this way IC. They will find a way to kill people regardless. It's everyone else. I'd contend that behaving this way IC would be more likely to make you a target, simply because other players OOCly will have a distaste for how "gamey" you're RPing your character.
I know I've had the displeasure of seeing people RP characters using all of the behaviors suggested in the OP, and while I hadn't wanted to kill them IC prior to them displaying said behavior, the behavior DID sour IC relationships with my PCs because it didn't make sense.
I do agree that certain things should be changed. Apartments shouldn't be the deathtraps that they are, in my opinion. But despite apartments often being deathtraps for PCs, they are not such for the VNPC world. They are much like apartments IRL. Sure, bad things happen in real apartments too, but you don't see people going straight homeless to avoid the possibility of bad things happening in a private residence. So, despite the fact that the code allows for apartment deathtraps, it's still incredibly poor RP to have all of your characters view apartments as deathtraps, because it makes no sense. We should RP our characters with the vNPC world in mind, and understand that the code doesn't always reflect the reality of the world.
Instead of compromising your RP, have a little integrity. RP a living, breathing character, and die from time to time. And if things like apartment deathtraps are a problem, address that issue. Bring it up on the forums and discuss ideas to bring that coded situation in line with the RPed reality that you're encouraged to roleplay, rather than reducing your RP to twinky, ridiculous actions that brings down the overall RP quality of the RPI.
Death SHOULD be quick and brutal. That is a reflection of reality. But roleplayers shouldn't let coded issues compromise their RP. That makes them just as bad, if not worse than the twinks who they're responding to.
EDITED TO ADD: I think there are a lot of things that could encourage alternatives to PK. I've discussed those in other threads, but this thread is about behaviors intended to safeguard against "surprise" PKs, so that is what I responded to.
Of course there was sarcasm in my OP. I am critiquing both the dominant PK statregy and the methods players use to beat them, which, obviously, are stagnating the RP environment. My writing style on the GDB is messy and blunt and people often misread the tone of my posts. I am not exactly writing for exposition here.
I try to propose both arguments for and against both sides of the debate in a way that showed how utterfly frustrating the status quo is.
Then I ended my OP by saying that this is how things are, but code changes can help fix it. However, I don't want to shove the ideas down staffs throat. I haven't exactly seen the game change when the GDB is used that way.
If my OP made you cringe, then it was effective at displaying the awful situation in game. I am seeing everyone's RP change over the way PK has spiraled and I don't like it at all. Embracing my 12 steps is not meant to "fix" the problem.
If staff watch my RP, they will uh, be finding me resting codedly in apartments aplenty, before and after I made this post.
Finally, I will go ahead and say this. Over a year ago I had a character murdered in an apartment. I woke up/logged on in it. Within less than a minute my key was stolen and I was given a say mid-backstab approach by a hidden person in the apartment, I noticed the key had been stolen from her inventory after the sudden "someone says" message. Tried to RP pleading for help, then the backstab gave my ~5days played PC heramide and that was it. "Sorry sweetheart, just bidness" was the line my PC heard.
Both my PC and that killer are dead >1 year ago now.
Around that time, another player, started her own thread on this topic. She did it for me. I appreciated that. I held my opinion then as I didn't want to break our OOC communication rules and divulge through my tone that I recently lost a character.
Well. Now I can talk openly about it and that is why this thread exists. The other thread focused on the decision to PK vs other plots. This one is going into the toxic meta effects of players overusing one PK strategy that has become OOC public knowledge. Both threads aren't meant to be focused on one player's experience but are meant to discuss how and why there are problems like these to begin with.
Here I felt we should openly discuss the shit that makes players hesitant to do what you are saying, Heade, which is roleplay a believable role.
By the way, you all should know that the 12 steps I've posted have all pretty much come from other players. If it made you cringe to read it here, imagine receiving the advice in that OP through IC means. It'll make you cringe there, to hear other people rp like so:
A templar says, 'Apartments are deathtraps.' But, there is nothing more to be said about it. The Templar will not be doing a thing about it, just commenting on this reality. (Codedly there is nothing really that can be done, but in a realistic Zalanthas, you'd think that the Templar could do something besides what they currently do, which is retaliate at times).
A noble says, 'Do not rest in your apartment, aide. It's too dangerous.' The more players hear this, the more it becomes a 'thing' where if you decide to RP as an aide, you'll be unable to participate in all that Private RP -- you'll just be too highly likely to be targeted by an assassin so that won't happen. (Ahem, this is something that has, and will continue to scare people away from those roles).
A commoner you share your apartment with says, 'wear your key so it can't be stolen.' That makes perfect sense, got it. (this just doesn't make sense and shouldn't be a solution to a big problem, but it apparently is.)
I have heard all these things over MULTIPLE characters I've played from MULTIPLE different players. The advice is given ICly, from respected players.
I am kind of frustrated that these 'tricks' are being passed along as legitimate RP, and the problem isn't the RPers, because they just want to help a storyline survive and to help someone achieve some growth and development for their character. To be able to survive a few IC years, at least into mid-adult years (20s, 30s, perhaps?) is realistic. But, with PvP standards as they are, how can anyone survive to adulthood and have children in any case if every apartment is a deathtrap?
So therefore, you can cringe all you want, but you are just cringing at the collective result of a problem which has been spread from player to player and affects everyone. Cringe away.
oh guys, I just had a GREAT code idea. Make scan a passively repeating action that occurs when you use it. Honestly, we (or staff) should be picking apart every single "tip" I provide like I will below, until we have good agreed upon fixes for all of these things that make you and others and myself cringe.
Currently it works like this. You scan, you activate a flag on yourself that you're scanning. While scanning, if you >look, then you will have a chance at seeing a shadow. While scanning, when using any action that targets a hidden person, there's a chance that you'll be able to interact with that hidden person, i.e. with a look or a watch or a kill command.
The way it's used? REPEATEDLY SPAM A LOOK COMMAND. That's STUPID. (I pointed this out in my OP, see tip #3, which is obviously laced with sarcasm).
What is a pretty obvious solution? Change it so when you start scanning, the game will periodically have your character have a chance to detect a hidden person based on your skill vs their hide. Perhaps while >looking east or so on it still works the same, and perhaps it also checks once when you first enter a room. However, repeated attempts at looking shouldn't make a difference (whereas it presently DOES). Then, maybe to compensate for this change, let's rebalance the odds of scan ever fucking working.
Instead, it'll be like this.
>scan
You scan the area intently.
(RP goes here. 4 minutes later:)
While scanning, you have detected a short, strange shadow in the room.
>look
A bedroom [S]
This is a bedroom apartment, clearly a deathtrap. No matter what you do,
you will never detect a person hiding in here, even though there are no
furniture items and just plain walls. There is a fucking chameleon in the room
RIGHT NOW. Also, there is a SKELETON INSIDE YOU.
*A short, strange shadow is here.*
Your clueless mate is here, relying on you to keep them alive.
>kill shadow
Quote from: Harmless on November 09, 2019, 10:13:02 AM
A templar says, 'Apartments are deathtraps.'
A noble says, 'Do not rest in your apartment, aide. It's too dangerous.'
Players in sponsored roles like these should have sponsored roles restricted if they're found to be saying things like this, as it is ignoring the vNPC world in favor of focusing on the limitations of code, which shouldn't be represented in RP.
Realistic RP shouldn't be compromised due to faults in the current coded environment. Instead, characters should be played realistically, and players should repeatedly complain about the code shortcomings leading to character deaths until an acceptable code fix is implemented.
Staff DO read the forums, and while change doesn't happen quickly, I'm confident that discussions on the GDB
have resulted in both coded changes in the game and policy changes. I think our current staff is quite possibly the most receptive staff that Arm has ever had, when it comes to implementing ideas generated by the playerbase.
EDIT TO ADD: I also had a character apartment PKed about a year ago. Had a key stolen right out of my hand immediately after I locked the door. I've been very vocal about coded issues with apartments and how they don't make sense realistically. That said, I don't blame the people who do this for poor RP. They are doing what they are codedly able to do in the most expedient manner they're able to do it, very likely due to RP reasons. The issue is that they shouldn't be able to so easily do what they do. But that is a fault of the code. There are many things we could do to make apartments a
little more safe.
One that I have been in favor of is to make it impossible to shadow someone through their apartment door without them noticing. IRL, the way people use doors is that they close them quite literally as they pass through them, so no one would be able to follow a person into their home without it being quite obvious. This wouldn't stop someone from following you in, but it WOULD prevent them from having enough time to let you close and lock the door, pickpocket your key, and backstab you. Instead, if that was the method they used to get you alone, they'd be forced to initiate combat through normal means, or give you an opportunity to leave before locking the door.
This wouldn't prevent someone from breaking into your apartment while you're away and waiting for you, and it shouldn't. That, in my opinion, should be a valid strategy to kill someone. But that strategy takes commitment and time. Either you wait for a long time with no guarantee of when your target might show up, or you perform enough due diligence on your target to know when they're likely to be there. Either way, it isn't quite so simple and opportunistic in nature. I don't want to eliminate apartment kills as a thing that happens. But I do want it to be realistic, and I'd like to get rid of cheesy elements like shadowing into apartments.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying Heade except with filing player complaints or whatever for what those other players have said with their characters.
I don't think the right answer here is to place any blame whatsoever on the behavior or actions or RP of the players revolving around this issue.
"Blaming the players" is never the answer.
It never fixes the problem.
I do agree that code changes such as the one you suggest would help and I do hope for some of them, absolutely. I am sure it is complicated to balance this all out.
In any case, please take away the tone of blaming players for this, because that just doesn't lead to change, and it is blaming the PRODUCT of the problem as the cause of it, which it is not. This was caused by a set of factors as others have posted about here, not just "the players," so asking the players to change how they play will not lead to change.
After all, players feel justified to take lethal retaliation due to the need to "survive." After all, it is what our characters want. Our characters want to survive -- we as players aren't supposed to take that alone into account with our RP, but to outright ignore it is putting blinders to survival in a world where survival is everything.
Quote from: Heade on November 08, 2019, 08:51:37 PM
Instead of compromising your RP, have a little integrity. RP a living, breathing character, and die from time to time. And if things like apartment deathtraps are a problem, address that issue. Bring it up on the forums and discuss ideas to bring that coded situation in line with the RPed reality that you're encouraged to roleplay, rather than reducing your RP to twinky, ridiculous actions that brings down the overall RP quality of the RPI.
Death SHOULD be quick and brutal. That is a reflection of reality. But roleplayers shouldn't let coded issues compromise their RP. That makes them just as bad, if not worse than the twinks who they're responding to.
I think the point here is that you can just as easily say that assassins should have a little integrity, not use only coded-instawin opportunities, fail from time to time, and not just be twinky PKers. But the code pushes people into the extremes - it's pretty dangerous for an assassin to come out and say, "Time to die. Lord Oash sends his regards." Because someone will just type <look person> <contact friend> and then that assassin PC is written off, or draw weapons, or just flee.
I think both sides here have room to ease up a bit on the coded hijinks to protect their characters.
I always was a supporter of the idea that upon death, a PC becomes a ghost. It's lifespan can be debated upon. From 5 minutes, to next dawn, to until log off, to until death by ethereal predators.
You can't talk, or affect thingdls. You can just watch. This will give victims of sudden deaths closure, as players will be able to pull off the kills with realistic caution and brutality, and able to turn it into a scene that might hopefully illuminate the story behind the kill.
Add the ability to speak and emote to a backstab.
backstab Bogre (Slipping out from behind ~Bogre with a key in one hand and a knife in the other) [murmuring, "Lord Oash sends his regards, it's nothing personal."]
Quote from: Fenneko on November 09, 2019, 02:25:05 PM
I agree with a lot of what you're saying Heade except with filing player complaints or whatever for what those other players have said with their characters.
I don't think the right answer here is to place any blame whatsoever on the behavior or actions or RP of the players revolving around this issue.
"Blaming the players" is never the answer.
It never fixes the problem.
This isn't "blaming the player" for the situation. They aren't responsible for the code. However, the examples given above were for people approved to play a Noble and a Templar. From what I understand, players playing such roles are expected to have a deep understanding of the game world and a respect for the vNPC population. The comments said by players of those roles demonstrate that they do not, and therefore should not be playing those roles.
It's not a "blame" issue. They aren't at fault for creating the "gamey" issues surrounding things like apartments. That is the code's fault. But what IS their responsibility is how they choose to address the issue of apartments in character. And nobles/templars are held to a higher standard than the rest of the playerbase, from a staff perspective. I, personally, think that ALL people who play this game should be held to a higher standard of RP than that, and discouraged from spreading such nonsense IC. But I don't make the rules.
It might be worth doing to simply expand the number of apartments in the game by about 10 times. This would reduce the number of instances of "incidental" apartment PKs by giving random burglars far more apartments to cycle through before randomly running into an active, online PC. When paired with the elimination of shadowing into apartments, this could potentially make apartments feel much less like deathtraps.
I know that I personally noticed that the number of "random" breakins in Allanak is often absurd. In one RL day of playing, I once had 6 different people pick the lock on my apartment door, see me in there, and run away. A 7th tried to backstab my merchant PC and failed. All different characters breaking in. This sort of thing would be less likely to happen if there were a LOT more apartments to go through before you just "randomly" stumbled onto a PC.
It would still allow people who put in the time and effort to know where someone lives to target you, but it would severely lessen the "random" encounters, and the elimination of shadowing into apartments would lower the cheese factor, requiring people who want to pickpocket your key and backstab you in a locked room to prepare in advance, find out where your apartment is, break in while you're gone, and lie in wait for you there. Or, alternatively, follow you in, but give up the opportunity to surprise backstab you.
Quote from: Bogre on November 09, 2019, 02:56:31 PM
Quote from: Heade on November 08, 2019, 08:51:37 PM
Instead of compromising your RP, have a little integrity. RP a living, breathing character, and die from time to time. And if things like apartment deathtraps are a problem, address that issue. Bring it up on the forums and discuss ideas to bring that coded situation in line with the RPed reality that you're encouraged to roleplay, rather than reducing your RP to twinky, ridiculous actions that brings down the overall RP quality of the RPI.
Death SHOULD be quick and brutal. That is a reflection of reality. But roleplayers shouldn't let coded issues compromise their RP. That makes them just as bad, if not worse than the twinks who they're responding to.
I think the point here is that you can just as easily say that assassins should have a little integrity, not use only coded-instawin opportunities, fail from time to time, and not just be twinky PKers. But the code pushes people into the extremes - it's pretty dangerous for an assassin to come out and say, "Time to die. Lord Oash sends his regards." Because someone will just type <look person> <contact friend> and then that assassin PC is written off, or draw weapons, or just flee.
I think both sides here have room to ease up a bit on the coded hijinks to protect their characters.
There is a difference. On one hand, an assassin KNOWS for certain that a life or death situation is imminent, because they're causing it with their attack. On the other, a person playing a PC that is taking all of the "precautions" that the OP suggested is presumably doing it 24/7, just IN CASE something happens, to the detriment of their PCs social interactions. I've seen PCs played as if they're completely in love with another PC, but they refuse to go into an apartment with the object of their "love" just because they're following the "rules" that the OP listed out. It's absurd to think that characters would refuse to go into private residences.
The fact of the matter is that even places like the Gaj SHOULD have lockable doors that could trap a PC if one is taking the vNPC population into account, and so there should be virtually no difference between going in any other building and going in an "apartment" in game. But the fact that we have a limited number of storytellers and code limitations causes people to think they should be able to act that way IC, when they really shouldn't be. It's metagaming. It is NOT roleplaying, and it is completely ignoring the vNPC world.
The entire idea of it makes me want to wish up to ask for someone to animate the bartender/soldiers at the Gaj, so that I could bribe them to leave for 5 minutes and lock the doors when my "friend" comes in. If we had 24/7 access to storytellers for animating, things like this could happen, and people would relax about the idea of apartments being deathtraps, because all BUILDINGS are potential deathtraps if we're taking the vNPC world into account. Society is a deathtrap. People are deathtraps. If you don't want to be in a deathtrap, learn to live on the dunes and run away a lot. But if you're living in society, every location with doors and locks IC should be considered just as dangerous as an apartment.
Lots of hyperbole to defend practices that can also be criticized for their ignoring of the vnpc world. Shadowing someone in doesn't even check against the apartment gate guard's scan skill -- if you successfully hid from the victim you are shadowing and follow them into the apartment complex, the gateguard doesn't even try to stop you. If the gate guard ignores you following a tenant in, the assumption I make is the guard assumes you are "with" the victim. But why can't the victim see this mysterious passenger at all? Because they lack a scan skill or because they didn't pause to scan and type "look" a dozen times to check their six?
An assassin who truly took the virtual world into account would voluntarily stop shadowing at the lobby, roleplay some act to get past the guard and break their hide maybe, then check their coded skill at hide (which to me doesn't just mean being under a table, since after all you can stay hidden and move, so to me it represents disguising, sneaking, being unnoticed and acting "normal" all in one).
But assassins don't do this, do they? Why are victims being accused of metagaming when assassins take just as much advantage of the metagame as victims do?
Moreover you say Templars have a higher standard. But why doesn't an assassin, with the power to end storylines, have the same high standard?
I still think that this comes down to how code and therefore rules work, and really has nothing to do with players, because arguing with hyperbolic statements of players failing to take the virtual world into account can always be flipped around on its head. It is an RPI but it is also a storytelling experience and to claim that expecting players to dial down their "cheese" when it comes to life or death is not going to get us anywhere. People very rarely voluntarily disadvantage themselves when the outcome means losing the chance to ever enact a character's story again. The changes need to come from the top down.
You're posing a straw man, as I've already said that it shouldn't even be possible to shadow someone into their apartment. And yes, I think that it is cheesy and miserable RP to do so, just because you can if you consider how people use doors. But many people don't even think about that, and so they assume shadowing someone is a legit action. But, that said, they are again entering into a situation with a 100% risk factor that constitutes probably at most 1% of their playtime, whereas the person who is following your "rules" for character longevity are doing so just IN CASE something happens, 100% of their playtime.
Compound gates are a bit different, because there is often only 1 coded entrance into a compound despite the IC reality being in 3 dimensions. So there needs to be some way to get in to represent the various avenues someone would have for infiltrating such a large place. Ideally, there would be coded rooms with secret entrances, climbable walls, windows or drainage grates and such instead, but in the absence of such options, an option to clandestinely get in needs to exist.
State of PK sucks right now. Don't have a solution to propose. It's a zero sum game so it's just not all that fun.
Also: I have and will continue to recommend underlings from engaging in dangerous behavior if that's what they want to do. If there is a trend of murders in apartments or out on the streets at night -- guess what my PC tells their underlings to stay away from? Pretty IC. You can go ahead and file your complaints about it.
"Rash of home burglaries prompt police to recommend getting rid of homes."
The problem of PVP sucking is definitely a mix of culture and code. Of the two, the former is more readily changeable. Back after the Tek Serak Laser Light Show debacle I suggested we move to a form of honoru duels where soldiers meet and fight on even ground, but that obviously went no where.
Hey guys. PK is pretty awesome, and was way more prevalent a few years back, in my opinion, in fact the capacity for sudden pk seems reduced now, which is almost certainly a design decision. That being said. Permadeath and the risk of PK is why the roleplaying is so strong, and years ago imms never had a problem with shadowing into apartments or anything of the sort. Especially with the delay sometimes accidentally putting you in a locked room before your follow me command is registered. I remember once almost starving to death when I accidentally followed someone into an apartment, and they mudsexed for three real life hours. That sort of memory and stories like that, as well as pks by and against, are lingering memories for me. This game is great, and so is PK (as long as it isn't scrubs RDMing.)
I don't know that SUDDEN PK is reduced now. I think the capacity and execution still exist. As staff expectations have changed to require PCs being alive for RL months before full support kicks in, I think some players are becoming cognizant of that, and not resorting to outright One Hit Kills.
Not that they don't happen.
Armageddon is a competitive deathmatch pretending it's a roleplaying game.
Quote from: Is Friday on November 12, 2019, 07:12:41 PM
Also: I have and will continue to recommend underlings from engaging in dangerous behavior if that's what they want to do. If there is a trend of murders in apartments or out on the streets at night -- guess what my PC tells their underlings to stay away from? Pretty IC. You can go ahead and file your complaints about it.
Would you say they can die mad about it?
Quote from: valeria on November 14, 2019, 05:25:20 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on November 12, 2019, 07:12:41 PM
Also: I have and will continue to recommend underlings from engaging in dangerous behavior if that's what they want to do. If there is a trend of murders in apartments or out on the streets at night -- guess what my PC tells their underlings to stay away from? Pretty IC. You can go ahead and file your complaints about it.
Would you say they can die mad about it?
The apartments one is crazy, where the hell else are people going to live? Because I am near certain that most PC characters aren't going to at all be role played as being homeless.
The streets one is fine, it's the streets.
There's been like 3 - 4 threads recently pointing out that the state of PK is not in a good spot at the moment.
General complaints are as follows:
-Instakills can't be saved from in many cases
-PKing is overly used, even if there could be a different response/consequences to a scenario
-Poison is overly available
-Certain PCs are unsafe in the nice parts of town, while you're overly safe in other parts of town
-NPCs are bugged and duplicated, representing on unrealistic element of protection in some places
-It feels like a coded game, posing as a RP game
I don't think these issues are coming up again and again for almost two years now for no reason. On the flip side, you also have some leader PCs that are alive for real life years and years and Armageddon is one of the few games that seems to think it realistic to set forth objectives for a character that can take RL years to achieve. I absolutely don't approve of that. I think it's toxic and unhealthy. The timeline of Armageddon needs to be sped up or something. When my IG objectives take as long my real life objectives something is wrong. I can finish Horizon Zero Dawn in a month. Armageddon is a game, there needs to be a balance. Things shouldn't take four real life years to achieve. And then, when certain PCs do get to a certain point they're stored.
That is my biggest issue with the game at present. It feels unbalanced. Although I like the new classes a lot of it seems unfinished and now the meta is struggling to catch up. I don't know why so many classes start with poison, one of the most deadly skills in the game, while crafting/city based characters don't even have listen now. It took a lot of advocating for artisans to be able to even custom craft. It feels like certain types of characters were punished while others were made incredibly powerful. Poison used to be a skill you branch, now it's a starting skill. But nobody starts with brew. It's so frustrating. I have a lot of recommendations for the new classes but I have neither the time nor energy to comb through them all and start pushing for them.
I also think that how things are staffed right now is a little arbitrary. Rules get put in place just to have them in place. Playability sometimes is put to the wayside. I feel like if the game were balanced, you'd see less of flagrant PKing because the game world would react better and codedly those focused on the code wouldn't be able to instakill people left and right in like two months. So while, if you're a leader starting say a shop or engaging in a marriage contact can take a real life YEAR. Hunter McGee can become an insta assassin in eight weeks. Which means the timeline is off. Code is god, RP players have to waddle along far behind and every tiny, itty bit of power they achieve will be 1) arbitrary and up for interpretation, 2) ignored by everyone. I don't GET it. I don't get soldiers scoffing at nobles, or slaves thinking they're above Kadians. The social mores of the game, the game world and how it's enforced is constantly secondary to code and staff interpretation or grotesque longevity of certain characters.
I also don't understand having certain leaders around for like 3-4 real life years. It causes the game to stagnate. If leaders aren't killing one another off, or politicing each other into corners there's a problem. Leaders greatly effect the meta and when they never leave it causes areas to stagnate. Given that there's only one city-state open right now, there is also no "other" to oppose them.
In general, I guess what I'm saying is the game feels unbalanced in many ways. Not to mention coded skills you can't even roll a save on so some people can just walk in and boop your dead. This leads to a lot of aversion. I don't feel like there's enough thought given to will this be fun for the player? Will this be fun for the characters around them? Is this playable? It's fun to roleplay drama and pain at times, it is not fun to have an experience of drudgery on an OOC level. I don't want to put a month into a character, just to have someone to come along and have two months into a character and be able to kill me because they've spent every waking moment sparring or kill me with a skill I can't even possibly save from or even procure until I've had the character like three real life months. I don't want to go into the salt flats and get attacked by six scorpions and pay 120 coins for one cure as a newb. Why is certain shit so ridiculously hard and some shit so ridiculously easy?
Half the time the rules on an OOC overly solid, and the other half of the time there just seems to be no rules and everything is open ended and subjective. Just like on the PC art forum. One character was taken down after art was posted by a former player. Another character that had been alive within that one year time frame stayed up for months until I pointed it out. The game didn't suffer for the art of either being up. But one character was taken down, while the other remained.
I really, really wish as a community we would decide what our priorities are, and the intention behind our actions and then go from there. Is Armageddon supposed to be accessible? Is it adult? Is it foremost an RP game or foremost a coded game? From there, you can start making good decisions. This trying to be everything to everyone gambit doesn't work. Like having sex and violence but saying the game isn't just for adults. Or saying its an RP game but letting people breech social mores constantly in some respects or getting on people's cases OOC for superfluous reasons. I think all of this ties into PK because I think we have a cultural problem in addition to a coded one. But I really don't have much hope considering staff decided that an entire city-state, pretty much the other half of the game world wasn't "thematic" to the game after being a part of its lore and player base for decades.
I just don't get a lot of the decisions being made, and I don't feel rewarded for RPing my heart out generally. But the reward in code grinding is clear. Put some hours in and be able to instakill. Instakill power > social power.
Quote from: Hauwke on November 14, 2019, 05:34:21 PM
Quote from: valeria on November 14, 2019, 05:25:20 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on November 12, 2019, 07:12:41 PM
Also: I have and will continue to recommend underlings from engaging in dangerous behavior if that's what they want to do. If there is a trend of murders in apartments or out on the streets at night -- guess what my PC tells their underlings to stay away from? Pretty IC. You can go ahead and file your complaints about it.
Would you say they can die mad about it?
The apartments one is crazy, where the hell else are people going to live? Because I am near certain that most PC characters aren't going to at all be role played as being homeless.
The streets one is fine, it's the streets.
If you are an employer who provides housing (barracks, etc.) then why would they want to live out in town where it's dangerous? This applies to GMH or noble house.
Quote from: Is Friday on November 14, 2019, 07:38:12 PM
Quote from: Hauwke on November 14, 2019, 05:34:21 PM
Quote from: valeria on November 14, 2019, 05:25:20 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on November 12, 2019, 07:12:41 PM
Also: I have and will continue to recommend underlings from engaging in dangerous behavior if that's what they want to do. If there is a trend of murders in apartments or out on the streets at night -- guess what my PC tells their underlings to stay away from? Pretty IC. You can go ahead and file your complaints about it.
Would you say they can die mad about it?
The apartments one is crazy, where the hell else are people going to live? Because I am near certain that most PC characters aren't going to at all be role played as being homeless.
The streets one is fine, it's the streets.
If you are an employer who provides housing (barracks, etc.) then why would they want to live out in town where it's dangerous? This applies to GMH or noble house.
Because a Kadian is rich enough to rent or buy his own apartment and not have to get it stunk up by the cleaning slaves?
You could argue for Aides specifically not having apartments, because they should be ready and on hand at all times for their noble, but a merchant hasn't got that kind of work load. Not realistically. They get to go home at the end of the day if their work is done. If it isn't finished? So what, I am the boss man I get to go home and shove the work onto Amos the knife sharpening slave because he is a slave and I am not.
I love the thrill and danger and Permadeath. I do not like the state of PK right now. Poison is lame. So is that one spell. Lame af.
I am here for the storytelling. If there is no fun scene to accompany the murdering, I feel disgusted, unfulfilled, and discouraged. It makes me play less.
Quote from: Hauwke on November 14, 2019, 08:38:41 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on November 14, 2019, 07:38:12 PM
Quote from: Hauwke on November 14, 2019, 05:34:21 PM
Quote from: valeria on November 14, 2019, 05:25:20 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on November 12, 2019, 07:12:41 PM
Also: I have and will continue to recommend underlings from engaging in dangerous behavior if that's what they want to do. If there is a trend of murders in apartments or out on the streets at night -- guess what my PC tells their underlings to stay away from? Pretty IC. You can go ahead and file your complaints about it.
Would you say they can die mad about it?
The apartments one is crazy, where the hell else are people going to live? Because I am near certain that most PC characters aren't going to at all be role played as being homeless.
The streets one is fine, it's the streets.
If you are an employer who provides housing (barracks, etc.) then why would they want to live out in town where it's dangerous? This applies to GMH or noble house.
Because a Kadian is rich enough to rent or buy his own apartment and not have to get it stunk up by the cleaning slaves?
You could argue for Aides specifically not having apartments, because they should be ready and on hand at all times for their noble, but a merchant hasn't got that kind of work load. Not realistically. They get to go home at the end of the day if their work is done. If it isn't finished? So what, I am the boss man I get to go home and shove the work onto Amos the knife sharpening slave because he is a slave and I am not.
I'm really not arguing a blanket statement for all PCs. My post was in response to high end noble house and most GMH employees -- who by and large have no real "reason" for an apartment.
As a sidenote: The upkeep cost of an apartment isn't really worth it to most PCs.
A couple thoughts from somewhere out in the dunes:
How about no hiding in apartments? Yes, I know it's technically possible, but still, how about no hiding in apartments? Or, perhaps better, an automatic decrease to your hide/sneak skill in apartments and other rooms flagged as quiet/solo/whatever. So yes, maybe you can hide under the bed, but maybe you can't hide under it as easily as you hide behind the wall out in the street.
How about PC combat not being able to end in death? How about it drops you to, say, -5, and leaves you there? Then, PKers who just want to do the deed can finalize you with kill YourNameHere, or, if they just want to rob you, they can do that, and you leave with your life, assuming nothing else happens between you going down and your HP recovering (provided your constitution allows that to happen).
How about crimes generally staying in their social stratosphere? So no nobles contracting out hits on the guy who robbed your gatherer. Nobles could still take out hits on the guy who mugged Sally Blond-tress Aide, but that's a different social class. Or, hey, simplify it ... it's considered socially stupid to worry about someone more than a class step below you.
And finally, maybe get rid of the deadliest poisons. Oh, wait, nah, I don't like that. Make poisons applied to weapons be an aide, not a killer. More like bloodburn, less like perrain. Perrain on a weapon might, for instance, slow down your foe - in their food, it does it's whole thing. Give poisons more nuance in different applications.
And, back to apartments, make doors breakable.
Quote from: Bebop on November 14, 2019, 06:49:56 PM
-PKing is overly used, even if there could be a different response/consequences to a scenario
I've half-arsedly skimmed this thread a while and this point (raised by Bebop and a few others before her) is the only point I agree with. I am fine with unfair and instant mechanisms of death. That is like real life, even back in the days of medieval warfare. This is an RPI, not DOTA where we have to meticulously balance gameplay mechanisms so that PK is "fair." Murder and death in real life is not fair.
But lately, since coming back from my hiatus, I've found some characters are way too PK happy, and it is particularly frustrating coming from characters with power who could devise more clever punishments and plots to entrap their foes. I've noticed metagamers who twitch and run from certain characters
without good roleplay, often, are twitching and running from characters who kill
without good roleplay. PKing people without a second's thought to alternatives, and choosing to kill people rather than an alternative, doesn't foster roleplay, it damages it. It might convince people who came here for the RP and not the PK to give up.
Quote from: Heade on November 09, 2019, 05:44:10 PM
You're posing a straw man, as I've already said that it shouldn't even be possible to shadow someone into their apartment. And yes, I think that it is cheesy and miserable RP to do so, just because you can if you consider how people use doors. But many people don't even think about that, and so they assume shadowing someone is a legit action. But, that said, they are again entering into a situation with a 100% risk factor that constitutes probably at most 1% of their playtime, whereas the person who is following your "rules" for character longevity are doing so just IN CASE something happens, 100% of their playtime.
Compound gates are a bit different, because there is often only 1 coded entrance into a compound despite the IC reality being in 3 dimensions. So there needs to be some way to get in to represent the various avenues someone would have for infiltrating such a large place. Ideally, there would be coded rooms with secret entrances, climbable walls, windows or drainage grates and such instead, but in the absence of such options, an option to clandestinely get in needs to exist.
I've always thought you should have to get you a cloak or armband or a number of clan objects in order to shadow your way into a compound.
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on November 14, 2019, 11:03:17 PM
Quote from: Heade on November 09, 2019, 05:44:10 PM
You're posing a straw man, as I've already said that it shouldn't even be possible to shadow someone into their apartment. And yes, I think that it is cheesy and miserable RP to do so, just because you can if you consider how people use doors. But many people don't even think about that, and so they assume shadowing someone is a legit action. But, that said, they are again entering into a situation with a 100% risk factor that constitutes probably at most 1% of their playtime, whereas the person who is following your "rules" for character longevity are doing so just IN CASE something happens, 100% of their playtime.
Compound gates are a bit different, because there is often only 1 coded entrance into a compound despite the IC reality being in 3 dimensions. So there needs to be some way to get in to represent the various avenues someone would have for infiltrating such a large place. Ideally, there would be coded rooms with secret entrances, climbable walls, windows or drainage grates and such instead, but in the absence of such options, an option to clandestinely get in needs to exist.
I've always thought you should have to get you a cloak or armband or a number of clan objects in order to shadow your way into a compound.
Been staying away from this thread as I don't think there are any solutions to the problems proposed, however, I want to voice my support for cool features like this. In fact it would be great if there were some automated way to "gain" a clan flag if you wear the clans equipment. Perhaps that is making it too easy but the complete lack of disguise and subterfuge is unfortunate. Could a player put in a request if they have clan gear to gain the clan flag and enter a clan compound? I suppose that would be just as good.
Honestly, I think if some of the really debilitating poison effects were changed from a hard effect (nope, can't do anything my dude!) to a fail chance/added delay on attempt, it would solve a lot of my issues with the current meta. Sure, getting instadeath backstabbed sucks, but assasinations should be a real and valid threat. And it looks like door/sneak issues might get addressed from that other thread.
Quote from: kahuna on November 15, 2019, 08:18:35 AM
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on November 14, 2019, 11:03:17 PM
Quote from: Heade on November 09, 2019, 05:44:10 PM
You're posing a straw man, as I've already said that it shouldn't even be possible to shadow someone into their apartment. And yes, I think that it is cheesy and miserable RP to do so, just because you can if you consider how people use doors. But many people don't even think about that, and so they assume shadowing someone is a legit action. But, that said, they are again entering into a situation with a 100% risk factor that constitutes probably at most 1% of their playtime, whereas the person who is following your "rules" for character longevity are doing so just IN CASE something happens, 100% of their playtime.
Compound gates are a bit different, because there is often only 1 coded entrance into a compound despite the IC reality being in 3 dimensions. So there needs to be some way to get in to represent the various avenues someone would have for infiltrating such a large place. Ideally, there would be coded rooms with secret entrances, climbable walls, windows or drainage grates and such instead, but in the absence of such options, an option to clandestinely get in needs to exist.
I've always thought you should have to get you a cloak or armband or a number of clan objects in order to shadow your way into a compound.
Been staying away from this thread as I don't think there are any solutions to the problems proposed, however, I want to voice my support for cool features like this. In fact it would be great if there were some automated way to "gain" a clan flag if you wear the clans equipment. Perhaps that is making it too easy but the complete lack of disguise and subterfuge is unfortunate. Could a player put in a request if they have clan gear to gain the clan flag and enter a clan compound? I suppose that would be just as good.
I have felt for years that there should be a certain "combination" of insignia checked for most gate access, like how Tuluk would check for tattoos in certain locations, or deny entry.
There are hundreds of Bynners, and the Gate Guards are able to know every face of every Runner that a Sergeant just hired out of the Gaj last night? Nah. But they got an aba, and a patch, so let 'em on through.
It might make for more break-ins, but that sounds like an IC issue. Stop hiring idiots who go into the 'rinth and get killed, letting them pretend to be whoever they want.
(This is also because for 10 years I've wanted to run a Guild shop full of 'costumes' which is just a place you go to rent House-specific items. Trooper Sleeves, AoD patches, signet rings, etc.)
For the record, I've been following this and have brought some points here-in to others on the team. We'll be reviewing if/what/how changes will come about.
As far as peraine. Before I made changes, there were around 50-60 objects used by the poisoning skill to poison stuff with peraine sitting in save rooms. Now there are less than 10, and they are all in advances states of decay.
It will take awhile for already poisoned objects to flush through the game, but once we have some of that, we'll see where it gets us and what the game state with respect to use of peraine for trivial reasons is.
QuoteIt took a lot of advocating for artisans to be able to even custom craft.
It was less about advocating and more about letting time pass to see where the game stabilized at. I am pretty sure I said when classes were rolled out we'd come back and relook at it. My expectation to do so was always after a year. Our time frames can be fairly long. For instance, it could easily take a real life year for objects that have already been poisoned with peraine to work their way through, without some sort of coded change to them.
Just throwing this out there (as it may have already been stated) but what if insta-paralyze was changed to a gradual over-time effect that took 20-30 seconds to take hold and go thru the nervous system of the victim to eventually paralyze rather than immediately?
Quote from: kahuna on November 15, 2019, 11:57:30 AM
Just throwing this out there (as it may have already been stated) but what if insta-paralyze was changed to a gradual over-time effect that took 20-30 seconds to take hold and go thru the nervous system of the victim to eventually paralyze rather than immediately?
I can chime in.
If you poison me with something that paralyzes me, and I have 30s to get away? I am spam running to the nearest apartment/compound gate/house with locks.
You know why? Because I've thrown weapons with heramide at people before, and they were only 5 rooms away from an escape, and ran immediately there, where I was unable to get to them.
Edited to add: Also, that's what another poison kind of already does, and nobody uses it. Because there are better options.
Quote from: Riev on November 15, 2019, 12:32:30 PM
Quote from: kahuna on November 15, 2019, 11:57:30 AM
Just throwing this out there (as it may have already been stated) but what if insta-paralyze was changed to a gradual over-time effect that took 20-30 seconds to take hold and go thru the nervous system of the victim to eventually paralyze rather than immediately?
I can chime in.
If you poison me with something that paralyzes me, and I have 30s to get away? I am spam running to the nearest apartment/compound gate/house with locks.
You know why? Because I've thrown weapons with heramide at people before, and they were only 5 rooms away from an escape, and ran immediately there, where I was unable to get to them.
Edited to add: Also, that's what another poison kind of already does, and nobody uses it. Because there are better options.
So how is that relevant to fixing it? If the argument is "Well players will just run away so I can't win." I don't think that's a good argument. This can apply to any aspect of the game from subdue to bash.
Instant paralyze is a bit silly outside magick.
Peraine could sap all the strength from your limbs instead, which drops you to a resting position and makes you unable to stand or move much. You'd still be able to emote or whisper but you wouldn't be able to shout, and talking or getting objects (only lightweight ones, like curatives) would sap stun? Waying would cost double stun. It would set in about as rapidly as heramide unless you cured it.
I am just pretty disappointed because since I've been back I put everything into a few characters in particular. I really enjoyed them and both were kind of ruined by either the constant threat of PK for completely stupidly barely justifiable IC reasons that began from a partially OOC issue and arbitrary rule enforcement. The other was RPing to the nines and killed instantaneously with no chance to save from the skills being used on then in a place that if the game world were real there would be some serious consequences. The reason for it happening was also relatively lame and unnecessary. One character I didn't touch my skills, the other that was killed instantly I worked hard on them, as hard as I could manage. It made literally no difference. Not having good stats. Not leveling as fast as I could while still RPing. Nope.
The end result is that after a year and a half I feel kind of down about what I've experienced over the past year and a half and have quickly lost all desire to play again. I know if I keep playing I'm going to have to go through the SAME grind and could at any time just blink and die to some silly code issue or whatever.
I used to die SO often when I played before, but those deaths felt fair and satisfying. I'm not having the same experience after my five year break. I want to come back and be a social player, but I don't have the stamina to have my characters come into game, play my heart out and hit the wall of coded players taking over the narrative and watching the social mores of the one city-state we have now get tossed out the window. I also don't have the volition to keep trying to appease the same leaders that have been in the game for real life years and years and years. I just can't force myself to do it right now, not even casually. I just don't see the reward in playing a social character. I really don't see it.
Most social players (who require a story to enjoy the game) left with Tuluk.
Were things really all that different before? Gin lived for ages and the lifespan of a rinthi was counted in hours if you did not appease the guild those days.
Same with templarate. Templars tended to live long. Especially in the Lirathans.
I mean if you had your fill of the nakki current populace. There are other pretty developed societies right now that you can play with.
Death was always sudden in Arm. Always. People are complaining that peraine and heramide are too common now. Before, heramide was sold in stores! Tan Muark had 50+. Guild had dozens upon dozens.
Deaths are sudden because fleeing is too powerful and the consequence for failure too high. But this does not make the pills more common, if anything it makes pking rarer. Because people who aren't certain of success, don't try.
Being lured into an apartment for a kill is actually a good death. It means there was rp involved. You had to be tricked. Your trust had to be won, etc.
Would you really prefer to be susceptable to be attacked by non instant methods in the cities?
Can you really blame the leaders for not dying? How does this even really work? On one hand, the deaths are too rampant and quick. On another hand, there is not enough death. If your PC Bebop did not die and continued on, would you have become the leader that other people do not want to interact with by their characters?
Quote from: Malken on November 15, 2019, 06:03:13 PM
Most social players (who require a story to enjoy the game) left with Tuluk.
As if Tuluk offered any of that. Tuluk was even worse then nak. Lirathans that never died and had omniscience, omni reach.
Quote from: Dar on November 15, 2019, 06:07:23 PM
Being lured into an apartment for a kill is actually a good death. It means there was rp involved. You had to be tricked. Your trust had to be won, etc.
I don't think people are complaining about being lured into someone else's apartment where they get PKed. You're right. That is a totally legit RP death.
People complain about being unrealistically shadowed through their own door, having their key pickpocketed from their hand right after they used it to lock their own door, and getting insta-backstabbed in their own apartment. People complain about being in their own apartment, a small box, and someone opening the door while they're looking at it and walking in to backstab them without them ever getting an echo that the door was opened, or that someone was in there. People complain about issues that shouldn't really be issues, because the code shouldn't allow them to begin with.
If you resolve some of those, fewer people will be complaining, I think.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Also, I'd really like to see us go back to making slavery more prominent in the game, and allow PC slavery since the majority of Zalanthans are supposed to be slaves. Allow existing PCs to be enslaved through IC means. ALLOW the characters to have alternative means of punishing other characters, or sending them a message, and we may see more of that.
I've never played a character that was involved in any type of rape scene in the game, but I do remember interacting with others who were, and I know that was a tool for conflict and retribution back in the day, too. X made Y unhappy, so Y raped X's lover, Z, instead of just PKing X.
For these reasons, I was always against getting rid of things like PC slavery and the rape plotlines. A decade ago, I said if you remove people's ability to dole out alternative "punishments" to other PCs, then PCs will be more likely to use PK as the ultimate conflict resolution/punishment. Well, here we are.
Torture, and general fear-mongering were more commonplace back then, too, because if your character was a person of power like a Templar or a Noble who could potentially just enslave you on a whim, people tended to be more afraid of them, because there was more on the line than just character loss. And the potential fallout from upsetting them was far more visible to the public when you'd come back to the gaj with your fingernails pulled out, or missing a hand, or with a disfigured face, as opposed to just being found on the corpse pile later, having died quietly in an apartment.
All of these things were removed slowly over time in order to avoid "triggering" anyone, or for other reasons. But together, it made the game feel far less gritty and harsh, and in my opinion led to a rise in the PK first attitude of many players. I know we've lost some very good RPers over the years, and I'd really like to see us move in a direction to try to get some of them back. I think committing to the idea that we explore adult themes here, and dropping the pretense of avoiding triggering people would allow us to bring back some of the things that made Zalanthas really feel alive.
I think a good first step would be for one of the Imms to take on a project to really DEFINE how slavery works in Zalanthas. Give us good documentation on it like we had on the old website(but perhaps even more fleshed out), and re-open PC slavery as something that can be both special apped, or happen IC. If staff is open to the idea, I volunteer to come on staff to spearhead the development of the documentation and subsequent implementation. I'll also be happy to help with other duties.
EDIT: Also, re-open Tuluk.
There still are very select slavery roles you can take, a Byn mul for example. But I do think slavery would be pretty cool to open up, on the sole condition that the enslaver has the onus on them to provide the enslaved with content and things to do.
Quote from: Hauwke on November 15, 2019, 10:51:36 PM
There still are very select slavery roles you can take, a Byn mul for example. But I do think slavery would be pretty cool to open up, on the sole condition that the enslaver has the onus on them to provide the enslaved with content and things to do.
If I remember correctly, the actual problem with enslaving PCs was that they all eventually turned into plots against their masters and didn't really roleplay the "I am a slave, I work for this house and owe them my loyalty" very well.
Not having things to do, for a Byn Mul, sucks a huge one. However, I think it was more that slave roles weren't being played consistently or realistically in the first place. As much as we all think we could do it well, apparently we didn't.
In most cases doing it well and realistically was, unfortunately, usually boring.
On the slavery tangent:
For slaves to be a viable role, there needs to be an avenue toward freedom that isn't "escape", perhaps modeled off Roman slavery. That way, characters who are enslaved during active play do not have to be stored, and instead have a hope of earning their way back to freedom through good behavior. Characters who start out as slaves would then have the opportunity of changing the direction of their storyline. Earning one's freedom should not be easy or common, but it should be genuinely possible.
Otherwise, slavery will continue to be a role which is dead-ended and doomed to stagnation. Once the player has fully explored the space they occupy, there will be no room for growth and movement, and there will be little reason to revisit a similar role.
Quote from: Mr. Fancypants on November 16, 2019, 12:29:54 AM
On the slavery tangent:
For slaves to be a viable role, there needs to be an avenue toward freedom that isn't "escape", perhaps modeled off Roman slavery. That way, characters who are enslaved during active play do not have to be stored, and instead have a hope of earning their way back to freedom through good behavior. Characters who start out as slaves would then have the opportunity of changing the direction of their storyline. Earning one's freedom should not be easy or common, but it should be genuinely possible.
Otherwise, slavery will continue to be a role which is dead-ended and doomed to stagnation. Once the player has fully explored the space they occupy, there will be no room for growth and movement, and there will be little reason to revisit a similar role.
I agree that more would need to be done with slavery to be interesting and to keep players engaged. Earning freedom might be one of those things, but there are plenty of others as well. That's why I volunteered to team up with staff to really flesh out a detailed slavery document for Zalanthas before rolling out something like opening up PC slavery again.
I wouldn't want it just opened up wholesale without any documentation, just to fail, and to get shelved for another 10 years because of it.
I love this tangent.
(https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdontxS27M1rau2uso1_500.gif)
Yeah dude, anyone wants an angry mul slave lemme know.
Open slavery as a clan app-in, for Salarr, Kadius and Kurac, for crafts slaves.
Give them the standard custom craft option, with room to increase it by up two additional custom crafts per month, with the caveat, the crafts must be ones ordered from other characters. So, then, you can test slavery waters, in a situation wherein slaves have something useful to be doing and working on, that requires interaction at LEAST within the clan, and potentially, eventually, outside the clan as dictated by rp.
People could then, once again, actually have a snowballs chance in hell of ordering custom works from a merchant house that is actually completed, slavery as a role is once again tested OUTSIDE of a combat role, with some innate ic justification for said slaves to be engaged with in a meaningful, interesting way.
Depending on testing, perhaps it leads to careful allowance of enslavement as an ic consequence, possibly done on a 'term' basis, not unlike indentured servitude. Full blown, slavery as a punishment, as a role, would be rather hard to do in an enjoyable way, due to the absolute lack of trust, knowledge of a life of relative freedoms, social connections, etcs, but knowing its for a set duration, rather than a 'until death or escape', may encourage people to not immediately plot ridiculously, and see it through to its conclusion.
Baby steps.
I want to thank Heade for opening up the R-word discussion.
I want to say that one of the best events I saw with a prior character was an arrangement for mature-sexual RP as 'payment' for something.
It was consensual, but the act was taken in order to settle a debt between two characters, and it was made 'public knowledge' by involving a third person.
The impact that scene left on the victim, and the people around the victim when the victim told my character about it, was huge.
I never got to see how the scene played out -- for all I know, the players FTB'ed the whole thing to get past it -- but in the end, all parties were then 'settled.' Some were scarred by it, as shown by the RP, and they got to live on and keep telling their fucked up story a bit longer.
It is a lot more satisfying to know that your character (but not you, the player) endured something and was forced to learn a way to deal with it. Rather than just lights out.
As for slavery, I have been an open proponent of more enslaving and the idea of a Roman style contract of slavery is extremely exciting. Sign me up. I'm the type of person who can endure IC years and years (and hey, if I don't die, RL years) of the same role and get through the boring stuff.
If I could enjoy the life of someone who had a shady past, became enslaved as a result of enmity with a greater power, and then had to live through that, I would fall even more back in love with this game.
Chiming in to say I think slavery as an option could be a viable exploration. The word "indentured" that Vex used would be more along the lines of what I would expect to function well in ARM from a playability standpoint. Contracted slavery for debt repayment or as a punishment. Set timeframes, etc. Lot of levels to this but I can see some avenues for interesting stories coming out of situations like that.
If it was something you could register officially like so and so is bound to do X Y Z for so and so pay fee of 10,000 coins to get seal of approval. If terms not met, bondee will be subject to arenification, etc.
Something to think about.
QuoteQuote from: Dar on November 15, 2019, 06:07:23 PM
QuoteBeing lured into an apartment for a kill is actually a good death. It means there was rp involved. You had to be tricked. Your trust had to be won, etc.
I don't think people are complaining about being lured into someone else's apartment where they get PKed. You're right. That is a totally legit RP death.
I do. I would vastly prefer to lose a character to someone shadowing through a doorway. It's better than spending a moment of my time playing with the prickhole that's trying to trick me out of a character with a locked room.
I think I would prefer a gith or the silt sea even.
On Discord the solution of making keys objects you have to hold in a hand to use (as one does with keys) but also making them unstealable in this situation (you're holding on to it), seems like the easiest most chill way to address people shadowing into apartments (which I still doubt is an actual problem except in the echo chamber of the GDB).
As for the tangent, hell yeah bring back enslaved PCs. Allanak is a big ol city of awful slavers, it makes sense.
Quote from: LindseyBalboa on November 18, 2019, 12:56:14 PM
to address people shadowing into apartments (which I still doubt is an actual problem except in the echo chamber of the GDB).
If people didn't get shadowed into their apartment, have their key stolen from them right after they locked their own apartment door, followed by a backstab, do you think people would be complaining about it on the GDB?
I've had it happen to me, but never started a thread about it. Others have obviously had it happen as well, since they started threads to discuss it. How many people does it need to affect before it meets your definition of a "problem"?
If you haven't had this happen to multiple characters of yours, perhaps you have a different style of play in which you're less likely to be targeted this way(like, perhaps playiong more clanned PCs who don't spend a lot of time in their apartment), but I don't think that makes the people's problems, who are targeted with this cheesy way of PK any less relevant.
Put on your chill pants everyone, and stop making assumptions.
The idea is that you make it so key objects MUST be held/wielded in order to work on a door.
You cannot steal a held/wielded object (without disarm, heh)
So you can get into your apartment, inside, lock the door, and not have someone steal your key.
This will solve the key-stealing problem, and still allow for the possibility that you, walking into your house, are at a disadvantage because now you can't have a weapon out, or a shield, or etc etc, because you are holding your keys.
(Also, murderers can hide inside your apartment and just wait until you come home. Who lives where is a VERY important bit of information)
Quote from: Riev on November 18, 2019, 03:52:12 PM
Put on your chill pants everyone, and stop making assumptions.
The idea is that you make it so key objects MUST be held/wielded in order to work on a door.
You cannot steal a held/wielded object (without disarm, heh)
So you can get into your apartment, inside, lock the door, and not have someone steal your key.
This will solve the key-stealing problem, and still allow for the possibility that you, walking into your house, are at a disadvantage because now you can't have a weapon out, or a shield, or etc etc, because you are holding your keys.
(Also, murderers can hide inside your apartment and just wait until you come home. Who lives where is a VERY important bit of information)
It still doesn't solve the issue of being shadowed into your apartment, which is physically impossible when you consider how people use doors IRL. They tend to close them as they walk through them. There is no physical space to shadow them into their apartment. So, while I don't have a problem with this particular thing being implemented, I don't think it solves the issue by itself.
(This thread is super long <.< >.> and I haven't been on the forums in a hot minute so my eyes hurt trying to read it all)
This has most likely been brought up already but I just feel the need to point it out.
Gameplay, in my opinion, is too fast for PK not to be an all-or-nothing ordeal. Whether it's a gank-fest, poison, or a locked-door scenario. Spamwalking is basically a get out of jail free card especially if someone wants to make any attempt to RP and not just enter a typing contest with you. And combat happens at a speed that is, in my experience, inconsistent at best. It is possible to make an attempt to RP mid-combat, just not type fast enough, and be forced to make the decision between trying to RP and just outright dying because your time should've been spent typing commands to run away or affect the outcome of the fight.
I understand, however, that people have lives to live and if gameplay in Arm becomes too slow it errs on the side of tedium and greatly reduces what people can hope to accomplish in the spare time they have to play in the first place. At the end of the day, as long as trying to manage the coded mechanics super-cedes roleplay and there's no repercussions for neglecting to inject roleplay into the scene outside of coded commands (I've heard the argument that using commands IS roleplay, and I don't disagree with it) then overwhelming force, be it spamwalking or twelve poisoned blades, is just going to be the way of the world.
Think of the situations you want to see in game. What type of activities should be possible? What sort of things should be common? Rare? What sort of fiction are we trying to create and emulate? Design accordingly, to promote the common and dissuade the rare. Just because things have always been a certain way doesn't mean that it's for the best.
To be less cryptic about it, poison and/or backstab should be the starting move in a melee, that puts the initiator at an advantage. It shouldn't be the only move. It also shouldn't be the only sane way to fight. And since conflict is fun, losing a conflict shouldn't be punished by also losing 40/60/100/200 hours worth of grind and character development.
Just as example of changes that could be made -- a successful backstab or a nasty poison could give the victim a status effect that gives an ongoing penalty to their defense and offense and movement, rather than killing or incapacitating outright. (Backstab shouldn't debuff you with an action delay, if this were the case.)
Poison should have to be applied within a RL hour of use. Stuff like bloodburn shouldn't be lethal at all -- it can knock you down to 10 HP, but never lower, maybe. But it's effects should be more pronounced, up until that limit.
There could be a hamstring-ish skill that puts a long delay on movement. The flee skill could be far less certain and give your character a strong offensive debuff.
Meanwhile, skill grind could be cut in half, or more. 3 days played is still an incredibly hefty time investment.
Culturally, murder could become the province of the templars. Taking the life of a citizen must be licensed by the Highlord, because all lives belong to Him. Assassins and the like that kill in Allanak, even in areas like apartments, are branded super-criminals and automatically given permanent Wanted flags. Thieves and burglars that steal from certain people and places are automatically given temporary Wanted flags. Casting a spell without a gem should give you a permanent Wanted flag.
If you have a Wanted flag, soldiers should be able to track you down, via asking vNPCs which way you went, maybe via special flagged tracks that appear with the Hunt command. There should be (an even greater) move cost for sneak-hiding while Wanted.
(and by certain places, I mean, the Gaj and it's apartments, because we want for those places to be used. If you do your criminal stuff there, you lose the ability to be social in Nak.)
It could be the Guild also has some means of pardoning their guys, via a friendly vNPC templar, for a hefty price. But in general, it means if you kill in apartment, you become public enemy number one, unless you've got a PC templar willing to sign off on the death.
Quote from: number13 on November 19, 2019, 01:30:36 AM
It could be the Guild also has some means of pardoning their guys, via a friendly vNPC templar, for a hefty price. But in general, it means if you kill in apartment, you become public enemy number one, unless you've got a PC templar willing to sign off on the death.
This is an IC thing really, but anytime ANY PC engages in an assassination, unless it was done without anyone knowing who did it, it becomes a witch hunt. Everyone wants to fight the bad guy, and it gets to the point where the Templarate sends assassins after the assassins, except Templarate Assassins have all the benefit of being backed by the Templarate.
My ONLY... read ONLY problem with slowing down combat/poisons so it isn't instantaneous, is that you then need to rework flee.
Flee should be on a timer, based on skill. You "begin looking for an escape" during which time you stop attacking back, and find a way to flee. If you do, you take the attack of opportunity, unless you beat the skill check by <x> amount.
At least then, people know you're about to flee and can try to disarm, or bash, or whatever they might have to try and close the gap.
Flee would also need to have something added that adds delay to the person pursuing them to some varying degree also based on skill. Otherwise, people will just say fuck using bash and just wait to charge in and attack again.
You might say that's well and good, but as it gets played out and people get used to it, it would get tiresome and pointless, I promise.
You're already lagged out for like a year when you initiate combat. This is part of why people feel forced to resort to instant/inescapable ganks.
Quote from: Greve on November 19, 2019, 03:02:31 PM
You're already lagged out for like a year when you initiate combat. This is part of why people feel forced to resort to instant/inescapable ganks.
A large chunk of that, is people spamming the hell out of flee until they succeed, then just spam walking off.
Putting a delay on flee attempts, preferably a before delay, so there was warning so that something could be done about it, would be a good solution to that. It would potentially lower the number of one hit kill attempts, because then Angry Amos the Byn Fighter could feasibly kill a guy in PvP.
But, it would cause a whole slew of problems with people being unable to run away by spamming it and hiding. Would it not? Yup, that's the point.
If you want to run away, you will actually need the skill, because that's what it is, a skill. It's not just running from a fight, it's running in a manner that doesn't cause you to trip up, doesn't allow the guy to cut you off.
Quote from: number13 on November 19, 2019, 01:30:36 AM
Culturally, murder could become the province of the templars. Taking the life of a citizen must be licensed by the Highlord, because all lives belong to Him. Assassins and the like that kill in Allanak, even in areas like apartments, are branded super-criminals and automatically given permanent Wanted flags. Thieves and burglars that steal from certain people and places are automatically given temporary Wanted flags. Casting a spell without a gem should give you a permanent Wanted flag.
If you have a Wanted flag, soldiers should be able to track you down, via asking vNPCs which way you went, maybe via special flagged tracks that appear with the Hunt command. There should be (an even greater) move cost for sneak-hiding while Wanted.
(and by certain places, I mean, the Gaj and it's apartments, because we want for those places to be used. If you do your criminal stuff there, you lose the ability to be social in Nak.)
It could be the Guild also has some means of pardoning their guys, via a friendly vNPC templar, for a hefty price. But in general, it means if you kill in apartment, you become public enemy number one, unless you've got a PC templar willing to sign off on the death.
Not a fan of this part of your ideas. We have to remember that the City-States are huge and lacking in technology. Being able to get a rock-solid description of a murderer that could reasonably identify him/her from the other million inhabitants of the city and then being able to spread that description among said populace, and having said downtrodden populace actually give a shit is, in my opinion, an act of futility.
The coded number of locations is inconsistent with the documented size of the city-state. Because of how large the city is, in the canon, I have always looked at places like the Gaj as only representative of one of the many, many taverns that would, in reality, be throughout the city. But because we have a playerbase that is a far cry from the 1 million+ inhabitants of Allanak, it is difficult to remember that you're in a huge, overpopulated metropolis of a city. But, this is a roleplaying game, and that IS the city we inhabit.
Quote from: Heade on November 19, 2019, 03:33:59 PM
Not a fan of this part of your ideas. We have to remember that the City-States are huge
The amount of witnesses is huge and we lack the ability to populate the world sufficiently. You can creep into the Gaj's top floor, traverse narrow corridors, and linger by an apartment door for in-game days, waiting for your victim, and never see anyone else. When the victim screams out, dying, there will be no one to listen.
I'm a fan of the idea of AI agents being used to populate MUDs. Google can teach AI agents to play DOTA2, and beat top-tier DOTA teams, so I imagine teaching a few agents to be believable players in a MUD is within the realm of possibility, and in a decade, will be in the realm of affordability. It will be computationally cheap. But we're not quite there yet, so systems have to take the place of simulated players.
Quote
...and lacking in technology.
The city-states don't lack in technology. It's just that their technology is based off psionic and magical powers rather than electronics. Anyone, without fear of discovery and reprisal from the criminal element, can communicate to a templar, instantly. From anywhere, with apparent privacy. It's better than a cell phone.
I've often touted for the idea that PCs and certain NPCs are special, that telepathy is actually very rare in Zalanthas. But the kayfabe of the game is, everyone can use the Way. The implications of that are not accounted for, at all. It's actually silly. But so long as that's a thing...crimes should be basically impossible to cover up. There's going to dozens of potential observers at any particular moment, and all of those eyeballs can tattle instantly, with little risk to themselves.
A lot of those eyeballs are going to be devotees of the Highlord. A lot of those eyeballs are going to be people who just don't like the idea of neighbors getting murdered, don't like the idea of Rinthi creeping through their apartment complex, for reasons of self-preservation, for the noise and smell and mess disrupting their routines, and just basic decency (which does exist. most people in-game are not psychopaths.)
After a string of non-stop crimes, the templars should be posting sneaky soldiers or paid snithes in the Gaj, with max Scan. That doesn't happen because it's boring to play that out. It's boring to sit there waiting. But it makes perfect sense for it to be happening.
I could go on and on. There's an infinite number of justifications that could be made for any crime immediately being flagged.
But the real justification is game design. Apartments should be safe-ish for the owner, not death traps, not loot boxes for burglars, or else they are useless.
You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:
1. People don't WANT to know a Templar. To know a Templar is to draw their attention, and as they have the power to end a person's life for nothing at all, most citizens wouldn't even want to be on a Templar's radar. And if you don't KNOW a Templar, you can't exactly contact one on the way. Knowing a Templar is a good way to increase the likelihood of your own death. Also, reporting a crime, if that criminal was working for someone important, or paid off someone important, might get you killed just to shut you up. Which leads me to the next point...
2. You're not taking the corruption of the game world into account. People are poor, law is flexible depending on who you are, and who you've paid. If we were going to simulate making the world populated everywhere, and making crim-flags happen everywhere, we should also then simulate the ability to bribe officials anywhere to keep that from happening for a bit in that location. And bribes to such NPCs should be cheap. Because, unlike the player economy, vNPCs subsist on very meager amounts of sid, as demonstrated by both documentation and clan salaries.
3. But bribing PCs is notoriously expensive, because the PC economy isn't on par with the documentation. Some types of characters could potentially make enough to bribe a PC Templar, while others would struggle to ever make enough to warrant a conversation. I'm fine with this end of things, because certain professions of PCs -should- be more capable of coming up with the sid to bribe important people for special situations. But virtually anyone should be able to bribe a vNPC or two, for next to nothing, because those bribes represent how the world operates on a normal, day to day basis, per the documentation.
So, ultimately, we could simulate all of that. The imms could implement all of it, but it would just end up being the same situation we have now, where in the more sparsely populated areas of the game, they could simulate bribing an apartment gatekeeper to hold up people at the entrance for 5 minutes, or bribing a guard captain in an area to "forget" the report that they get about something happening in an area during a period of time, or whatever. But it'd just be a bunch of work for nothing when the result would be the same. Right now, we can imagine that those things happen. And in some cases, where more bribes might be able to make even further headway than we currently can with code, we can wish up, or move to bribing PCs if our own PC is financially capable of doing so.
Quote from: Heade on November 20, 2019, 12:15:08 PM
You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:
1. People don't WANT to know a Templar. To know a Templar is to draw their attention, and as they have the power to end a person's life for nothing at all, most citizens wouldn't even want to be on a Templar's radar. And if you don't KNOW a Templar, you can't exactly contact one on the way. Knowing a Templar is a good way to increase the likelihood of your own death. Also, reporting a crime, if that criminal was working for someone important, or paid off someone important, might get you killed just to shut you up. Which leads me to the next point...
2. You're not taking the corruption of the game world into account. People are poor, law is flexible depending on who you are, and who you've paid. If we were going to simulate making the world populated everywhere, and making crim-flags happen everywhere, we should also then simulate the ability to bribe officials anywhere to keep that from happening for a bit in that location. And bribes to such NPCs should be cheap. Because, unlike the player economy, vNPCs subsist on very meager amounts of sid, as demonstrated by both documentation and clan salaries.
3. But bribing PCs is notoriously expensive, because the PC economy isn't on par with the documentation. Some types of characters could potentially make enough to bribe a PC Templar, while others would struggle to ever make enough to warrant a conversation. I'm fine with this end of things, because certain professions of PCs -should- be more capable of coming up with the sid to bribe important people for special situations. But virtually anyone should be able to bribe a vNPC or two, for next to nothing, because those bribes represent how the world operates on a normal, day to day basis, per the documentation.
So, ultimately, we could simulate all of that. The imms could implement all of it, but it would just end up being the same situation we have now, where in the more sparsely populated areas of the game, they could simulate bribing an apartment gatekeeper to hold up people at the entrance for 5 minutes, or bribing a guard captain in an area to "forget" the report that they get about something happening in an area during a period of time, or whatever. But it'd just be a bunch of work for nothing when the result would be the same. Right now, we can imagine that those things happen. And in some cases, where more bribes might be able to make even further headway than we currently can with code, we can wish up, or move to bribing PCs if our own PC is financially capable of doing so.
Instead of having to resort to vNPC bribes, why don't we just bring everyone down to level they should realistically be at? Because it straight up wouldn't work, someone would ruin the system. Which is why I think the ability to go to a street corner and type 'bribe dude' would be a good way to supplement criminal undertakings.
Quote from: Heade on November 20, 2019, 12:15:08 PM
You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:
The game isn't simulationist. It's essentially a narrative game, with a few rules on top to adjudicate (a few) situations.
All I'm saying is that it's plausible to conjure a narrative that justifies assigning Wanted flags for murder in apartments, or picking certain locks, or picking pockets in certain locations. And furthermore, that the current situation is poor game design. Instead of apartments being sought after rewards, they are death traps. Something drastic has to change so that they have at least some utility.
Quote from: number13 on November 20, 2019, 07:29:01 PM
Quote from: Heade on November 20, 2019, 12:15:08 PM
You're mentioning all of the ideas of simulating the things that would hamper criminals, but none of the elements that would make it easy for them to be criminals to begin with:
The game isn't simulationist. It's essentially a narrative game, with a few rules on top to adjudicate (a few) situations.
All I'm saying is that it's plausible to conjure a narrative that justifies assigning Wanted flags for murder in apartments, or picking certain locks, or picking pockets in certain locations. And furthermore, that the current situation is poor game design. Instead of apartments being sought after rewards, they are death traps. Something drastic has to change so that they have at least some utility.
Well, I agree with that last part, anyhow. There have been multiple suggestions in the past that could help with this. One of them is being discussed right now in the doors and locks thread. Another is to allow PCs to hire NPC guards, even if those guards only work at their apartment and won't follow them around, but will protect them while they're in their rented space. The idea of affluent PCs hiring NPC guards was a topic that was brought up quite awhile back, but I think it has some merit depending on the implementation.
I know backstab was OP.....but it seemed to prevent huge amounts of the 'rare' poisons flooding the city. Now everyone with blowguns is an assassin whereas before it was extremely limited and came with a clear set of weaknesses.
Sidenote:
No classes start with blowgun use, but have to branch it.
3 of the 5 branch it from the poison use skill
Quote from: Nile on November 21, 2019, 02:58:06 AM
I know backstab was OP.....but it seemed to prevent huge amounts of the 'rare' poisons flooding the city. Now everyone with blowguns is an assassin whereas before it was extremely limited and came with a clear set of weaknesses.
Everyone who has strong connections to the templarate, the Guild, the noble houses, the elven whatever they call themselves lately, the merchant houses - are all assassins, if you want to go down the list. If you have a pet templar in your pocket or a GMH agent considers you incredibly useful and profitable to his plans, you just say "oh hai lrd templar/agent this breed just tried to attack me this morning!" and boom. Dead breed. No blowgun necessary.
Assassins are not defined by their skillsets. They are defined by their ability to ensure that someone doesn't wake up in the morning. Someone who could befriend someone, hire them, bring them to the silt sea, and push them off the ship...needs only the pilot skill. No combat needed.
Out of all the things my Assassin that would 1v1 Drov beetles could do that I considered OP, master backstab was not one of them. I think I had VG elf strength and I still could not do some stupid stuff with it.
Was it good? Yes. Was it op? No, not unless you were a dwarf with some really stupid strength.
Quote from: number13 on November 20, 2019, 12:49:35 AM
But the kayfabe of the game is, everyone can use the Way. The implications of that are not accounted for, at all. It's actually silly. But so long as that's a thing...crimes should be basically impossible to cover up.
This is actually a very good point. I don't have a solution off the cuff, because it has been part and parcel of Armageddon for two decades, but it's definitely something that has been under-addressed for the lifespan of this game. When you really think about it, an entire world where everyone can send instant mental messages to anyone would be a world that barely resembles anything we can conceive of. I don't have a great big statement to make here, but it's certainly true that the implications are not accounted for. When it comes down to it, I suppose it's one of those OOC QoL features that we're best served pretending isn't a fact of life in Zalanthas, because quite frankly, half the things that go on in this game would not be possible if it were a real world where people effectively have cellphones built into their brains. Over the years, I've caught myself wondering the removal of the Way would be beneficial or detrimental to the game. Other RPIs have functioned well without it, albeit with a smaller grid and fewer clans. It has always been kind of an elephant in the room.
Quote from: Greve on November 21, 2019, 07:57:50 PM
Quote from: number13 on November 20, 2019, 12:49:35 AM
But the kayfabe of the game is, everyone can use the Way. The implications of that are not accounted for, at all. It's actually silly. But so long as that's a thing...crimes should be basically impossible to cover up.
This is actually a very good point. I don't have a solution off the cuff, because it has been part and parcel of Armageddon for two decades, but it's definitely something that has been under-addressed for the lifespan of this game. When you really think about it, an entire world where everyone can send instant mental messages to anyone would be a world that barely resembles anything we can conceive of. I don't have a great big statement to make here, but it's certainly true that the implications are not accounted for. When it comes down to it, I suppose it's one of those OOC QoL features that we're best served pretending isn't a fact of life in Zalanthas, because quite frankly, half the things that go on in this game would not be possible if it were a real world where people effectively have cellphones built into their brains. Over the years, I've caught myself wondering the removal of the Way would be beneficial or detrimental to the game. Other RPIs have functioned well without it, albeit with a smaller grid and fewer clans. It has always been kind of an elephant in the room.
Everyone in the real world has a cellphone. Crimes are still covered up.
People in real life get robbed at gun point for over a minute long and then call the police afterwards and can't remember a single thing about their attacker.
People in Arm do a single look and can remember every detail about a fully cloaked person in a second.
Quote from: Jihelu on November 22, 2019, 12:00:27 PM
People in real life get robbed at gun point for over a minute long and then call the police afterwards and can't remember a single thing about their attacker.
People in Arm do a single look and can remember every detail about a fully cloaked person in a second.
This is the real problem. I played a raider somewhat recently, and by the time I rode back to my base of operations in [city] my mdesc, down to specific tattoos, was all over, despite being cloaked, masked, and having every part of my body covered.
This is in addition to the raid target being a grebber. I rode up on them, emoted a couple times, then said - stay away from the bug and you'll live - only for them to immediately type 'mount beetle;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w'
People know that spamwalking or spamfleeing and ignoring Rp saves them, so there's no recourse except to instagib. If you want to see PK get less 'random' (it likely wasn't random, you weren't privy to the other Rp going into it) then react more realistically instead of just spamming 'escape' while Waying everyone you've ever interacted with the full mdesc of the person you saw for twelve seconds fully cloaked.
If someone stopped and Rp'd, I left them alive 9 times out of 10, a little bruised but otherwise ok (one guy received an unlucky crit, sorry fella). If they spamfled/etc. I made it a point to chase them down and murder them if possible.
Masks used to hide mdescs but were removed. Also contact/psi used to show whatever sdesc you had at the time. So people could send you messages as the figure in a dark hooded cloak. Not sure when changes were implemented but I am all for bringing back the masks at the very least.
Quote from: GetKanked on November 22, 2019, 12:33:41 PM
If someone stopped and Rp'd, I left them alive 9 times out of 10, a little bruised but otherwise ok (one guy received an unlucky crit, sorry fella). If they spamfled/etc. I made it a point to chase them down and murder them if possible.
There is also the problem, of mul + dwarf + dwarf + human riding up to someone, instantly all throwing on THREATEN , and then essentially stripping the PC down naked with some suspect ooc-through-ic snark. Yes, that pc lived, but I rather doubt, they'll really have a good opinion of the game after that.
There is also the problem, where some group, simply rides in and murders someone without an emote, only for it to be 'lol oops, wrong guy, haha', like it's some kind of really funny thing, to just blow up a random pc because of the assumption 'only they wear this cloak'.
I've seen both go down, the first down south, and the other up north.
Much like AoD/Garrison with their crimcode immunity, players in groups or with some huge advantage, will usually abuse other players to the hilt, if given the leeway to do so. It is annoying, yes, when people flee away instantly and speed run back to town, but given the way most aggressors behave, it would be a failure to not understand why.
Fine with pvp/pk, but in arm, 99% of people only want to do either, when they're picking on a pc that has no chance.
That is the real problem. That, and zero karma dwarfs.
Also I thought it was stated somewhere that the Way was not usable by everyone in Zalanthas, but PC's always get it because playability.
I might be mistaken.
Read literally the second sentence in help "The Way".
QuoteThis is in addition to the raid target being a grebber. I rode up on them, emoted a couple times, then said - stay away from the bug and you'll live - only for them to immediately type 'mount beetle;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w'
He did RP, He got up and ran for his life. Just as valid as you appearing right next to them and telling them to stay away from something when you did not know how far away he was from the "bug". (And no it was not me)
On topic to the rest of the thread...I have been staying out of this mostly to consider things. Considering complete.
I do not understand why this thread exists.
In all of Real life human history, an OVERWHELMING percentage of killings are some sort of surprise attack OR on a subdued victim, often taken in some sort of surprise attack.
In movies, games, books, plays, Those two methods are a HUGE majority, from Julius Caesar to Saw, from Alien to John wick, from the Pulse nightclub to your average weekend in Chicago to terrorists beheading people. Even to the natural world where most predation is done by surprise.
Surprise, Overwhelming force and cutting off escape have been the tried and true methods since life learned how to take other lives.
And unlike RL where the odds are in favor of the aggressor, in Arm the odds are heavily in favor of the intended victim already...isn't there alreadya care bear mud?
I just want to say I would be totally fine with bringing back anonymity and the points about masks needing to hide mdescs I feel are valid (I think I've been a proponent of bringing more anonymity code in for a while, beyond only 'hide').
Secondly I want to say that anytime people say "spamfleeing is the problem' or 'spamthreaten is the problem' or 'spam..anything is the problem,' again your argument is coming down to blaming player actions.
however staff have said before that to flee is a form of roleplaying and does not necessarily mean bad roleplay. so is coming out of hiding without any warning and attacking, that is a form of RPing -- there may be RPing BEFORE the attack attempt that you didn't see, and when your victim is done fleeing? you better believe there will be RP.
-----
The solutions are in revising our systems so that things are sensible to people. So that when you get a kill, it's satisfying. When you die, it's satisfying (if not also sad).
If deaths are unsatisfying in some way, either on the killing or killed side, then I think the solutions lie in revising things (one at a time, seeing what effects each revision has) until things seem to be sensible again.
-----
To simply assert "there is no problem" is to ignore quite a lot of discussion that has been going on in the GDB not just in this thread but in many before mine over years.
To simply assert "there is no problem" is to ignore that staff have already made balancing changes in the way poisons are handled, that staff have recently given us the threaten feature (which is, IMO, a good thing indeed) in order to promote more RP and less spam-commands in PVP.
There isn't just a problem now, there has generally been beefs over these issues for a long time and it's just going to be a continued discussion.
Quote from: Brokkr on November 22, 2019, 05:44:31 PM
Read literally the second sentence in help "The Way".
Huh, maybe it was some discussion about psionics where this got tangled in. Guess you gotta reconsider how it all works after all!
It isn't my fault if I run away from a raider and it isn't a raiders fault if they immediately pkill me regardless. Both sides are right. The choice to engage in a collaborative scene is simply that, a choice that's decided on by both sides. If one person decides not to that doesn't make them wrong.
It isn't my fault if I enjoyed watching one character totally bait raiders with their newbie clothes then completely destroy them.
I feel that, all pvp/pk is a surprise because everyone thinks their PC will live forever.
Quote from: Krath on November 22, 2019, 10:40:50 PM
I feel that, all pvp/pk is a surprise because everyone thinks their PC will live forever.
That is an unfair generalization that is not true and I think you know that.
I agree with what someone else said earlier in the thread relating to hiding mdescs with cloaks/masks/other clothing items.
I'm not sure why it was removed but I think it would be a good addition if added back to the game, especially involving PVP.
Quote from: X-D on November 22, 2019, 05:48:56 PM
QuoteThis is in addition to the raid target being a grebber. I rode up on them, emoted a couple times, then said - stay away from the bug and you'll live - only for them to immediately type 'mount beetle;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w;w'
He did RP, He got up and ran for his life. Just as valid as you appearing right next to them and telling them to stay away from something when you did not know how far away he was from the "bug". (And no it was not me)
He was sitting down. And I get what you're saying, but you worked REAL hard to ignore the rest of my post (and the other issues I had with the interaction).
You're absolutely right, in real life surprise attacks/etc. are definitely a thing. I've no problem with surprise attacks. There's just not a situation where you can move from a seated position to riding your bug at a run to the west before the other person can react, except that it's a text based game with text based limitations. I find it a little lame, as I said.
Also, you aren't the arbiter of what threads should exist. You'll have a much happier life if you just accept that sometimes people want to discuss things that you don't want to discuss, and have opinions that are different from your own. You seem to want to dismiss the problem entirely, but there are clearly many people who see it as a problem worth talking about. The weird, oldbie GDB poster urge to shut down all discussion that you, personally, see as pointless is one of the most toxic things about this place, and has been irritating since I started playing, decades ago.
Moderated my own post.
Simple Solution to the Mdesc issue: Staff Bring back the Mdesc Hiding Mask
Quote from: Krath on December 02, 2019, 09:36:25 PM
Simple Solution to the Mdesc issue: Staff Bring back the Mdesc Hiding Mask
I'd be alright with this, as soon as someone figures out how to force a person from the 'shadows' who is in a room full of people and know that you are
standing right there, but can't in any way interact with you.
Quote from: JohnMichaelHenry on December 04, 2019, 06:39:57 AM
Quote from: Krath on December 02, 2019, 09:36:25 PM
Simple Solution to the Mdesc issue: Staff Bring back the Mdesc Hiding Mask
I'd be alright with this, as soon as someone figures out how to force a person from the 'shadows' who is in a room full of people and know that you are standing right there, but can't in any way interact with you.
I've said this for years and even posted it May last year:
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,53671.msg1011878.html#msg1011878
Quote from: JohnMichaelHenry on December 04, 2019, 06:39:57 AM
Quote from: Krath on December 02, 2019, 09:36:25 PM
Simple Solution to the Mdesc issue: Staff Bring back the Mdesc Hiding Mask
I'd be alright with this, as soon as someone figures out how to force a person from the 'shadows' who is in a room full of people and know that you are standing right there, but can't in any way interact with you.
You can attack a shadow, you can steal from a shadow, and you can interact with them in the same manner that you would with a visible PC once you manage to start watching them. I'm not sure what the brawl code does in taverns if you try to 'hit' a shadow - maybe there's room for improvement there? But shadows are hardly invulnerable once you spotted them.
You are missing the point.
If Shaleah spots Rinthrat hiding in the Gaj, Riev cannot in any way interact with Rinthrat.
Even if Shaleah APPROACHES Rinthrat, and says "He is standing right here. Look. See this here? This is a person."
Its not about being "invulnerable", its that Riev will never be able to see Rinthrat, unless Shaleah performs an aggressive, likely unlawful action.
On SOI I think you could reveal hidden people if you could see them, breaking their hide status.
Quote from: kahuna on December 04, 2019, 09:46:12 AM
On SOI I think you could reveal hidden people if you could see them, breaking their hide status.
yep via the `point` command, the mechanic was not awkward and intuitively makes a lot of sense.
Point...One of the few things from SOI that I agree with. That and what is it, study? The method to get the sdesc of hooded/masked people.
I moved a reported post and some associated responses to moderation. Please play nice, y'all.
Arrived late to this discussion but just some thoughts:
1. I think stealth is fine the way it is, it is not as strong as people think without some sacrifice.
2. I would be okay with making hiding(but not sneaking into) in apartments tougher. It should not be so big of a penalty that someone who has invested in stealth would be overly concerned with it. However it would give those with master scan(mostly who haven't used wisdom as a stat dump) an easier time detecting the people who have are able to kill them the fastest but still not be able to stop someone who has just invested in stealth in order to spy on them.
3. Apartments should not be death traps. When you lock an apartment door from the inside, it should only be locking the door from the outside. Thus anyone on the inside can open the door and leave. Additionally, if you flee from inside an apartment with a closed door, the door should open automatically letting a person run out. (this avoids the need to break/fix doors)
4. Glad to see all the changes to certain poisons that should be rare, but at the same time the amount of cures people carry for common poison is absurd as well. Increasing decay rate for pills might help here.
I would be okay with changing paralyze/sleep to lower strength(significantly)/blindness instead, but at the same time, the effects of common poisons like grishen or bloodburn should double seeing how common and cheap cures are, and how quickly people can get away to safety anyways.
5. As time passes, more love should be given to location around allanak like redstorm, luirs and rinth, this will help people not be so scared of failure when they can still go to these places to make a new life for themselves. That includes staff supporting and encouraging leadership PC in these area to have more conflict with allanak, rather than being open/secret allies who will sell out PC running from allanak.
Quote from: Dresan on December 26, 2019, 03:04:56 PM
Arrived late to this discussion but just some thoughts:
1. I think stealth is fine the way it is, it is not as strong as people think without some sacrifice.
2. I would be okay with making hiding(but not sneaking into) in apartments tougher. It should not be so big of a penalty that someone who has invested in stealth would be overly concerned with it. However it would give those with master scan(mostly who haven't used wisdom as a stat dump) an easier time detecting the people who have are able to kill them the fastest but still not be able to stop someone who has just invested in stealth in order to spy on them.
3. Apartments should not be death traps. When you lock an apartment door from the inside, it should only be locking the door from the outside. Thus anyone on the inside can open the door and leave. Additionally, if you flee from inside an apartment with a closed door, the door should open automatically letting a person run out. (this avoids the need to break/fix doors)
4. Glad to see all the changes to certain poisons that should be rare, but at the same time the amount of cures people carry for common poison is absurd as well. Increasing decay rate for pills might help here.
I would be okay with changing paralyze/sleep to lower strength(significantly)/blindness instead, but at the same time, the effects of common poisons like grishen or bloodburn should double seeing how common and cheap cures are, and how quickly people can get away to safety anyways.
5. As time passes, more love should be given to location around allanak like redstorm, luirs and rinth, this will help people not be so scared of failure when they can still go to these places to make a new life for themselves. That includes staff supporting and encouraging leadership PC in these area to have more conflict with allanak, rather than being open/secret allies who will sell out PC running from allanak.
In the realm of realism technology wise, point 3 is a contentious one. Because that style of lock and handle requires 2 things, a complex lock and an actual turning handle with a mechanism. Zalanthan door locks in my mind are super simple, they have the teeth in there to stop any other key unlocking them, but all the lock is, is just a bolt that gets extended within the door to lock it against the frame.
If it even is as complex as that, given the fact they have only bone and wood to make mechanisms.
Quote from: Hauwke on December 26, 2019, 03:41:37 PM
In the realm of realism technology wise, point 3 is a contentious one.
Generally, I wouldn't even bother too much with logistics of it. After all, making specialized mechanisms are outside my RL expertise.
Basically the way I picture it is that the key is more like a small tool to help you open the door which not so much "locked" but rather barred from the inside, far from the concept of tiny key and locks we use in ever day life. Soon as the door is closed, the door would be "locked" again, but again easy to open from the inside.
However, given there are chest and smaller boxes with keys in a world without metal, umm, yeah I wouldn't over think it. In the same as I don't overthink that my character doesn't need to go take a shit as I play him for a couple of IC days or the fact he sometimes fights giant bugs or there are stories of magick in the known. Perhaps they figured out some clever way to pull it off with bone, clay and stone which we never had to since we had metal.
To be fair, I don't make mechanisms either, So yeah.
And I can admit there could be one or two versions of it in circulation amongst nobility and nobility alone, I just can't believe that random commoners would get it in the first place.
What's wrong with being able to unlock a door from the inside without a key?
I think that's a great idea, if it can be coded. Would solve a lot of issues and make plenty of sense.
Not at /all/ a complicated mechanism.
Quote from: JohnMichaelHenry on December 31, 2019, 07:40:09 AM
What's wrong with being able to unlock a door from the inside without a key?
I think that's a great idea, if it can be coded. Would solve a lot of issues and make plenty of sense.
Not at /all/ a complicated mechanism.
It's the actual physical mechanism, not the coded one.
Quote from: Hauwke on December 31, 2019, 04:44:06 PM
Quote from: JohnMichaelHenry on December 31, 2019, 07:40:09 AM
What's wrong with being able to unlock a door from the inside without a key?
I think that's a great idea, if it can be coded. Would solve a lot of issues and make plenty of sense.
Not at /all/ a complicated mechanism.
It's the actual physical mechanism, not the coded one.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean to say that a door lock is a complicated mechanism? Cuz I'm saying that it is not.
In fact, a mechanism that locks and unlocks with a key from the outside, but with a manual lever from the inside, is much less complicated than a mechanism that uses a key from both inside and outside, which is what we have now.
I dunno if this has been said, but it just occurred to me this scans pretty well with real life murder too.
For the most part, victims will run and scream for help and killing someone without locking them in or the element of surprise is pretty hard.
It is indeed pretty realistic. I don't know what the hell could be changed. Other than, like... Maybe 'bash' having a chance to break down doors but making a hell of a lot of noise / alerting like... every fucking apartment nearby or something?
Quote from: MatisseOrOtherwise on January 24, 2020, 10:47:37 AM
It is indeed pretty realistic. I don't know what the hell could be changed. Other than, like... Maybe 'bash' having a chance to break down doors but making a hell of a lot of noise / alerting like... every fucking apartment nearby or something?
Yeah I wish.
if that ever becomes a thing... If you hear someone screaming "FBI", its me.
Why not give more penalty to flee? Too easy to get away, imo.
If we're talking mass combat, that's where a majority of kills happened historically. (After the route.) As it stands if you flee then you're generallly safe if you have enough stamina to spam run away. (You do in 90% of cases.)
A flee penalty would make PVE exploration even more impossible than it already is.
Quote from: MatisseOrOtherwise on February 18, 2020, 10:03:01 AM
A flee penalty would make PVE exploration even more impossible than it already is.
You can make adjustments based on skills.
For instance if someone retreats from a bahamet he gets his free attack like it is now.
If someone retreats from a PC with slashing weapons or threaten or literally any skill which is 99% PC only, you get a penalty.
I'm personally okay with having the difference since NPCs get tons of advantages as is. Including the insta move then double attack which staff have repeatedly insisted is a
feature.
I have only played for like 3 years but I have only been 1 hitted by a sneaky dwarf once and i was at like 20hp from making the mistake of forgetting my token of mercantilism on my rinth clothes so it could have been an urchin that did it and as a fellow rinthi at the time I got it. like ic how could he not a wounded elven fence in the
and my first real long lived character was a human rinthi fighter who walked around the rinth with 20k of weapons and armor calling her self the guard of west side wishing a mf'er would until she got she got so old the new recruits she was training after retiring from face started to give a square fight.
she never once went out of her way to mess up anyone's plots though unless a templar or noble requested it and never once attacked anyone without having a full conversation first.
So i think there is something to be said about the way a character behaves having a heavy bearing on the likeliness they have to be one hit KO'ed in kind of a live by the sword die by the sword kind of way and I think there is alot of room within conflicting plots for compromise between opposing sides even in a brutal world and when that happens in good faith even in criminal/raiding scenarios people will run with it becaue it is really fun. I mean the templarate taking bribes and making people do things is just this and is objectively way more fun for everyone than people getting killed by npc half-giants all the time, i feel like that same dynamic exists with most conflict in the game.
if its a dick measuring contest just stick a knife in their pillow a few days before you sit down to the bartering table or something to make them more amenable to your ends.
i really like the new poison degeneration but one-hits are not something I have a problem with in the game recently through virtue of mostly just good faith RP
Ive had more enemies who I would never want to kill because it was fun to play with them than enemies I have wanted to kill.
I'm not trying to blame players for this problem people are seeing i am on the contrary saying that in my experience if you rp in good faith people return the favor.
and my characters who go around letting their plots build with other people's plots rather than making it a zero sum game normally get treated in kind
i think if the cultural meta problem is too much one hit killing over nothing then perhaps the answer is sustaining a culture of good faith rp so that rp actually gets a chance to flourish. I have seen it done and it is when i have the most fun in the game.
I honestly think that since the classes got changed up i have seen rp in places get better not worse because people have well rounded enough characters codedly that there is more to their lives than how my pk's notched into their weapon hilt.
and if someone is a side character riding the tailcoats of someone with real ig power (ex. aides) getting sniffed because their boss offended someone over a doobie or what have you i feel like that kind of comes with the territory of being a side character involved over your head. Its a fun balance to play when it works but when the one hit poison l33t execution comes that wasn't a plot being sniffed it was just that character being a dispensable side character in a plot grander than themselves. and thats a believable consequence for jumping into games way over their head.
Quote from: Is Friday on February 18, 2020, 09:00:45 AM
Why not give more penalty to flee? Too easy to get away, imo.
If we're talking mass combat, that's where a majority of kills happened historically. (After the route.) As it stands if you flee then you're generallly safe if you have enough stamina to spam run away. (You do in 90% of cases.)
Flee is risky as attacks of opportunity can mean your life. Esp if ganged up on. Two people getting an attack if opportunity is deadly. Then if the attackers didnt have a delay on they can immediately go to the next room over and if you didn't land the right DIRECTION of the flee the first go then you may just have trapped yourself.
I think the only change I want is to remove the need to spam the command. If you type flee, your character should keep trying every so often until they succeed or a certain amount of failures or time has passed.
So instead of PANIC! you couldnt escape! IT says. "You couldnt escape yet, but you still try..." then it later says "you never found a way out of combat."
To balance such a nerf to flee, I really want a wimpy feature added to it.
But I never thought that flee was the problem. All the other lame strategies are a bigger contributor. Especially the fear of retaliation bit and the lack of anonymity bit.
Yeah flee is fine
i think my issue with flee is that it seems to remove the teeth from normal 1v1 sort of player conflict. i attack, incur delay, you flee, conflict concluded. so i switch to something that has actual consequence, like poison.
i'm not advocating for making it easier to pk someone via normal combat scenario. i'm advocating for making it a more viable means of conflict so that it might take the place of things like apt murder.
So, did reel change?
Reel used to be the counter to flee. I think reeling was the reason I couldn't flee in 99% of cases where brute force was used to PK my past characters.
But lately reel seems odd. I swear I see people fighting on right away after a reel or fleeing after a reel.
Was reel nerfed?
Quote from: Harmless on February 27, 2020, 11:43:42 PM
So, did reel change?
Reel used to be the counter to flee. I think reeling was the reason I couldn't flee in 99% of cases where brute force was used to PK my past characters.
But lately reel seems odd. I swear I see people fighting on right away after a reel or fleeing after a reel.
Was reel nerfed?
It's been like that for years. I think it was changed at some point, but for the last 3 years at least I would regularly counterattack while reeled before the aggressor got another action.
Pretty sure that's due to the fact that flee wasn't a skill everyone had access to. At least not in the form of being able to train it up!
No, reel has been bugged for ages now.
If an attacker reels you, you can disengage and they will stop attacking. It's stupid.
I refuse to believe that >:( Arm is perfectly balanced and not buggy at all especially when it comes to combat.
Nessalin said he was looking into how flee works in Discord last week. I'm hoping for some changes. Spamming flee without penalty then spam running is very easy. It forces Insta nuke tactics instead of low or mid tier combat.
Quote from: Is Friday on February 28, 2020, 08:10:37 AM
Nessalin said he was looking into how flee works in Discord last week. I'm hoping for some changes. Spamming flee without penalty then spam running is very easy. It forces Insta nuke tactics instead of low or mid tier combat.
Yeah, the idea that how well you flee is based solely on how quickly you can hit a button seems antithetical to the rest of the game design.
PVE kills players far more often than PVP on average. I think Admin posted stats on my this somewhere but I can't recall where it is at the moment. My worry about making flee less reliable is that it may seriously impact the PVE aspect.
There are oodles of mobs that can 1-2 shot pcs and if flee is very delayed or difficult then those oh shit moments might result in an unfavorable rate of PVE fatalities instead of close calls.
If flee from PVE and PVP were treated separately this would be ideal imho.
What's wrong with having more PCs die to instagank mobs? /s
Quote from: Alesan on February 28, 2020, 01:38:18 PM
What's wrong with having more PCs die to instagank mobs? /s
Creating/Advancing Plots is more annoying than fun when your participation turnover rate is too fast/high.
yeah if flee gets nerfed im just gonna not play anymore cus theres no point in exploration if you can't explore unless you can reliably take everything in an area
i dont want to put 2000 hours into spamming combat shit just to see how the next room description along looks
Quote from: MatisseOrOtherwise on February 28, 2020, 06:46:36 PM
yeah if flee gets nerfed im just gonna not play anymore cus theres no point in exploration if you can't explore unless you can reliably take everything in an area
i dont want to put 2000 hours into spamming combat shit just to see how the next room description along looks
So in order to continue playing you must be able to have an effectively infinite number of flee attempts available to you? In your mind what is the purpose of a failed flee message?
I get not wanting it nerfed, but as it is now there is no purpose to a failed escape attempt and it's kind of silly. You could probably just increase the odds of a successful escape, but add a small time delay to each flee attempt. Technically this would still be a nerf, but it would be a much smaller one and the game would make a lot more sense.
I just want Reel code fixed. If I hit a guy and he disengaged from me it shouldn't stop combat.
A lot of multiplayer games that have a Player-Vs-Player and Player-Vs-NPCs aspect to their code, treating player enemies different than robot enemies. That could be something to look into, if there is time and energy.
i am fine with differences in pve and pvp mechanics
if flee is nerfed I really want wimpy. I really hate that I can only have my character flee from combat if I am staring at the screen constantly waiting to enter a command. That's stupid also. I just have to say that, there has always been some kind of bias against a wimpy feature, but if we're going to nerf flee then we're making the game more "hardcore" and I would like something "casual" to compensate. I don't want to just die every time because if I am late to start fleeing from combat because I dont type fast that it's even more likely I'll die. I want my character to automatically do what my character would want to do, try to run automatically, if I am not there to type it manually. Then let the nerfed version of flee kick in.
Also, the two counters to flee really are reeling, and guarding/having the flee skill yourself and blocking their exit. I am okay with something like a delay added to a fail flee attempt if your opponent succeeded in their own guarding or fleeing check against you, and a special message sent. Maybe most mobs don't have a high flee skill and would be less likely to block your exit, not having that kind of training/body type. (the mobs will still chase you after all.)
Quote from: Harmless on February 28, 2020, 09:55:51 PM
i am fine with differences in pve and pvp mechanics
if flee is nerfed I really want wimpy. I really hate that I can only have my character flee from combat if I am staring at the screen constantly waiting to enter a command. That's stupid also. I just have to say that, there has always been some kind of bias against a wimpy feature, but if we're going to nerf flee then we're making the game more "hardcore" and I would like something "casual" to compensate. I don't want to just die every time because if I am late to start fleeing from combat because I dont type fast that it's even more likely I'll die. I want my character to automatically do what my character would want to do, try to run automatically, if I am not there to type it manually. Then let the nerfed version of flee kick in.
Also, the two counters to flee really are reeling, and guarding/having the flee skill yourself and blocking their exit. I am okay with something like a delay added to a fail flee attempt if your opponent succeeded in their own guarding or fleeing check against you, and a special message sent. Maybe most mobs don't have a high flee skill and would be less likely to block your exit, not having that kind of training/body type. (the mobs will still chase you after all.)
Except reel IS NOT working like that currently. Literally the only counter to flee is killing the person before they manage to get away, or preemptively guarding the correct exit.
Erm, I may be mistaken (it's been awhile) but doesn't attacking remove your guarding status anyway?
Quote from: Armaddict on February 29, 2020, 12:36:10 AM
Erm, I may be mistaken (it's been awhile) but doesn't attacking remove your guarding status anyway?
Select classes retain guard status during combat. Fighter does, for example.
What is it about bash that prevents it being the answer to prevent folks fleeing?
Quote from: Brokkr on March 01, 2020, 01:53:21 AM
What is it about bash that prevents it being the answer to prevent folks fleeing?
I've talked about it several times, people don't really give it the credit it deserves.
I believe it is because of:
A) Training bash is basically non-stop fails to the point that people think it will always fail, so they just stop using it.
B) It can't be used against someone who's mounted.
I don't believe, personally, that these are critical drawbacks, but getting other players to view bash the way it has often worked against -me- has not been successful.
Quote from: Brokkr on March 01, 2020, 01:53:21 AM
What is it about bash that prevents it being the answer to prevent folks fleeing?
It's incredibly unreliable if you're not max height or if the opponent is taller.
Quote from: Is Friday on March 01, 2020, 07:09:39 AM
Quote from: Brokkr on March 01, 2020, 01:53:21 AM
What is it about bash that prevents it being the answer to prevent folks fleeing?
It's incredibly unreliable if you're not max height or if the opponent is taller.
Only at lower levels. If you're a class that can master bash then height barely matters, the skill just overwhelms the height modifier.
I've had characters with high-end bash be reliably successful against creatures and people much taller than them. Spiders, scrab, anything that was within the size limitations, all with a below-average height human.
My master bash delf failed four times in a row against an assassin guild who was shorter, after double disarming after backstab, leading to his death.
Quote
I'm pretty sure bash is operating as intended, due to the fact that it has been in continuous operation as a skill for multiple decades. For what it's worth, height and skill are not the only factors to determining a successful bash, and it looks like the RNG was just against you in this series of encounters.
- the following request.
"RNG was against you regardless of your maxed skill". That's the definition of unreliable. The issue with bash is, unlike all other combat skills, there's no neutral resolve (ie, you disarm and neither party loses their weapon). Failing a bash means you're on your ass 100% of the time.
It's too unreliable for the negative consequences and anyone suggesting that it's the lynchpin underlying flight control needs to actually test the skill.
Edit: also bonus, "it's been like this forever which means it must be right". You can probably explain a lot of Armageddons worst aspects with that logic. ;D
I have to ask....what weapons were you using?
Bash is garbage because it has so few opportunities to be useful. Even if you land it its what 10 seconds max that someone is down? It feels as long as combat delay. And due to the nature of skills theres no point in using it unless you have it mastered. And it takes a long time to get it mastred.
Why bother with something unreliable when you can just nuke them with a backstab or some poison.
Maybe make standing players take extra attacks. Or players who have been bashed are forced to walking speed for a couple seconds. Maybe add a failure where you dont fall yourself once skilled enough and leave falling to crit fails.
Honestly any skill that only either succeeds or backfires mid combat should be looked at. Its a stupid mechanic that discourages use. Nobody would use disarm if every failure meant dropping your weapon.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on March 01, 2020, 06:54:27 PM
Bash is garbage because it has so few opportunities to be useful. Even if you land it its what 10 seconds max that someone is down? It feels as long as combat delay. And due to the nature of skills theres no point in using it unless you have it mastered. And it takes a long time to get it mastred.
I have to disagree here. Bash puts the enemy at a serious disadvantage if it succeeds, so much so that if you fail you're put in that position. High risk high reward type of skill.
Quote
Why bother with something unreliable when you can just nuke them with a backstab or some poison.
Why bother with anything when you can just use fireball? This is a cherry picked statement. You can say this about anything, what's the point?
Quote
Honestly any skill that only either succeeds or backfires mid combat should be looked at. Its a stupid mechanic that discourages use. Nobody would use disarm if every failure meant dropping your weapon.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Bash and disarm and two completely different skills. Disarm while is great doesn't lag the enemy at all. They can immediately draw another weapon. Bash is one of the only mundane skills in the game that permanently lags and puts the enemy in a terrible position for combat. It's very powerful.
I mostly agree with Kahuna.
BUT....I do find it odd that I have the bash skill and this other guy does not and yet he is able to "roll with my charge causing me to fall on my face" He does not have the bash skill but still Judo-master at reversing it?
Also, at master, you should stop falling over unless the person you are trying to bash is also master. It is in the realm of silliness that this guy has perfected the art of knocking people over but cannot seem to figure out how to remain standing himself if he misses.
I try to make it so my encounters aren't surprise attacks. There are ways to do it you just have to be willing to engage in that collaborative story with others.
Quote from: X-D on March 01, 2020, 08:03:47 PM
I mostly agree with Kahuna.
BUT....I do find it odd that I have the bash skill and this other guy does not and yet he is able to "roll with my charge causing me to fall on my face" He does not have the bash skill but still Judo-master at reversing it?
Also, at master, you should stop falling over unless the person you are trying to bash is also master. It is in the realm of silliness that this guy has perfected the art of knocking people over but cannot seem to figure out how to remain standing himself if he misses.
The game is never going to have enough success and failure messages for every gradiation of outcome. Bash and every other disabler must be unreliable, or they become "I win" buttons.
Edit:
Just saying that I have indeed tried the skill out over decades and it has often been exactly what people say it isn't. The reason I died/killed someone. The lynchpin of an engagement.
Personally I have never been able to get kick or bash to go up, not once that I remember.
A successful bash is hardly an I win button. If that were true every failure would be an I lose button.
Quote from: Brokkr on March 01, 2020, 01:53:21 AM
What is it about bash that prevents it being the answer to prevent folks fleeing?
A number of things, Brokkr.
For one thing, not all classes get bash. The class system is one of those cases where Armageddon is more RPG than RPI. If your chosen class doesn't get the bash skill, your character is outright incapable of ever attempting to prevent someone from doing something. Same way you're simply unable to attempt to spot a hidden person if you can't scan. It's just one of those things.
Secondly, the bash skill is useless until it's pretty high up and it goes up really slowly. Let's not mince words and pretend people haven't been through twenty years of play and one or two code leaks - bash is one of those skills that you have to grind for ages because its chance to increase is so small, and if you use it "responsibly" it'll never go above journeyman. It just doesn't go up at the same rate as things like backstab and throw and disarm and so on. This is antithesis to calling it the go-to solution to instant flee. You can't call it that when it's one of the hardest skills to raise while literally every character has the ability to instantaneously teleport out of combat. That
is what prevents it from being the answer to flee, same as [redacted because seriously wtf are you thinking] can't be called a common counter to nofail stealth.
Thirdly, size plays an inflated role in bash. If you're short and they're tall, you can pretty much forget about bashing them. I'm not a RL wrestler so I can't say too much about the logistics of putting someone on their ass, but burly dwarves should not be so terrible at it and skinny, hollow-boned elves should not be gods of bash resistance. There's a reason 95% of combat chars pick max height.
Fourthly (is that even a word?) you can't actually bash someone who's riding, sitting, flying or in any position besides standing upright with the soles of their feet planted on the floor. Hilariously, if someone's worried about being the recipient of a bash, it actually makes sense to fight seated so they can quickly stand and flee if it seems necessary. People use this against tarantulas. I bet that if someone was to play a character known to use bash to land kills, people would go out of their way to fight them in unbashable positions. Same way people speedwalk to avoid backstab, knowing that you can leave the room faster than the skill's before-delay.
And finally, even if you manage to get your bash skill pretty high, it just still seems to fail too often to be relied upon. If you fail a bash, it's over--either you die because you're now fighting on your ass or the guy gets away guaranteed and you've missed your shot as the guy will never let you have another opportunity. It's just not a dependable skill. Most skills actually become very reliable once you're good at them. Backstab and archery practically never miss at master, steal pretty much can't fail unless you're trying to steal a boulder, high climb turns you into spiderman, master stealth becomes failproof, etc. Bash doesn't seem to do that.
It obviously should not work in all cases to a high degree of reliability. That creates an "I WIN" button which is something we try to avoid.
My experience is with decent bash I could lead with a bash and, with a skilled character, kill people before they ever stood up. Also, that I could logically choose weapons such that I would hardly ever miss a bash, given a reasonable opponent.
Quote from: Brokkr on March 02, 2020, 12:06:01 PM
That creates an "I WIN" button which is something we try to avoid.
Is that right.
Halcyon, I never said bash should not fail. In fact, I would not change how often it fails or why.
What I would change is the outcome. You don't have the bash skill and I try and fail to bash you, You don't cause me to fall down, you don't know the first thing about making people fall down. Instead maybe I just cannot use any combat skills for double the amount of time for a success. Or some other thing that is just a stumble and time to regain balance.
I have master bash, I don't fall down unless verses somebody with skill close to mine and other penalties are reduced a bit. As it sits now, failing a bash at master is the same as failing at novice...and mildly silly.
I have to echo Brokkr on this point.
QuoteMy experience is with decent bash I could lead with a bash and, with a skilled character, kill people before they ever stood up. Also, that I could logically choose weapons such that I would hardly ever miss a bash, given a reasonable opponent.
Done properly, master bash is nearly unstoppable even dwarf verses elf. (leaving out half-giants of course).
Let's put it this way: if bash was actually the answer, people would be doing it. This debate wouldn't exist. If bash was a reliable and effective way to engage in PvP, it would be what we see people doing. It just isn't. We see people resorting to max-strength bludgeoning etwo, we see people resorting to sap and backstab, we see people resorting to peraine and spells and whatnot. These are effective ways to overcome the fact that any idiot can type 'flee' and instantly leave the room unless it has no exits. Brokkr, you want to make it sound like bash is this miracle solution that noone has ever thought of. It just isn't. If it was, this forum would have five threads per year talking about how people use the bash skill to render their victims helpless. I'm not even saying I want that to be reality, but I maintain that it most certainly isn't, and I don't like being gaslighted with "just use bash lulz." Time and time again, your answer to coded concerns is something that we all know just doesn't work, but you persist in trying to hoodwink players who have tried these things a hundred times and found them lacking.
In my experience, when used by someone who is good at it, bash is absolutely devastating. It's normally followed up by a head/neck attack. It's so good that it's sometimes dangerous to let someone bash you while using sparring weapons.
Bash can be horrifying and life-ending when it lands.
That's enough of a trade off for its current accuracy.
The whole reason we're talking about bash is because people resort to the truly deadly things like Backstab, Magick, Poison, apartments, because people can flee too easily. People resort to those things because they ARE "I Win" buttons.
Bash is definitely NOT in the same caliber. And even if it landed 100% effectively it would still not be even close to on par in terms of feeling as cheap and powerful as those others are. Bash still gives you opportunity to escape, to outsmart your enemy, to avoid them, to be guarded by someone else.
Quote from: Brokkr on March 02, 2020, 12:06:01 PM
Also, that I could logically choose weapons such that I would hardly ever miss a bash, given a reasonable opponent.
What does this mean?
Quote from: MatisseOrOtherwise on March 03, 2020, 01:08:42 AM
Bash can be horrifying and life-ending when it lands.
Only if you're significantly more skilled than your opponent. At which point literally anything can be life-ending in such an engagement. Like a reel.
doublepost accident
Mundane on mundane violence should be fairly balanced imo. Bash is not balanced. Neither are dwarves.
Things which are unbalanced on purpose, which is okay:
Poison
Magick
Muls
Half-giants
Social power
The things that are unbalanced are either in theory difficult to acquire, creates enemies, or require karma and responsible use with respect to other players.
Quote from: Greve on March 02, 2020, 10:40:41 PM
Brokkr, you want to make it sound like bash is this miracle solution that noone has ever thought of. It just isn't. If it was, this forum would have five threads per year talking about how people use the bash skill to render their victims helpless. I'm not even saying I want that to be reality, but I maintain that it most certainly isn't, and I don't like being gaslighted with "just use bash lulz." Time and time again, your answer to coded concerns is something that we all know just doesn't work, but you persist in trying to hoodwink players who have tried these things a hundred times and found them lacking.
My perspective is different. I did not mention bash because I thought it was a "miracle solution". I mentioned it because it is one tool in the toolkit and that tool had not been mentioned. As I wrote, I've effectively used bash (and had it used against me) so I was wondering as to why it wasn't mentioned.
I'm not asking as someone trying to gaslight you into believe bash is "The Answer!" but as someone who has been behind changes to bash already, over the last year or so.
Bash vs Backstab
Backstab causes a high amount of lag/delay after using.
Backstab, on a success, deals instant damage.
Backstab, on a success against an unarmed opponent, deals instant damage plus a free hit.
Backstab, on a failure, does no damage.
Bash causes a small amount of lag/delay after using.
Bash, on a success, deals damage similar to kick, and causes the target to be in a sitting position.
Bash, on a fail, causes you to be in a similar sitting position.
Backstab skill goes up quickly, on a single fail.
Anecdotally, bash requires more fails in order to pass the check for a skill-up.
Backstab can be mastered in a 3-5d played with proper practice.
Bash, in my experience, takes much longer and comes with more inherent risk in training.
So yes, Bash is a tool that could be used. But the meta is Burst Damage to prevent fleeing, which even if it fails, causes damage and leaves behind trails that can help you track down your prey.
Bash, if it fails, gives them an easy out, and an ability to run before you've even done a single point of damage.
As a tool to prevent fleeing, bash is less useful in its utility. Backstab and/or sap are, frankly, more reliable if death is your goal.
Quote from: Riev on March 04, 2020, 10:35:03 AM
Bash vs Backstab
Backstab causes a high amount of lag/delay after using.
Backstab, on a success, deals instant damage.
Backstab, on a success against an unarmed opponent, deals instant damage plus a free hit.
Backstab, on a failure, does no damage.
Bash causes a small amount of lag/delay after using.
Bash, on a success, deals damage similar to kick, and causes the target to be in a sitting position.
Bash, on a fail, causes you to be in a similar sitting position.
Backstab skill goes up quickly, on a single fail.
Anecdotally, bash requires more fails in order to pass the check for a skill-up.
Backstab can be mastered in a 3-5d played with proper practice.
Bash, in my experience, takes much longer and comes with more inherent risk in training.
So yes, Bash is a tool that could be used. But the meta is Burst Damage to prevent fleeing, which even if it fails, causes damage and leaves behind trails that can help you track down your prey.
Bash, if it fails, gives them an easy out, and an ability to run before you've even done a single point of damage.
As a tool to prevent fleeing, bash is less useful in its utility. Backstab and/or sap are, frankly, more reliable if death is your goal.
One thing you didn't take into account is that characters that can master bash will be overall better at killing that characters that can master backstab. With this in mind, bash should be at least a little inferior to backstab as the problems with bash are compensated for with other aspects of the character's skill sheet.
The problem is that a character with master backstab that doesn't kill their opponent is more likely to flat out lose the ensuing fight.
Quote from: Riev on March 04, 2020, 10:35:03 AM
Backstab skill goes up quickly, on a single fail.
Anecdotally, bash requires more fails in order to pass the check for a skill-up.
Backstab can be mastered in a 3-5d played with proper practice.
Bash, in my experience, takes much longer and comes with more inherent risk in training.
They fixed this. Bash goes up much quicker now. I've tested it with recent PCs.
Quote from: Riev on March 04, 2020, 10:35:03 AM
Bash vs Backstab
Backstab causes a high amount of lag/delay after using.
Backstab, on a success, deals instant damage.
Backstab, on a success against an unarmed opponent, deals instant damage plus a free hit.
Backstab, on a failure, does no damage.
Bash causes a small amount of lag/delay after using.
Bash, on a success, deals damage similar to kick, and causes the target to be in a sitting position.
Bash, on a fail, causes you to be in a similar sitting position.
Backstab skill goes up quickly, on a single fail.
Anecdotally, bash requires more fails in order to pass the check for a skill-up.
Backstab can be mastered in a 3-5d played with proper practice.
Bash, in my experience, takes much longer and comes with more inherent risk in training.
So yes, Bash is a tool that could be used. But the meta is Burst Damage to prevent fleeing, which even if it fails, causes damage and leaves behind trails that can help you track down your prey.
Bash, if it fails, gives them an easy out, and an ability to run before you've even done a single point of damage.
As a tool to prevent fleeing, bash is less useful in its utility. Backstab and/or sap are, frankly, more reliable if death is your goal.
What I see?
You are stuck in one scenario.
If I was an enforcer and had the option of backstab or bash in a 1v1 situation, yes, if I thought I was hidden and they didn't know I was there, I would backstab them first in nearly all cases.
However, if we were hunting each other and I thought they might be starting their backstab? I would bash. Since it is an instant command so it would either put them into a wait state and disable their ability to backstab or it would put me on the ground, but in combat, and so still disable their backstab.
However, if it was a 3v1 situation, I would bash.
However, if I was already in combat, I would bash (since flee+backstab is twinky as hell).
However, if they missed their backstab on me, I would wait until I thought their wait state was about to come up, and then I would bash them.
You really need to consider all scenarios, not just the alpha strike.
I got backstabbed from the front three times in open combat by an assassin fleeing, running back in, and stabbing again over and over due to me being in skill delay due to (master) bash missing, a scenario that was openly admitted to being unintended and wrong in the resultant requests. So the argument that these things are being balanced appropriately doesn't hit the mark with me. I think most of these things were implemented years ago and now that testing has demonstrated glaring issues with them that produced the current meta, they're too far gone to fix easily. So its easier to privately admit that they're not working as intended while publicly saying it's all as intended.
Its not.
You guys wanna see this log of a master sap?
QuoteThe Main Bazaar [NESW]
The clamor, tumult, and melange of smells that make up the bewildering
chaos of Allanak's main bazaar fill the air. Crowds jostle each other on
every side, in a constant jumble of shouts, arguments, and conversations.
Merchants from both Allanak and afar trade goods and services, throughout
the day and night. Tents and stalls are scattered throughout the bazaar,
vendors and beggars vying fiercely for prime spots. The dry air is filled
with the red dust kicked up into the air by the constant movement of the
crowds, as well as the mingled smell of cooking foods, perfumes, spilled
wines and attars, the reek of tanning and dyeing vats, and unwashed bodies
to every side.
A small stand has been erected here, with small fruits hanging off it.
The chestnut-haired, elderly woman sits here, cutting some cloth.
89/89, 108/115, 86/86, walking, early afternoon> °
89/89, 108/115, 86/86, walking, early afternoon> Your vision goes black.
___
/\__//~- -~\
(~) ~- ~- -~ -~
(~) ~- ~- -~ /-~
Welcome to Armageddon! (~) `~- ~======--~~ ~
That's it. That's the whole log.
But tell me again how we balance things to avoid instant win buttons.
Quote from: Namino on March 04, 2020, 04:43:49 PM
But tell me again how we balance things to avoid instant win buttons.
I thought it would be obvious that I meant we are trying to avoid implementing instant win buttons. Not that we are going back and removing the ones that already exist, implemented by previous combinations of staff. By "we" I mean current combination of staff, not previous ones.
Given the snark, apparently that wasn't obvious.
Nice log, Namino. You want to put that in the Submissions forum?
It would take little effort to put in a check on the backstab verb to prevent these "flee, return, backstab" situations. Calling it twinky and stigmatizing it doesn't fix the problem. Coding a solution fixes the problem.
Namino brings up a fair point. I've heard tales of 120+ stun dwarves being sapped by elves into 0 stun. I mean honestly if you're wearing a helmet it should just make you immune to sap or at least reduce the stun damage by 80% or something. It's ridiculous that someone could sap 120 stun when someone has a helmet on.
Quote from: kahuna on March 04, 2020, 06:46:54 PM
Namino brings up a fair point. I've heard tales of 120+ stun dwarves being sapped by elves into 0 stun. I mean honestly if you're wearing a helmet it should just make you immune to sap or at least reduce the stun damage by 80% or something. It's ridiculous that someone could sap 120 stun when someone has a helmet on.
I mean, sapping isn't just whacking a dude on the head.
Its hitting them in such a way that their brain moves and they get a concussion. No helmet is going to protect from that.
Even real life helmets don't prevent concussive force being applied to them. After helmets were implemented in military uses to protect from gunfire the rate of concussions sky rocketed.
Hauwke, your revolutionary thesis on kinesiology of the Natural World doesn't justify bad game design. If we're doing away with one hit kills, then these things should be rebalanced. If we're not doing away with one hit kills, why cut sorcerers and elementalists into pieces? Let's have a little reliability in our design standards. Is that too much to ask?
Im not against changing it, and honestly if Sap can kill with HP damage that needs changing. But there needs to be ways if quickly and effectively taking someone out besides perraine.
The log is either not of sap, or there was scroll after the vision goes black thing that got eaten. You can't mantis head someone with that many hps with just sap (although the follow on attacks certainly can).
Quote from: Hauwke on March 04, 2020, 08:05:19 PM
Im not against changing it, and honestly if Sap can kill with HP damage that needs changing. But there needs to be ways if quickly and effectively taking someone out besides perraine.
There does not need to be ways to quickly and effectively taking someone out, including perraine, which also should be changed, especially if you're a proponent of realism -- neurotoxins paralyse over time, not instantly.
Rather than supercharging offensive abilities to OHKO people, we should be addressing the reason why people feel that OHKOs are necessary, which has already been referenced in this thread: flee.
If we do what was originally suggested, and stop flee from being a Hanna-Barbara style instant run into the middle-distance as bongos play, then combat wouldn't have to rely on OHKOs. If we do that, we don't need such an alpha-strike centric meta. Right now, the meta relies on alpha-striking because frequently the alpha-strike is the only strike you get before your target goes Kentucky (or hits you with their own OHKO). If we do away with these 'instant fight enders', both offensive (perraine, 100% HP sap, ect) and defensive (spam instaflee without endlag), then you get to swing more than once on your target and the need for alpha-cheese is alleviated.
Edit: That log is unedited. It could have been a backstab, in which case, same problem. It's sort of hard to verify when it's an instant kick to menu moment. I've definitely been hit for over 90 HP in a single pump from a backstab.
Quote120/120hp 196/218mv 118/118 | running, manageable, unarmed | dusk on Barani
Someone suddenly plants their long in the middle of your back! - UNGH!
The <snip> solidly stabs your body.
The <snip> stabs at you, but you dodge out of the way.
25/120hp 196/218mv 21/118 | running, manageable, unarmed | dusk on Barani
They got one of the inline hits, but yeah.
95 damage in a single pump.
98 stun damage.You can continue trying to defend these really bad design decisions as long as you want, Brokkr. But the writing is on the wall. Combat in this game is cheesed to the nines and horribly unergonomic, due to poor design decisions made years ago. You can either throw up your hands as a dev and say "it's janky, but we like it" or alternatively overhaul the system to make a better game.
But you can't sit here and say it is well made.
Because your audience actually plays this game, knows better, and keeps receipts.
Basically, removing one hit kills/saps/backstabs wouldn't be the worst thing if flee was also heavily nerfed.
I don't think there is a problem with backstab as it is. We need to bear in mind that the people who have it lose in virtually all other situations, both mechanically and (usually) socially to other classes. The alpha strike is all they have, which means they basically have to both catch you alone and be undetected with you in one place long enough for the pre-strike delay to count down.
On one end of the spectrum, you have a skill which, when maxxed, can help you to kill -ALMOST- any other SINGLE character class in the game if you catch them by surprise.
On the other end of the spectrum, a very skilled fighter can kill 5 other PCs simultaneously if they actually try to fight him/her.
Each one can essentially counter the other one given the situation fits their set of skills. If a fighter sees an infiltrator, he can bash him before backstab delay finishes, and if each are maxxed in their class skills, the fighter will mop the floor with the infiltrator. And Brokkr & co. has already indirectly nerfed backstab by ensuring that no one who can master backstab also has master stealth, so there is always the chance that you see them coming, even if you don't have scan at all.
I personally think the infiltrator class is in a particularly bad place precisely because of that situation, but I won't dredge up that argument here.
I think playstyles are an issue here, and people who aren't attracted to the assassin playstyle just don't like the idea of the OHK. But that is sort of the entire identity of the assassin playstyle. They're heavily advantaged in a single, very narrow combat situation in which they're highly prepared, but they lose to other classes in virtually all others. Since failure often means death for such a character, I don't think they should be worse at the one thing they can currently excel at.
I'd also like to point to a place earlier in this thread, where we talked about situations where such assassins shouldn't be able to do what they're currently able to do, like shadowing people into their apartments. It shouldn't work because of the way people use doors. If this wasn't such an issue, then I don't think people would have as much of a problem with the backstab skill itself, because it would require far more planning and patience to use effectively, by requiring you to plan ahead a way to get someone alone in order to backstab them.
I think Heade makes some very convincing points here.
Quote from: Heade on March 05, 2020, 12:04:15 AM
I'd also like to point to a place earlier in this thread, where we talked about situations where such assassins shouldn't be able to do what they're currently able to do, like shadowing people into their apartments. It shouldn't work because of the way people use doors. If this wasn't such an issue, then I don't think people would have as much of a problem with the backstab skill itself, because it would require far more planning and patience to use effectively, by requiring you to plan ahead a way to get someone alone in order to backstab them.
I way agree here. I would have no issue whatsoever with backstab being as nasty as you wanna be if there wasn't a tendency by people who have the skill to tail people into their apartment, steal their key once the door is locked and then ohk you without even the courtesy of an emote - and I mean, you could literally command stack the emote with the command so it doesn't take any extra time, and the person is literally totally trapped with no means of escape. wtf is this lack?
And when I say that, I don't mean it to target any one specific person, or because anything relevant has been a personal issue for me any time recently. Afaik the last time I was pked was 2017 or before, even, so this is all just sort of a general assessment here.
Yeah, I'm with you there. The entire shadowing into an apartment, pickpocketing the key they literally just used from their hand the moment they lock the door without being noticed, followed by a backstab is super cheese and the mechanics of the game shouldn't allow it. I've said this many times before, and we've had extensive discussions about it in this thread.
Were this not the case, I don't think people would have as much problem with backstab being as it is.
tbh i think all of this is a mindset issue.
Death happens in arm, thats true.
But going for the kill in cheesy ways, backstab, poison, however it is..in the end its the mindset of the players.
it stems from the fear of death of your own character, IMo, becuase if someone escapes..
There will be a manhunt, thats the general fear.
People fear dying because they have to put so much time and work into their character.
That makes sense, it really does, it takes a lot of time to build up a character.
When someone makes a move like that, and botches it, they litereally become public enemy number one because there's just not enough 'villains' to tackle or worry about.
So, people go for nuclear options, choosing the most guaranteed way to eliminate risk of being found out. Theres IC ways of doing this, then there are gamey ways of doing this, which..are really not IC at all - its not storytelling at all, imo.
its a fear of losing what one has worked for, its a gamer's perspective of "If I don't win this, its game over."
"If I lose this, i could die, and all my work will be lost."
Perhaps the perspective we should look at, is infact that. People put a lot of time into their characters, and losing a character sucks. This fear of losing a character to death can lead to a lot of gamey, unfun, and uninteresting interactions.
I've had the most fun on various RP platforms knowing I could pursue actions that are risky, and could get my char killed, and even if they did die, that I wont need litereal months of time to be 'capable' again.
Because on those RPs, they recognize character sacrifice, they recognize the effort put forth into a character.
I haven't been active in Arm, but i've read a lot of this topics main points made by the OP, and..
This isn't something game mechanics changes can fix.
its about promoting a constructive mindset within the game, where people can afford to fail. Where people can do something risky, or dangerous, without taking many layers of measured security, or 'grimey' tactics, as one could call them.
Roleplaying is a co-operative experience. Lets say someone attempts a hit on another player, they botch it.
Perhaps the victim player was too shocked by the intensity of the moment to really recongize anything of who they were.
its up to the players to let a story keep flowing, conflict and the like to continue.
Choosing the nuclear option each time doesn't do that, it in fact can lessen the intrigue and story presented in a RP.
I think the major thing we should look at, is this concept of the fear of failing, and death within armageddon.
Cause thats all that it sounds like to me.
A character should be able to celebrate and enjoy their failures as much as they should their successes.
The failures are what make a character more interesting.
On arm, it seems like the current climate is. "You cannot afford to fail when conflicting with other players. Ever."
i guess im simply just trying to say:
Think of what would be COOL for the story. Think of what could be fun. Think of what could be interesting. Build conflict through time and intrigue, and when someone dies, actually make it something worth remembering. People RP for the stories, after all. Even if two Players characters are enemies, the two players involved are effectively co-operating to make a story.
Armageddon's mechanics allow us a vehicle to drive it, but at the end of the day, the player has a choice on how far to take mechanics.
So I guess one hit kills and other "janky" combat will still exist in the game for the foreseeable future, right?
This is just a problem of how the one hit kills are used? For example, seemingly randomly and/or without RP?
Literal one-hit kills do not happen often. Those are the "I walked into the shop, and suddenly there was a mantis-head and I got no prompt" and are indeed quite rare.
What people do not like is that PvP is not a long, drawn out process by code. The longer a PvP engagement goes on, the easier it may be to simply flee, or otherwise run away. While some consider the "enemy who gets away" trope to be fun, others do not enjoy the harassment and IG consequences of 'failure'. So a lot of PvP errs towards burst damage, catching people unaware, and the like. Because of this, often, a PK does not involve emotes or thinks or feels beyond "Who is that? They're on MY TURF?" most to 'cover the RP portion of things'.
So it is a problem with how they are used, but also with the meta-gaming of killing another PC. There are a host of IC and OOC consequences for failure.
I'm surprised the realism players havent voted more on this issue.
I agree there is a lack of ways to hurt another character at times, other than death. Yet, once a pc gets to the point of killing another pc, shouldnt effectiveness matter? Contract hits arent taken out with a 40% chance of success, and tactically "rocket launcher tag" is always stupid. If you cannot afford to take a counterstroke, dont let the other guy survive to hire a murderer or report their problem to law enforcement.
I dont think Arm has a social "dueling" culture. If anything, long winded rivalries are the games of the nobility. The rest of the world is savage and final, right?
Only PVP surprise to me is that it is mostly same clan killing off clannies, or ranking members in the clan and staff doing so. But then there is very little of a outward conflict to fight so guess it makes it part of the harsh desert world or something.
Quote from: Halcyon on March 19, 2020, 01:14:58 PM
I'm surprised the realism players havent voted more on this issue.
I agree there is a lack of ways to hurt another character at times, other than death. Yet, once a pc gets to the point of killing another pc, shouldnt effectiveness matter? Contract hits arent taken out with a 40% chance of success, and tactically "rocket launcher tag" is always stupid. If you cannot afford to take a counterstroke, dont let the other guy survive to hire a murderer or report their problem to law enforcement.
I dont think Arm has a social "dueling" culture. If anything, long winded rivalries are the games of the nobility. The rest of the world is savage and final, right?
Realistically, someone would shoot the other with a gun and there would be no combat scene at all.
The dueling culture aspect is demonstrated via brawling and unarmed combat, and sparring weapons with the mercy flag toggled on. There's also the roleplayed aspect via the "three-cuts" dueling style of various and sundry tribals and others.
I'm fine with quick deaths, if I know I'm outmatched and will die anyway. Better to get it over with and submit an app for a new character than have it take forever and have to ooc that I have to log out and let's continue tomorrow.
Quote from: Rokal on March 16, 2020, 04:16:55 AM
When someone makes a move like that, and botches it, they litereally become public enemy number one because there's just not enough 'villains' to tackle or worry about.
In my Opinion, this here is the crux of the problem. Back in the day we had uber sorcerers of doom, staff avatars or not, Gith, and Tuluk. Most of the big baddies were staff run, which to me was fine. It gave the playerbase something to rally behind and work for, and assassins did get away. There were undead Lich kings, Demons that would posses PCs, all this cool stuff driven by the storytellers/Staff.
Staff made the change some years ago to have plots player driven and started. It seems that once that change was made the amount of villians in game, not player run, diminished greatly. So this only left PCs to be the "big bad guys" and be killed.
Those are my two, maybe three cents. I am not saying it is good or bad, it just it what it is and seems to me.
Quote from: Harmless on March 20, 2020, 09:39:30 AM
If anyone here thinks that I have in any way been a "cowardly" roleplayer then let them speak now.
....
I will just say, you don't know me or my career in this game Vex. I won't dignify your post with more than this, it isn't needed.
I don't know, or care, who you are, who you play, or why you decided to step onto that ledge, with that drama, since I didn't call you out by name.
Why the ellipses? Did you sit there and wait to see, if someone spoke up, before you hit POST?
So... you're basically asking for some more rounds of combat, that is similarly inescapable, to replace those OHKs?
Quote from: Vex on March 20, 2020, 04:22:27 AM
The game needs, for players to be less cowardly human beings. Really, of late, it's getting kind of pathetic.
This just about sums up my very limited experience with pvp.
Quote from: Vex on March 20, 2020, 04:11:17 PM
Quote from: Harmless on March 20, 2020, 09:39:30 AM
If anyone here thinks that I have in any way been a "cowardly" roleplayer then let them speak now.
....
I will just say, you don't know me or my career in this game Vex. I won't dignify your post with more than this, it isn't needed.
I don't know, or care, who you are, who you play, or why you decided to step onto that ledge, with that drama, since I didn't call you out by name.
Why the ellipses? Did you sit there and wait to see, if someone spoke up, before you hit POST?
I am the OP and you are posting that the playerbase is cowardly and pathetic in my thread. I ask that you think of something helpful to say or leave your posts elsewhere.
This personal argument doesn't seem to be solving any issues, perceived or actual, so get it off the boards.
Presumably, you're adults. Act like it, BOTH of you.
Quote from: Harmless on March 22, 2020, 09:40:47 AM
Quote from: Vex on March 20, 2020, 04:11:17 PM
Quote from: Harmless on March 20, 2020, 09:39:30 AM
If anyone here thinks that I have in any way been a "cowardly" roleplayer then let them speak now.
....
I will just say, you don't know me or my career in this game Vex. I won't dignify your post with more than this, it isn't needed.
I don't know, or care, who you are, who you play, or why you decided to step onto that ledge, with that drama, since I didn't call you out by name.
Why the ellipses? Did you sit there and wait to see, if someone spoke up, before you hit POST?
I am the OP and you are posting that the playerbase is cowardly and pathetic in my thread. I ask that you think of something helpful to say or leave your posts elsewhere.
Harmless, there are a couple points I'd like to make. First, I understand that Vex's post might not have been entirely clear, but I think he was saying that it is the PKers who are often cowardly and pathetic by not really engaging in much RP prior to quickly killing people. But, I could be wrong. As I said, it's not clear.
The second point, though, is that even as the OP, you have no special rights, standing, privileges, or control over the thread. As long as people follow the forum rules, they can say whatever they want no matter how bad you dislike it. The same applies to me and any thread I start, or anyone else, for that matter. And that is a good thing. Forums would be a pretty awful place if each OP was the Highlord of their own thread. ;)
Hi! This thread has been reported to moderators, so I am popping in here to ask that y'all please keep it civil. You can say it like (you believe) it is and be tactful at the same time!
This thread wandered, eh? Ya'll wild.
But yeah. PK blows lately, even though I have mostly avoided it all. We should try to tell better stories.
Quote from: Krath on March 20, 2020, 11:17:30 AM
Quote from: Rokal on March 16, 2020, 04:16:55 AM
When someone makes a move like that and botches it, they literally become public enemy number one because there's just not enough 'villains' to tackle or worry about.
In my opinion, this here is the crux of the problem. Back in the day, we had uber sorcerers of doom, staff avatars or not, Gith, and Tuluk. Most of the big baddies were staff run, which to me was fine. It gave the player base something to rally behind and work for, and assassins did getaway. There were undead Lich kings, Demons that would possess PCs, all this cool stuff driven by the storytellers/Staff.
The staff made the change some years ago to have plots player-driven and started. It seems that once that change was made the number of villains in-game, not player-run, diminished greatly. So this only left PCs to be the "big bad guys" and be killed.
Those are my two, maybe three cents. I am not saying it is good or bad, it just is what it is and seems to me.
I agree wholeheartedly here with this observation, and will put my thoughts on this. Prepare for a post, this is based not just on experiences with Armageddon, but my RP experiences as a whole. Arm is not my only source of RP. I haven't even been on arm in a while.
-----
I joined arm after that change was made, and honestly, I wish it never had been. I -want- to see those kinds of plots, I want to see that kind of cool stuff, and arm has so much potential for it, that I feel, as a player, as a roleplayer, and someone who adores creative writing that its ruining arm's potential here.
I get it that player-driven plots that are the focus. I get that, but some people want to see the bigger stuff and be involved in it, and player-driven plots can't really make that sort of thing happen.
It was always in my mind that major, plot-driven plots should drag in players into the plot that then drive that plot forward, the characters the staff, or admin team of said roleplay are the vehicles that the players drive forward.
That way, its a mix of player and staff-driven.
I just wish things were a bit looser in some ways - I get the idea of adhering to docs, adhering to lore.
But there comes a time where adhering to lore and the documents to hard means there's no potential for change. New events within the history of an RP are supposed to update that lore and change the status quo
to me, it feels like, perhaps, players and staff alike have gotten into a mindset of 'this is how things are', and it's grown too rigid. I'm not saying that's how admins or anyone are, but in the time I played arm, it has begun to feel that way. Like a stubborn veteran of a craft refusing to lose their ground on the subject.
Things being more fluid, open, with the change, with interesting things happen is the lifeblood of RP.
I joined arm because of the stories people told me about these high arching plots of evil wizards in a place that has corruptive magic, of dark beings and demons messing with humans and the other races, possessing them or even trying to make deals with them, of lore that feels unreachable in the current spectrum of the game.
The game feels strangled, and limited, and it is honestly one of the reasons I haven't played in a good time. I love armageddon's setting, I love the potential for it as an RP and storytelling medium, but with how it is right now, it is like skipping a rock across a pond, amusing for a little while, but never as awe-inspiring as watching a fireworks show go off.
Ever since my first character, Keyrena, I haven't felt the same level of intrigue in story or anything, part of that might because they aren't my first character, but at the same time it also very much stems from the fact that, for me, I want to Rp in a fantasy world, a harsh, post-apocalyptic one that is arm.
But it very often does not feel like a fantasy world at all, even with the magic in it, its so very subdued.
And in the end, player-driven villainy cannot amount to the capacity of something admin-driven. I'm not saying we should change focuses, but try to combine the two. I KNOW how much work it is to put into working out plot lines as an admin, I've done it myself, on small Rps I've hosted in the past.
in the end, there's simply not enough support for villains to actually do something without getting dogpiled, and this, in turn, creates the mindset of 'i cannot fail, I must do everything in my power to ensure my level of success. I have to backstab, an arrow with poison, and not RP as much as possible when acting or ill get caught and figured out'
it's natural for people to fear that failure when the character they invested perhaps months, or even years of time to could DIE or get outted entirely and everything they set up ruined over a single mistake, even if they get away from that failure alive.
So, ya'll, next time you see a PC trying to be a villain?
Think about how to make the conflict last, and how to make it fun for everyone, instead of how to destroy this villain immediately.And if you are the villian? This one will be hard, but maybe try it.
Put trust in your fellow players to create good scenes and interesting story. I honestly think the biggest issue here is that no one trusts each other even a little on an OOC levelLastly..
I also think, in a game meant to be fantasy, people have come to focus on realism too muchI dunno about you all, but I personally want to play arm for the fantasy. The potential is there.
Its just untapped, or locked away.
I don't think I particularly mind "cowardly" fighting, as it is supposed to be a harsh world based upon survival of the fittest, and so of course every person is likely going to do whatever they need to do to ensure their survival. There are probably going to be many cowards in the world, whether just to escape or to live to fight another day.
But I do wish combat might be able to flow slower in those certain circumstances. Right now it just feels like there's not much time to beg for one's life or even blast off one of those cliché one-liners like "Whatever they're paying you, I'll double it!" or "See you in Drov!" Once combat starts, it's usually going to end quickly for one reason or another, and there won't be time to be typing emotes and tells unless everyone disengages. Or if the battle really is so one-sided that one person can afford to just disengage and emote at their foe.
Maybe we could have a kind of wish-sanctioned PvP combat, where combat drastically slows down to allow such commands much more easily, and yet it also restricts and slows down efforts of others to join into the combat and spoil it. edit: Wait! Would combat that's turn-based and waits for each member to interact be possible?!
The thing about supervillains sounds interesting as well. Maybe as a compromise, we could have one big bad run by staff, who may occasionally get involved and make a scare, but they have evil underlings which are players? Maybe a blend of both worlds!
I always thought the mercy command should be used to prevent all damage that goes past the 0 value.
So, if you backstab someone for 40 hit points of damage, but they were sitting at 23 hit points, it should put them down to 1 hp.
To absolutely stop combat when someone gets to that point.
Quote from: mansa on March 25, 2020, 05:10:27 PM
I always thought the mercy command should be used to prevent all damage that goes past the 0 value.
So, if you backstab someone for 40 hit points of damage, but they were sitting at 23 hit points, it should put them down to 1 hp.
To absolutely stop combat when someone gets to that point.
Agreed here. Even if its 'realism' to maybe accidentally kill someone, its still not fun from a gameplay perspective.
I'd even elaborate on it to make it so that anyone taken down to 1HP like this is left 'subdued', and cannot fight or m ove for a good bit. IE, incapacitated, but concious, can RP, ect, but they ain fightin.
I think something like that would make RP encounters much better, and it'd maybe even lead to a lot of situations that end in death, not end like such.
Quote from: NinjaFruitSalad on March 25, 2020, 03:20:41 PM
Right now it just feels like there's not much time to beg for one's life or even blast off one of those cliché one-liners like "Whatever they're paying you, I'll double it!" or "See you in Drov!" Once combat starts, it's usually going to end quickly for one reason or another
Honestly, this is because if you have time to plea, you have time to flee. One gives you an immediate coded response that can potentially alleviate the situation. One is entirely based on how much attention and care the other person is putting in. Some of us prefer the cold hard logic of coded outcomes. Dying because you failed a flee feels better (somehow) than dying because you failed to convince someone to keep you alive. One feels more personal.
I am generally unimpressed when an outcome if PK, but that is not really anyone's fault.
In a perfect world I think flee vs threaten at equal skill should be a 50 / 50 with ties favouring the defender (flee) but you just can't do that with the codebase.
The only solution I can think of is to be mindful that some people prefer the code to save them and some their RP to save them. I think the code is fairer of the two personally as it is you vs defender win or lose.
My opinion is probably biased by some pretty average lock in deaths which I should have put a player complaint in about, but in my usual fashion didn't and just took a break.
As a general rule, pvp in this game is a fucking gongshow. In about 15 years of playing I can't think of a single outcome that I thought was fun for the loser. And most often the loser of pvp lost because they roleplayed in some form or another. They visited the tablelands and got filled with arrows. They went to the tavern looking for interaction or they were on the wrong side of the law because of player choices.
I avoid it. I avoid conflict with other players in general because I do not trust that anyone is going to handle it in a responsible manner. I avoid clans now (unless i have ooc friends to back me up) because I can't trust players not to go full shitter and use the backroom approach.
In general, staff and players need to come up with better outcomes than: "Oops I roleplayed. Shouldn't have done that."
Quote from: tapas on March 27, 2020, 06:38:05 PMooc friends to back me up) because I can't trust
I thought I should say that as someone with very little experience of PVP in this, reading about this kind of thing is probably what puts off a lot of people playing RP games that have PVP in them - Because of not wanting to spend time dealing with people who do that kind of stuff when there's enough OOC corruption in the real world already...
...Which means less people play the rest of RP, which means less interesting stories for everyone (with clans too even if you don't like to play in them, empty clans mean less things for staff to do and so less chance for new and exciting stuff to happen) - you are hurting yourself when the game needs more people, it's a universal thing that most people tend not to complain and will just leave, all the little things are what makes somewhere worth being, everything matters
With stuff like that it seems like the same everywhere, don't be part of the problem, be the change that you want to see in everyone else, but at the same time make sure people that don't have any thought or empathy for other players are encouraged to, use www.icanprove.de (https://icanprove.de/), you could save the temporary download on web.archive.org/save (https://web.archive.org/save) to get a link to report), if you don't do it, someone will do it to you now everyone knows that :) (the forum probably shouldn't have contact buttons and links, stop encouraging free for all real life meetups, and move chat back to the website with reminders on what's allowed, put the community train back on track)
Quote from: mansa on March 25, 2020, 05:10:27 PM
I always thought the mercy command should be used to prevent all damage that goes past the 0 value.
So, if you backstab someone for 40 hit points of damage, but they were sitting at 23 hit points, it should put them down to 1 hp.
To absolutely stop combat when someone gets to that point.
I'm not sure how this pertains to the topic. Chars aren't killing other chars by accident, they're doing it because it's one of the only things left in this game that make them feel relevant. This is not a discussion about people unintentionally bringing sparring partners below -10 hit points. Mercy doesn't factor into this discussion at all. Noone
accidentally backstabs someone below 1hp when they didn't mean to. That's not a thing that happens. Nobody has ever so much as mentioned that.
The issue here is twofold:
1) The only sensible way to engage in PvP is to kill your target before they can type 'flee' or prevent the command from resolving (by, say, paralyzing poison or NPC HG subdue)
2) The current state of the game is such that proactive murder is often the first resort, taking precedence far ahead of things like rivalries and plot development
Mercy works almost perfectly fine. You have to be extremely careless to accidentally kill someone you were trying not to kill. There has never really been a noteworthy problem with that. It happens so rarely that it's a complete non-issue. I feel like your post is a willful deflection of the topic.
Quote from: tapas on March 27, 2020, 06:38:05 PM
In general, staff and players need to come up with better outcomes than: "Oops I roleplayed. Shouldn't have done that."
This should be the #1 order of bussiness for ArmageddonMUD in 2020. It's honestly embarrassing for the genre how things have turned out in this game, where roleplay is often something you're punished for and the lack thereof is never punished at all. This sire of the RPI genre has become a game where you're sometimes best served not roleplaying, and that's pathetic.
I don't agree on your mercy point.
While I understand the staff stance on the subject, like "How can you mercy an arrow or fireball etc?"....I think it is a point where you SHOULD go for the side of unrealistic. I think Mercy should be 100%. I cannot even count the number of times I did not intend to kill, had mercy on but since the method was like magick or ranged, Blammo...one shot dead.
I have even bugged it before.
Look north
Dude foraging
Get paralyzing arrow.
Shoot dude north
Arrow hits dude in the head BEEP
Dammit!
I mean, what is so wrong with it just putting them to -1 if I have mercy on? They still might die. Or I could walk in and kill them.
Keep in mind, I have nothing against one hit kills, I just think that if I have mercy on then it should be one hit morted. I hate killing without giving some sort of scene.
Quote from: Greve on March 29, 2020, 09:32:19 PM
Quote from: mansa on March 25, 2020, 05:10:27 PM
I always thought the mercy command should be used to prevent all damage that goes past the 0 value.
So, if you backstab someone for 40 hit points of damage, but they were sitting at 23 hit points, it should put them down to 1 hp.
To absolutely stop combat when someone gets to that point.
I'm not sure how this pertains to the topic. Chars aren't killing other chars by accident, they're doing it because it's one of the only things left in this game that make them feel relevant. This is not a discussion about people unintentionally bringing sparring partners below -10 hit points. Mercy doesn't factor into this discussion at all. Noone accidentally backstabs someone below 1hp when they didn't mean to. That's not a thing that happens. Nobody has ever so much as mentioned that.
The issue here is twofold:
1) The only sensible way to engage in PvP is to kill your target before they can type 'flee' or prevent the command from resolving (by, say, paralyzing poison or NPC HG subdue)
2) The current state of the game is such that proactive murder is often the first resort, taking precedence far ahead of things like rivalries and plot development
Mercy works almost perfectly fine. You have to be extremely careless to accidentally kill someone you were trying not to kill. There has never really been a noteworthy problem with that. It happens so rarely that it's a complete non-issue. I feel like your post is a willful deflection of the topic.
Quote from: tapas on March 27, 2020, 06:38:05 PM
In general, staff and players need to come up with better outcomes than: "Oops I roleplayed. Shouldn't have done that."
This should be the #1 order of bussiness for ArmageddonMUD in 2020. It's honestly embarrassing for the genre how things have turned out in this game, where roleplay is often something you're punished for and the lack thereof is never punished at all. This sire of the RPI genre has become a game where you're sometimes best served not roleplaying, and that's pathetic.
I believe that if I could, 100% of the time, put a character at 1 hp and display to them using the code that I want them to roleplay rather than killing them, it would change the way I would handle combat.
Imagine a gladiator fight, where the person could interact and plead with the crowds, rather than being prone and unable to speak like the game currently does.
Imagine the only way to actually kill another character, is to type 'murder <character>'.
Quote from: mansa on March 30, 2020, 10:03:05 PM
Quote from: Greve on March 29, 2020, 09:32:19 PM
Quote from: mansa on March 25, 2020, 05:10:27 PM
I always thought the mercy command should be used to prevent all damage that goes past the 0 value.
So, if you backstab someone for 40 hit points of damage, but they were sitting at 23 hit points, it should put them down to 1 hp.
To absolutely stop combat when someone gets to that point.
I'm not sure how this pertains to the topic. Chars aren't killing other chars by accident, they're doing it because it's one of the only things left in this game that make them feel relevant. This is not a discussion about people unintentionally bringing sparring partners below -10 hit points. Mercy doesn't factor into this discussion at all. Noone accidentally backstabs someone below 1hp when they didn't mean to. That's not a thing that happens. Nobody has ever so much as mentioned that.
The issue here is twofold:
1) The only sensible way to engage in PvP is to kill your target before they can type 'flee' or prevent the command from resolving (by, say, paralyzing poison or NPC HG subdue)
2) The current state of the game is such that proactive murder is often the first resort, taking precedence far ahead of things like rivalries and plot development
Mercy works almost perfectly fine. You have to be extremely careless to accidentally kill someone you were trying not to kill. There has never really been a noteworthy problem with that. It happens so rarely that it's a complete non-issue. I feel like your post is a willful deflection of the topic.
Quote from: tapas on March 27, 2020, 06:38:05 PM
In general, staff and players need to come up with better outcomes than: "Oops I roleplayed. Shouldn't have done that."
This should be the #1 order of bussiness for ArmageddonMUD in 2020. It's honestly embarrassing for the genre how things have turned out in this game, where roleplay is often something you're punished for and the lack thereof is never punished at all. This sire of the RPI genre has become a game where you're sometimes best served not roleplaying, and that's pathetic.
I believe that if I could, 100% of the time, put a character at 1 hp and display to them using the code that I want them to roleplay rather than killing them, it would change the way I would handle combat.
Imagine a gladiator fight, where the person could interact and plead with the crowds, rather than being prone and unable to speak like the game currently does.
Imagine the only way to actually kill another character, is to type 'murder <character>'.
A few muds do this and it actually
works. Some take it further by requiring x amount of hours rped with a character to even perform the command on them. Not saying that would work on arm, but these things have been done and work to encourage RP over killing.
It seems like there's two prongs that need different solutions, 1. The people that say they aren't able to trust - which can lead to doing things that actually makes it worse for everyone (above (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,55215.msg1044415.html#msg1044415)) - get rid of the encouragement of contacting other players from the forums and bring chat back to the site 2. The rules page (http://armageddon.org/help/view/Rules) doesn't mention killing explicitly but instead it's left as a grey area (
"Roleplaying is a requirement on Armageddon MUD. This involves assuming the role of a character of your creation, and acting the way your character would") - I've seen mentions before on the forum that it's frowned upon for people to kill for little justification and that staff will step in, but even having seen it talked about it before I can't think of what to put in the search to find those posts again, let alone someone that hasn't read about it before, and no way to search easily through staff posts :)
Maybe some of these crappy situations maybe could've been better if people had been more forewarned? Maybe something like this, brainstorm something better, or against having something like this? From some of the comments in this thread:
Quote from: example that is NOT on armageddon.org/help/view/Rules2. If your character is going to attempt to kill another character, roleplay that is not combat alone and a reasonable story justification is expected that is supported by your character's background or past history, whether it be through some level of roleplay with the other character (preferred, this creates a more interesting story for other players, you might also want to think how you would prefer to be treated on the receiving end) or use of the in-character "think" or "feel" commands.
At the moment also there's no mention of think, feel, or biographies in the Intro page for new players on the website, no mention in the Character section or Roleplaying page too!
edit: If you think about it, this also circles back to trust too - the idea of encouraging people to act in the ways that make the best stories and the most fun for everyone - when people don't know each other OOC, it's the perfect situation for realistic roleplay but of course at the same time people instinctively seek some level of trust, and it's impossible to tell who is more likely to follow the OOC rules - so what you want to do is make sure that all new and old players are on the same page and treated the same (from the comments above it seems like old players can be 50:50 too!), so that all players are less likely to behave in a cheesy way or do things for OOC reasons, if it's made clear that whoever does that first would be the one in trouble - make it impossible to not be aware and informed that there will be some kind of enforcement of it, which creates an environment where people are more likely to roleplay better. :)
I think "murder" for PCs would definitely be a good thing. At the very least it would prevent sparring accidents when someone OOCly forgets to set their mercy correctly. Also giving things the right names absolutely matters a lot, maybe people who are a bit trigger happy will think twice about the consequences their actions have on people playing the game.
Quote from: Night Queen on March 31, 2020, 02:51:58 PM
edit: If you think about it, this also circles back to trust too - the idea of encouraging people to act in the ways that make the best stories and the most fun for everyone - when people don't know each other OOC, it's the perfect situation for realistic roleplay but of course at the same time people instinctively seek some level of trust, and it's impossible to tell who is more likely to follow the OOC rules - so what you want to do is make sure that all new and old players are on the same page and treated the same (from the comments above it seems like old players can be 50:50 too!), so that all players are less likely to behave in a cheesy way or do things for OOC reasons, if it's made clear that whoever does that first would be the one in trouble - make it impossible to not be aware and informed that there will be some kind of enforcement of it, which creates an environment where people are more likely to roleplay better. :)
I see and feel the impact of the inherent lack of trust on how people interact in the MUD every time I play. On a macro level it definitely seems to affect how many players are willing to participate in certain spheres with characters/players they have OOCly learned not to trust if they want try telling a long and interesting story.
I don't necessarily like the "murder" idea, because the effects of that will be carried IC when they probably shouldn't be. As an example, currently, you can OOCly "forget" to have mercy on, and "accidentally" kill someone in a sparring match. And, while you might get some punishment for being reckless from your superior, it would be WAY different if there was an actual murder command you had to use to "accidentally" kill them in that spar.
Just the existence of the murder command would eliminate plausible deniability in situations like that. I wouldn't be opposed to making mercy on work 100% of the time, though. In that way, it still allows the possibility of a player forgetting OOCly, which translates into the game to allow "accidental" deaths in spars and such, whether truly an accident, or a character framing an incident as an accident to get rid of someone.
Meh to the murder idea or changing mercy functionality also from my end.
Just use bludgeoning weapons with mercy. Once their stun drops to 0 you will stop attacking as far as I know? Or am I wrong there?
It makes more sense that you reliably won't kill someone with a bludgeoning tool anyway.
Quote from: Harmless on April 04, 2020, 10:09:39 AM
Meh to the murder idea or changing mercy functionality also from my end.
Just use bludgeoning weapons with mercy. Once their stun drops to 0 you will stop attacking as far as I know? Or am I wrong there?
It makes more sense that you reliably won't kill someone with a bludgeoning tool anyway.
How can you roleplay in a group setting if you are prone, unable to listen and speak.
You can emote groaning in pain and drooling on the floor, or however your character handles being unaware of their environment after a vicious bludgeoning, you can see the emotes that others put in the room describing what is happening to you, and if the intent was not to kill you, you can eventually awaken subdued by someone else and stripped of all your things, possibly in a locked interrogation room.
But, the main reasons I had a problem with the suggestion is what Heade said, the intentionality of a murder command is OOCly jarring and the inability to accidentally kill someone with bladed weapons is also not realistic.
I do think that generally, when you are sparring, you'd want both combatants wearing armor as normal, and both using blunted, softer material, (perhaps even lighter) weapons to help minimize damage. And stop sparring when you reach about half HP.
But people already do this, don't they? Or does everyone just use the biggest, baddest, sharpest weapon they can hold and push to the limit until the other person collapses?
Quote from: NinjaFruitSalad on April 04, 2020, 02:15:09 PM
I do think that generally, when you are sparring, you'd want both combatants wearing armor as normal, and both using blunted, softer material, (perhaps even lighter) weapons to help minimize damage. And stop sparring when you reach about half HP.
But people already do this, don't they? Or does everyone just use the biggest, baddest, sharpest weapon they can hold and push to the limit until the other person collapses?
In my experience, people already do this. But also in my experience, a skilled mul, dwarf, or HG might kill you with a blunted spoon in a single hit to the neck. Going from "I'm fine" to mantis head can happen all to quickly.
And if a very skilled and strong combatant wants to get rid of a new recruit who saw something they shouldn't have seen, a "sparring accident" is potentially a good way to make that happen. It's quite simple to accomplish, really. One successful bash and neckchop later, problem solved. The issue is that being prone from bash makes hard hits far more likely, and if there is a large skill disparity, death can come quicker than someone might be able to type "disengage".
So, I'm in favor of mercy on working 100% of the time, but I'm not in favor of a murder command. OOC plausible deniability needs to exist to facilitate IC "accidents".
Quote from: Heade on April 06, 2020, 04:05:23 PM
So, I'm in favor of mercy on working 100% of the time, but I'm not in favor of a murder command. OOC plausible deniability needs to exist to facilitate IC "accidents".
But, if mercy worked 100% of the time, then the plausible deniability will go away, because people will all OOCly know you can never kill anyone "accidentally" anymore. So, if we change mercy we'll lose the ability to facilitate IC accidents.
Better yet, don't spar half giants and muls. :P
Or.. if you insist on practicing skills like Bash that have some input delay, maybe do it unarmed? I guess that would help.
Quote from: NinjaFruitSalad on April 06, 2020, 06:35:07 PM
Better yet, don't spar half giants and muls. :P
Or.. if you insist on practicing skills like Bash that have some input delay, maybe do it unarmed? I guess that would help.
Thats why in clans that accept half-giants and muls there are generally rules in place, even a newbie HG could probably kill another untrained player with ease.
Quote from: Hauwke on April 06, 2020, 06:38:56 PM
Thats why in clans that accept half-giants and muls there are generally rules in place, even a newbie HG could probably kill another untrained player with ease.
I've had a noob bynner ordered to spar a HG before by his PC sergeant. That character died while sparring said HG.
Quote from: Harmless on April 06, 2020, 05:54:47 PM
Quote from: Heade on April 06, 2020, 04:05:23 PM
So, I'm in favor of mercy on working 100% of the time, but I'm not in favor of a murder command. OOC plausible deniability needs to exist to facilitate IC "accidents".
But, if mercy worked 100% of the time, then the plausible deniability will go away, because people will all OOCly know you can never kill anyone "accidentally" anymore. So, if we change mercy we'll lose the ability to facilitate IC accidents.
Not really, because you can OOCly "forget" to turn mercy on. But you can't use the OOC excuse that you forgot if it was necessary to input the command "murder Harmless" to actually strike a killing blow.
That seems entirely IC if you were ordered.
Will still lead to meta. People will state 'please turn mercy on' or 'mercy check' in ooc. Once your mark is dead accidentally everyone will have ooc knowledge that you turned it off or never turned it on. Same problem.
Quote from: Harmless on April 09, 2020, 04:54:52 AM
Will still lead to meta. People will state 'please turn mercy on' or 'mercy check' in ooc. Once your mark is dead accidentally everyone will have ooc knowledge that you turned it off or never turned it on. Same problem.
The best response to someone doing an OOC mercy check is to OOC to keep it IC. Icly you cannot tell the difference until they actually kill you.
Quote from: Harmless on April 09, 2020, 04:54:52 AM
Will still lead to meta. People will state 'please turn mercy on' or 'mercy check' in ooc.
Have always considered this bad play. Especially when you get someone that says it to everyone they spar, or a leader that says it to every new recruit, not in a "btw in case you are new we have mercy, check it out" but in a "if you are here, you will use mercy" sort of way. That is not your determination to make, as a leadery PC. Ditto with folks that want you to nosave so you don't attack fleeing folks.
Quote from: Brokkr on April 09, 2020, 11:06:41 AM
Quote from: Harmless on April 09, 2020, 04:54:52 AM
Will still lead to meta. People will state 'please turn mercy on' or 'mercy check' in ooc.
Have always considered this bad play. Especially when you get someone that says it to everyone they spar, or a leader that says it to every new recruit, not in a "btw in case you are new we have mercy, check it out" but in a "if you are here, you will use mercy" sort of way. That is not your determination to make, as a leadery PC. Ditto with folks that want you to nosave so you don't attack fleeing folks.
I disagree that this is bad play. How is it not a leadery PC's call to make it so those under their command do not kill each other whether it be accidental or purposeful? I think it's their duty to do so. IRL there are all kinds of ways to safeguard against fatal injuries during sparring type situations but they don't work in the game as we have no control over how hard we hit or where we hit, etc.
Quote from: Blink on April 09, 2020, 01:18:55 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on April 09, 2020, 11:06:41 AM
Quote from: Harmless on April 09, 2020, 04:54:52 AM
Will still lead to meta. People will state 'please turn mercy on' or 'mercy check' in ooc.
Have always considered this bad play. Especially when you get someone that says it to everyone they spar, or a leader that says it to every new recruit, not in a "btw in case you are new we have mercy, check it out" but in a "if you are here, you will use mercy" sort of way. That is not your determination to make, as a leadery PC. Ditto with folks that want you to nosave so you don't attack fleeing folks.
I disagree that this is bad play. How is it not a leadery PC's call to make it so those under their command do not kill each other whether it be accidental or purposeful? I think it's their duty to do so. IRL there are all kinds of ways to safeguard against fatal injuries during sparring type situations but they don't work in the game as we have no control over how hard we hit or where we hit, etc.
The PC is only a leader ICly. It's an OOC statement, so if it were truly a command it would be inappropriate.
That said, I usually take it as a suggestion. That's what I always mean it as when I say it (though usually I phrase it so that this is clear).
As someone with a terrible memory...I'd rather everyone be given a light nudged reminder. But I do consider it that, a reminder, not an OOC order. I consider it shorthand for the leader to ICly be going "Let's try not to accidentally bludgeon Rookie to death folks!", and accept that, sure, accidents still happen. But without being able to pull blows (why is this not a thing?), then there is still the possibility that someone will intentionally get murdery and 'accidentally' bludgeon someone...I mean, big bone club? Totally doable if you hit in the right place.
So...as long as there are no recriminations IC of "Wtf, didn't you have mercy on?!", then a little nudge to remind me, is appreciated ;D
What about a mercy level.
You can be merciful to the point of unconsciousness or to the point of being poor, near death, heavily wounded, etc.
You will automatically stop at whatever level you set in advance of a fight.
Your character will assess the opponent after landing strikes.
It can save lives against accidents due to ooc stuff like disconnects or lag.
I must admit to being confused. I see all the deaths that happen while I am online. I hardly ever see a sparring death. I could be around at the wrong times. Is it certainty that is wanted? The game is typically not designed for certainty/safety. Or I could have a whacked out baseline, as my baseline is sort of before mercy existed, before disengage existed. Sparring had some risk and people died. Routinely, thus disengage and mercy.
I don't see people dying now, so folks want....???
It [/i]seems[/i] that the suggestion is to have a function that
1) infallibly has a mercy-type option or code-interrupt that incapacitates instead of killing a PC in any combat, magic attack or ranged situation, but that is also is, completely paradoxically,
2) OOCly indeterminable that the attacker chose not to use it when they "accidentally" murder someone. The player doesn't want to have their PC face repercussions for their OOC choice to let the "accident" happen.
Quote from: Seeker on April 10, 2020, 01:19:58 PM
It [/i]seems[/i] that the suggestion is to have a function that
1) infallibly has a mercy-type option or code-interrupt that incapacitates instead of killing a PC in any combat, magic attack or ranged situation, but that is also is, completely paradoxically,
2) OOCly indeterminable that the attacker chose not to use it when they "accidentally" murder someone. The player doesn't want to have their PC face repercussions for their OOC choice to let the "accident" happen.
We have a winner.
A way for PvP to end in a non-story-closing manner, but also not being held to harsher consequences when a story-closing strategy is taken.
Quote from: Seeker on April 10, 2020, 01:19:58 PM
It [/i]seems[/i] that the suggestion is to have a function that
1) infallibly has a mercy-type option or code-interrupt that incapacitates instead of killing a PC in any combat, magic attack or ranged situation, but that is also is, completely paradoxically,
2) OOCly indeterminable that the attacker chose not to use it when they "accidentally" murder someone. The player doesn't want to have their PC face repercussions for their OOC choice to let the "accident" happen.
Well, it seems there is a balance of interests here:
1) Ability for PCs to maintain OOC plausible deniability over sparring accidents. As we have read, this seems to be an extremely rare occurence, and even when it occurs, OOC knowledge of an infallible mercy command should have no bearing on IC actions.
2) Ability to disable PCs without killing them (when you don't have specialized skills to accomplish that). This seems to have multiple uses besides sparring, including mugging, raiding, and attempting to capture a criminal. Occurence of this is of course impossible to determine, but is plausibly several times of the first case.
Considering PK is one of the third rails of Arm discussion, any feature to prevent inadvertent PK (not wanted by either side) should be given the benefit of doubt.
I can't remember...does Armageddon have code for tying people up? I mean, subdue is fine, but requires you to be holding someone. We have rope IG, it'd be nice to be able to tie people up, so you can have a good pontification scene after they regain consciousness, so they can reply. But that might be me returning from a game that had both tying-foes-up and being able to gag people to muffle them. Both useful when you want to give a more RP-centric scene that both badguy and victim can participate in.
Quote from: Kyviantre on April 10, 2020, 04:37:45 PM
I can't remember...does Armageddon have code for tying people up? I mean, subdue is fine, but requires you to be holding someone. We have rope IG, it'd be nice to be able to tie people up, so you can have a good pontification scene after they regain consciousness, so they can reply. But that might be me returning from a game that had both tying-foes-up and being able to gag people to muffle them. Both useful when you want to give a more RP-centric scene that both badguy and victim can participate in.
Coded blindfolding and hog-tying have been requested, but not implemented. I was told that it was going to be an Atrium elective course.
I'll take masks that actually mask first, if given the option...pretty sure the Atrium electives are more to do with grub-silk rope bondage, not dirty rinther hostage-taking!
Quote from: Harmless on April 10, 2020, 10:31:15 AM
What about a mercy level.
You can be merciful to the point of unconsciousness or to the point of being poor, near death, heavily wounded, etc.
You will automatically stop at whatever level you set in advance of a fight.
Your character will assess the opponent after landing strikes.
It can save lives against accidents due to ooc stuff like disconnects or lag.
This is a great idea! It's a great solution that will help. And it's perfectly logical and realistic too.
I don't understand what the urgency for "plausible deniability" is. Technically, that already may exist if you spar against half-giants, muls, or accidentally hit someone with a nasty head or neck hit. Right?
If you really want to kill someone so badly, there's got to be a lot of better options out there, aside from "accidentally" killing someone while you spar them in a hamfisted manner, and hoping for no repercussions. I don't think that should ever fly, unless it's clearly a freak accident. And a mercy setting of, say, 50% health should by and large ensure that.
I don't think there should be an easier, less-dangerous way to grind your combat skills up.
Sparring should result in death, or permanent injury, from time to time.
That being said, if there was a mercy-style toggle that changed a PC death to a permanent injury that has to be reflected in stats and desc, I would one hundred percent be behind that as an alternative.
Quote from: ErdluWings on April 10, 2020, 04:28:15 PM
OOC knowledge of an infallible mercy command should have no bearing on IC actions.
should versus would
Quote from: Zexalt on April 11, 2020, 04:19:34 AM
Quote from: ErdluWings on April 10, 2020, 04:28:15 PM
OOC knowledge of an infallible mercy command should have no bearing on IC actions.
should versus would
The thing is though, if you knew 100% that mercy on would save a PC from dying, or that mercy on being defaulted to every so often so that you 100% could not genuinly accidentally kill someone. There would be suspicion, regardless of code. People are fallible and log out the second sparring time ends, they log out once they get their fails and then they wait 5 hours until the end of the day and do it again.
And then they complain if they get killed because their total 8 hours of effort to get a badass results in nothing.
See now, that is the thing. I want mercy to be perfect but I also want the chance that it is not.
As far as I can see this returns us to another suggestion that comes up year in and year out. And that is the "death period". In other words, Your PC is past -10, They will die, nothing at all will save them but you have X time to get in that last couple emotes, thinks, feels...hell, I don't have an issue with them being awake and get those last couple says in...long as they have not been moved to -stun.
Is that so that some of us will be able to shout, "No! This cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!"
;D
Hopefully.
Quote from: Riev on November 15, 2019, 09:47:46 AM
Quote from: kahuna on November 15, 2019, 08:18:35 AM
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on November 14, 2019, 11:03:17 PM
Quote from: Heade on November 09, 2019, 05:44:10 PM
You're posing a straw man, as I've already said that it shouldn't even be possible to shadow someone into their apartment. And yes, I think that it is cheesy and miserable RP to do so, just because you can if you consider how people use doors. But many people don't even think about that, and so they assume shadowing someone is a legit action. But, that said, they are again entering into a situation with a 100% risk factor that constitutes probably at most 1% of their playtime, whereas the person who is following your "rules" for character longevity are doing so just IN CASE something happens, 100% of their playtime.
Compound gates are a bit different, because there is often only 1 coded entrance into a compound despite the IC reality being in 3 dimensions. So there needs to be some way to get in to represent the various avenues someone would have for infiltrating such a large place. Ideally, there would be coded rooms with secret entrances, climbable walls, windows or drainage grates and such instead, but in the absence of such options, an option to clandestinely get in needs to exist.
I've always thought you should have to get you a cloak or armband or a number of clan objects in order to shadow your way into a compound.
Been staying away from this thread as I don't think there are any solutions to the problems proposed, however, I want to voice my support for cool features like this. In fact it would be great if there were some automated way to "gain" a clan flag if you wear the clans equipment. Perhaps that is making it too easy but the complete lack of disguise and subterfuge is unfortunate. Could a player put in a request if they have clan gear to gain the clan flag and enter a clan compound? I suppose that would be just as good.
I have felt for years that there should be a certain "combination" of insignia checked for most gate access, like how Tuluk would check for tattoos in certain locations, or deny entry. It also came up recently with regards to the changes made to sdescs on the Way, etc.
There are hundreds of Bynners, and the Gate Guards are able to know every face of every Runner that a Sergeant just hired out of the Gaj last night? Nah. But they got an aba, and a patch, so let 'em on through.
It might make for more break-ins, but that sounds like an IC issue. Stop hiring idiots who go into the 'rinth and get killed, letting them pretend to be whoever they want.
(This is also because for 10 years I've wanted to run a Guild shop full of 'costumes' which is just a place you go to rent House-specific items. Trooper Sleeves, AoD patches, signet rings, etc.)
I was just thinking about this today and tried to find the best thread to just say "+1 disguises." This topic showed up in the recent Content and Creation thread, here, and about 10 other places.
The way in which this could improve roleplay is obvious, and makes infiltration much more interesting than
* a strange shadow is here * per the original topic in this thread.
One of my favorite things about the 'Rinth is it in effect has a "dress code" -- if we managed to program this for the 'Rinth, what Riev and others have proposed should be feasible. Someone also recently mentioned that we need more 'rinth friendly gear -- they are totally correct, and it looks like staff are even calling for East Side crafts. I like the direction of more TLC into this part of our codebase, and if we put the effort there (and if players keep saying it's something they like and want), why not expand this idea of disguise/uniform beyond the 'rinth.
Totes optional rant explaining why I am necroing this shit: I've been chilling in Texas and people think I am a woman here 50% of the time, while it was only 5% of the time in California. The way I am treated and perceived has totally changed just by being somewhere else and it's weird. It completely cracks me up. Identity, even your god damned perceived gender, is totally context dependent. Also kudos to texas for unintentionally getting my gender identity more right than West Coasters who always 'politely' and annoyingly assume "super butch female = trying to be man" (https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Butch_Dykeman?file=Butch.png) like we are still in the nineteen fucking fifties.
I've always felt it's super dumb that you, in your own apartment, with a key you have in your hand, can't unlock the door and flee while in combat. It's like apartments are DESIGNED for you to die in if you have one. Never get an apartment, guys. It never works well for you.
Quote from: Kialae on December 16, 2020, 08:25:05 AM
I've always felt it's super dumb that you, in your own apartment, with a key you have in your hand, can't unlock the door and flee while in combat. It's like apartments are DESIGNED for you to die in if you have one. Never get an apartment, guys. It never works well for you.
I love [redacted] so much that I'll take the risk because the negative account notes for public [redacted] are worse.But srsly thanks for posting, this is the sort of "stupid clunky code thing" that I do not mind seeing posted since it is a matter of life and death and not at all related to realistic/awesome/good roleplay (what the game is about). I understand why we had that thread where people were asking for the ability to bash down doors better now as well ty boo
At the very least, if you disengage from combat, you should be able to try and open a locked door. The other person can still wail on you, but you at least can struggle to break free.
In general, conflict should be escapable for the most part, and it cheapens apartments that under-skilled assassins can take advantage of what is ostensibly an OOC construct (Once in combat in a one room space with a locked exit, you cannot escape). The same goes for soldiers being unable to subdue you for crime-code once you are in combat with another soldier or NPC.
I don't think all PvP used to be 'surprise attacks only'. Some things changed with the game that seem to lean it towards both longevity and a desire to be ultra-skilled before engaging in dangerous plots. For one, we used to not be able to see skill levels, it was something that you had to feel out for yourself. I think this pushed people to rely less on whether their weapon skills were (journeyman) or (advanced) before feeling confident enough to inhabit their PC more fully. As a result, it seems PCs are living longer because they are taking less risks.
Part of why I miss Tuluk (not all, but part) is PCs could get involved in plots with a day 0 hour 0 PC, due to Nobles being more approachable, the risk of death from having a conversation with a Templar being more minimal for a Northern PC, and a general supportiveness for self-generated plots. I had a PC who on day 0 hour 0 was approached by Raleris in the Sanctuary for partisanship, and before logging off that session, my PC had independently approached the Tenneshi Noble (Darsul?) for the same position. He later used it as a foil off one another, siding more strongly with Raleris, and avoiding an Artist contract Darsul took out on him due to Raleris' status. It was just cool shit that started right off the bat, because there was not a price of entry.
I don't know if that's our OOC Culture now, or IC culture of Allanak, or whatever it is, but I encourage people to play their PCs to the hilt from the very get go. Not after you've been in the Byn for 20 days played, or practiced backstab on Labyrinth NPCs until you're advanced in backstab. There seems to be a push for the idea that all conflict must be resolved immediately, and there can be no room for error or escape, but honestly, most of the fun comes from the botched jobs, the near misses, and the almost assassinations.
EDIT:
To add, I feel that there should be more tools in the toolbox for assassins beyond the Apartment Trick. Poisons that damage stamina and movement, or provide greater chance of critical hits, for example. Trap was an excellent tool that, when it worked correctly, accomplished the job without having to even engage in direct combat. Slow-acting poisons like Methelinoc that a person can cure if they understand the symptoms and have access to the curatives. Silent poison delivery via blowdart that can be noticed by watch by the victim. Tripwire that can be installed in certain rooms indoor rooms, like hallways, that will either set off an explosive or simply trip the next person who exits the room. Providing realistic advantages to assassins would decrease the more OOC advantages they have to employ currently, I think.
I like the idea of being able to unlock doors while in combat..As long as you, the person unlocking and opening the door, opens themselves up for being attacked, much like when you try to flee or pick something up. To Clarify: This would create up to three Opportunities of attacks:
1. Unlocking Door
2. Opening Door
3. Fleeing (Depending on your flee skill)
I think it'd solve this and a lot of other issues if doors didn't need a key to open from the inside.
This solves the locked in your own room problem, makes it more difficult for other people to lure you into an apartment and kill you, and people could quit out in other people's apartments knowing they'd be able to leave later.
I know one issue I've had is that crashes will relock doors, trapping people inside that originally had an unlocked door to leave from even when the owner intentionally left it open.
Quote from: Narf on December 16, 2020, 01:10:08 PM
I think it'd solve this and a lot of other issues if doors didn't need a key to open from the inside.
I like this solution - it could exist for some of the cheaper apartments, and not exist for the more expensive ones.
Let me just think about a few scenarios.
You are given a key
You unlock the door from the outside.
You enter.
Does the door automatically relock when it closes from the outside, or does the door stay unlocked?If the door changes it's status back to being locked - what if you forget the key behind when you leave the room? You can't get back in - and you'll have to get a duplicate get from the innkeeper.
(THIS IS A PROBLEM)If the door doesn't change it's locked status, and remains unlocked - other people can enter your apartment from the outside.
Is that a satisfactory expectation and gameplay change?Which leads to the intent of the apartment rooms themselves - Is the major intent to "save" your objects/items when you're not in the room from the majority of other players? And if you're in the room it's fair game?
Quote from: mansa on December 16, 2020, 01:25:55 PM
Does the door automatically relock when it closes from the outside, or does the door stay unlocked?
From the outside, you need a key to lock and unlock. From the inside, anyone can lock and unlock without a key. (It's pretty easy to imagine physical mechanisms that would work this way.)
Add in the ability to unlock and open if you disengage from combat, and you've probably reduced apartment ganking as much as is reasonable. There's still a real advantage to luring someone into private for murder; they just have an actual fighting (fleeing) chance.
It has been >1 year since my original post, and still everything in game works sadly according to the meta silliness I pointed out in the OP. My distaste for pvp is why I haven't PKed anyone for several years and until any changes are really made to things in any of the ways other posters here have suggested it still seems to me like a status quo will linger.
I can't prove this but I also do suspect that a judgy distaste for ERP/apartment activities in general is why the code favors them to be death traps. I do think this is a deterrent in essence and therefore get miffed about this. This game claims to want to portray a world where prostitutes for instance are an accepted role but to actually employ that means getting familiar fast with all the nonsense about doors and locks and shadowing and scanning and blah blah blah.
My tone on the topic of PVP functionality will be much the same as time goes on unless changes do happen. Has been more than a year since I started this topic and I still see the exact same strategies and pitfalls in action, so there has been no reason for me to change my tune.
But, for instance, employing any of the suggestions in the few posts above would be a great basic start towards a better PvP experience in these areas. Any of them. There were 6-10 good ideas scattered in the 10+ pages of responses before them too.
There aren't mechanisms to unlock or lock a door from within using a wooden lock, that I could find. We don't have metal locks, or even complex locks. Wooden locks were actually made to keep people out, not in, only lockable or unlock able from one side. Beyond that, they were easily picked with household items. So if you enjoy the privacy of being in your apartment with a locked door that someone has to have a special pick made for, you're already getting easy mode benefits!
Quote from: LindseyBalboa on January 10, 2021, 12:55:21 PM
There aren't mechanisms to unlock or lock a door from within using a wooden lock, that I could find. We don't have metal locks, or even complex locks. Wooden locks were actually made to keep people out, not in, only lockable or unlock able from one side. Beyond that, they were easily picked with household items. So if you enjoy the privacy of being in your apartment with a locked door that someone has to have a special pick made for, you're already getting easy mode benefits!
You know - of all the years I've been playing... I never posed the question:
Why not make all the doors unlockable from the inside without a key?Simple, genius solution.
Shouldn't even have to type 'unlock door' or 'open door'. If you are in an apartment and type the direction of the door, the door opens and you go that way. Or if you type "flee" and the game chooses that direction for you to run, you burst through the door.
It should have been done decades ago.
Also, it would make practicing lockpicking (a little) more risky.
You should have to unlock it...But it should not take a key. Doors on the inside should be barred, and unpickable from the outside. IE, if I lock my door from the inside I am throwing bars.
And before anybody thinks to post about something against that. That is exactly how I built my door IRL, I built a dutch door, each half weighs over 300lbs and is basically 3A armor. Each section has two bars inside. You cannot pick that but it does take me pulling all 4 bars back to get out.
Also, I know such a thing is codable IG, I have seen them before.
So your point is that the doors to apartments should be unpickable, or that they should be unpickable when locked from inside?
Because if it's the latter, I don't think code can differentiate if it's locked from inside, or outside.
The idea is that no one uses a key to lock their own apartment door from the inside. Its usually a latch or bolt or bar.
The idea you can be PKed in an apartment because you're locked in with a key, is bizarre.
Personally, I don't think you should be able to pick anybody's apartment unless they are online. The entire idea of keys are pretty overly advanced for our world, frankly. But of course I understand why they exist. Ideally, you could just open from the inside, lock from the outside, and not be robbed unless you were online.
Yeah, its a playability-vs-realism thing that is very clunky.
Lots of the rooms descriptions describe people as living in tents or huts, or shacks, or whatever else.
Or in hall-ways and crumbling places, yet no PC would live in a non-locking space for playability.
Weird balance, but I dont like the current setup.
Yes, the latter Dar.
So you have never run into a door in game that can be barred from the inside and still has a lock on the outside?
Pretty sure I have.
Should be easy enough to do since technically every exit is 2 exits. I make a room, I make an exit east and link it to another room. The exit only shows in the first room until I go to the second room and link it to the first making a two way exit. Same I believe applies to doors. Have to make a door in each room with matching key.
As such, it would not take much of a script to make a door able to be barred on one side and key locked on the other. Assuming it would not just work by setting each side that way.
Not sure why Nenyuk would let anyone do that to their apartments. Given the pain in the ass they would have if someone died inside, had to evict someone, had to give the authorities access to it, etc.
"Sorry but alterations to apartments are grounds for eviction by the way we're keeping your rent money so hopefully you have something else to bribe the AOD soldiers with. Who are on the way."
Lmao I love it.
I still think people should just be chill with the ability to somehow magically lock a wooden lock from within with an intricate key that someone needs skill to recreate. Just don't lock the door when you're inside, problem solved, and it's way more realistic.
Well, how about being able to bar the door that is simply dependant on actually being in game in the room, log out, locked as normal. But while inside, no need for a key to get back out.
Seeing as the arguement that Nenyuk would be less then happy to have to break down a door every time an apartment started stinking is pretty legit.
Most apartments probably have at least a half dozen people sharing space in them. If one dies, the other five can take care of it. And if someone barricades the door to avoid paying rent, they can just as easily do so without Nenyuk's permission. Building a robust barring mechanism probably wouldn't even take an hour if you happened to have a few nails and a hammer on hand.
That's the other argument for barring mechanisms. They're cheap as dirt to make compared to locks and keys.