Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

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Durvayas
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Durvayas » Sat Jul 13, 2019 7:47 pm

xanrael wrote:
Fri Jul 12, 2019 11:04 pm
Cortex wrote:
Fri Jul 12, 2019 10:13 pm
Reasonable arguement
If the faction can't deal with lone squatters and huddle in their rooms I'd call into question them owning the guild house in the first place. There should be more to a faction than simple guild house ownership.

Regardless I imagine the behavior of not engaging in interactions with that squatter and hiding in their rooms is going to have a RP and morale cost to the faction members that RPing in their nearly impregnable base does not. I'm sure they did complain, but I'm not sure losing the ability to segregate their factional RP from the rest of the server thanks to a door is that strong of a complaint. Anyone that doesn't have one of these places has to deal with possible disruptions after all.

I'm not saying its perfect, but you could have a slight tweak/clarification of the rules that if there is an engagement and someone dies, regardless of the winner the owners are allowed to enter and leave while those that do not have to stay away for 24 hours unless the rule is waived by both sides.

Ah yes. Except this arguement doesn't work if we're really trying to tell people that levels don't matter for RP on the server, which has always been a dichotemy Arelith has strived for.

Beyond which, what narrative value would allowing this to be a thing actually accomplish? None. Convincing someone on the inside to be a trojan horse, turning on the defenders to let an army in for a battle is one thing, camping the base and killing people as they log in is entirely something else and has no narrative value whatsoever.

If one level 30 can camp in the lobby of a faction's building and everyone in that faction is signifigantly lower level, they can't use their faction's building at all, it cripples that faction's capability to do anything because the rules will prevent them from re-entering the area post-PvP if that PC won't leave. And even if the rules were changed to allow this scenario, its still textbook griefing if you're sitting inside their very base waiting for them to log on so you can kill them repeatedly. At the very LEAST if flies in the face of the be-nice rules.
Its not exactly against the rules to besiege a guildhouse, its been done before, but if your idea of fun conflict is parking an army(or even a single lvl 30, if the defenders aren't all 30s themselves) inside a hallway and ganking people as they log in and appear in the kitchen, bedrooms, and storage rooms with one or two lines of RP, you probably haven't taken a nasal breath in your life and I wholeheartedly support steps taken to curtail your behavior or remove you from the server outright.

Simply put, this should not be a possibility, period, because Arelith's players have shown time and time and time and time again that they cannot be allowed a vagueness in the rules because they WILL exploit those rules for cheese.

Thief RP is near nonexistant, and always has been. Quarter locks are as high as they are because the server has shown that people WILL abuse the mechanic until owning the building storage is pointless, and 90+% of the time there will be zero RP for the theft. Its simply not worth allowing for the 5% of people who will do thief RP it to the enjoyment of both sides when the other 95% of thieves and gankers are going to abuse it.

Disclaimer: I'm not targeting 'you' so much as using the broad, royal 'you' as in the reader.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by magistrasa » Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:22 pm

Not sure it's contributing for the conversation to assume rulebreakers are just going to go on griefing without reproach. I mean... They'll be punished if they camp faction bases long enough. Are we just assuming the rules won't be enforced? Are we assuming there's enough bad actors to be able to just replace one another as quickly as the DMs are banning them? This is a silly hypothetical.

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Durvayas
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Durvayas » Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:40 pm

magistrasa wrote:
Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:22 pm
Not sure it's contributing for the conversation to assume rulebreakers are just going to go on griefing without reproach. I mean... They'll be punished if they camp faction bases long enough. Are we just assuming the rules won't be enforced? Are we assuming there's enough bad actors to be able to just replace one another as quickly as the DMs are banning them? This is a silly hypothetical.
Without reproach? No. But the DM team has also never been particularly swift in dealing with this sort of thing, often not before signifigant morale damage has been done and people start shelving or quitting as a result. I simply don't see any value in facilitating it getting to that point in the first place. And if someone can penetrate into the lobby, or worse, interior hallways, of a guildhouse, you can be sure that at some point people are going to be getting killed as soon as they log in, as the conflict meta will almost certainly shift slightly because you can now use abjurers in a hostile faction's guildhouse to force the gank of their people one by one as they appear by warding teleport unless they coordinate their timing with discord, which is not something we should be encouraging further.

Narratively, I don't see what value could possibly be gleaned from allowing guildhouse camping that isn't already amply served by the rule allowing door sneaking.

From a design standpoint, I don't see how allowing it would be beneficial when these guildhouses already cost signifigantly more than mundane quarters to begin with, lowering security to the exterior door of guildhouses would effectively be a wealth tax on the faction owning the building, forcing all interior doors to need much better security, a spider's web of key access(which sounds like the opposite of fun, with keyless entry still awful), and almost certainly a redesign of a not insignifigant number of the existant guildhouses to accomadate the rules change and prevent it being very heavily abused.

Additionally...

Guildhouses with guards are already kind of a joke, because those guards are far too low a level to repel even a single combatant of mediocre level. They are effectively customizable furniture. These guards would need a buff to be less for show.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Might-N-Magic » Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:52 am

If you want to, you can make a burglar capable of burgling anything even with maxed numbers.

Is it easy? Nope. Should it be? Nope.

The only thing that should be talked about here is how every burglar most likely metagames the fact that the person who's name on the quarter isn't online on the playerlist so there's no chance they'd get caught.

Remove names from the quarters. There's no reason for them to be there.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Nevrus » Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:28 am

I think this problem is solvable in a way that can actually generate RP.

First, put alarms on the door. How can doors have alarms? Alarm is a first level spell. Make it shout to the area that a door's lock has been picked. This gives the would-be burglar a brief time to do the deed and maximizes the chances that a guard will come by and interrogate nearby NPCs, or fetch a ranger to look at traps.

Second, reduce the DC when the owner is online, and ONLY when they're online.

Third, have the Alarm alert the owner at the time of the break-in that their property has been broken into, or immediately upon log-in, like a faction message.

Fourth, and this is the key one, mandate that only one house can be broken into per IRL week, and institute a 30 day cooldown on breaking into the same house, to reduce the 'daily robbing spree.'

Fifth, mandate some evidence can be left behind which can be found with a high DC search check, and that can pinpoint who exactly broke in.

This altogether reduces the meta-game and get-out-of-jail-free nature of the current system where if you can break a lock it's all yours every day.

Now, there's one more facet that's necessary to prevent people from constantly having their most valuable things taken:

Make it so that if you've broken the lock on the house, when you loot their chest you get one of the items inside AT RANDOM.

It needs to be a high-risk, unpredictable reward affair to ensure that it's useful as an RP tool but not useful as a standalone profession. If you're playing a burglar it should be about the thrill of the infiltration and trying to get away with it, not about the material benefits- just like playing an assassin is about the thrill of the hunt and trying to deflect suspicion, rather than just winning pvp gud.

This wouldn't be a change that would make everyone happy but it will give guards something to do (patrol in case of break-ins, investigate break-ins), give would-be burglars something to do, and enable thieves-guild style RP because there's thieving you can do other than picking pockets.

I'm willing to risk my stuff getting stolen if it means I get to chase down and gut the one what did the stealin'.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Reallylongunneededplayername » Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:26 pm

Aodh Lazuli wrote:
Sat Jul 13, 2019 3:55 pm
Reallylongunneededplayername wrote:
Sat Jul 13, 2019 2:08 pm
Aodh Lazuli wrote:
Sat Jul 13, 2019 8:19 am



Hi, what about characters that for one reason or another take no settlement citizenship?
As one that has a quarter but no settlement; If it ain't a resource, If it's heavy, If I can not pawn it, I don't want it.

But that is how I deal with it.
So you are asking for a change that has no negative repercussions for your own character, but does for others who exhibit different choices and engage with the game in a different manner to yourself? And your response to questions about it is to suggest people behave more like you do?

Hmm.

Where did I put that thinking emoji...
No, I anwsered a question with a personal solution.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Aodh Lazuli » Wed Jul 17, 2019 5:43 pm

Reallylongunneededplayername wrote:
Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:26 pm
No, I anwsered a question with a personal solution.
Yes, and therein lies the problem. This thread fails to acknowledge a broader array of playstyles than your own, and requests a change that suits your particular way of playing the game.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Zavandar » Wed Jul 17, 2019 6:08 pm

I have never seen thief rp done well

the system is fine as-is
Intelligence is too important

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by ReverentBlade » Thu Jul 18, 2019 9:43 am

The setting is high-magic enough that I find mundane thievery of a high-level adventurer's house to be...implausible. By now this island would have wards and adamantine puzzle locks on every door. Just let embrace the absurdity and let it go.

There is absolutely nothing about being an uncatchable random nuisance that adds to your RP, or to mine. There are plenty of ways to incorporate off-screen criminality into your RP without house-break mechanics being a thing, if that's what your character concept calls for.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by magistrasa » Thu Jul 18, 2019 3:15 pm

I sympathize with the complaint about uncatchable thieves not adding to roleplay, but I'd caution people to consider what happens to the thieves that DO get caught. Thieves that get caught tend to have their names and description posted up on every board, alongside a bounty far above what they've stolen, and are then (from what I've seen) almost always targeted by a relentless killbash campaign. I've seen it happen time and time again, and I've seen people roll or quit over how miserable the experience becomes. Getting caught as a thief can mean the end of your character. And these are characters with rich and varied personalities, with unique motivations behind why they steal and who they target - I genuinely miss a lot of the thieves I've seen vanish over the course of my playing on Arelith.

People in game, and certainly people in this thread, are often swept up in the fabricated value of their digital privacy and wealth. And that leads them to do some crazy stuff to the players they think have infringed upon that. I think it's going to lead to merciless and personally targeted abuse if any system were put in play that just outright told you who stole from you. An alarm system is one thing - I actually think that idea could be interesting to implement - but any form of "evidence" mechanic that could easily lead back to the perpetrator treads on dangerous ground. No system should be added without first considering this extensively.

Maybe you should be able to -investigate quarter chests to see who last used it. The information from that is vague enough to protect the thief's identity, but clear enough to give the victim some jumping off point to actually pursue through roleplay. It'll also incentivise people to invest in this oft forgotten system. Beyond that thought, I got nothing.

I wholeheartedly endorse thief roleplay, and I have seen it done phenomenally well by more than a few people, so from my perspective, the animosity towards the concept seems entirely selfish. Theft DOES create roleplay - you might not be explicitly part of that roleplay, despite being its victim, but it absolutely is out there, happening, right now. Don't knock it 'till you try it.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Cortex » Thu Jul 18, 2019 3:22 pm

The reason thieves are hated so much is because most of them do a lot of things to deserve that hatred, so even the more "benign" thieves will be thrown in with the others. Just like any other archetype that is viewed as a negative IC/OOC will generally be ostracized. Thief RP is just not very suitable for a PW, where being a thief implies stealing hours of investment from another player.
:)

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Mr_Rieper » Fri Jul 19, 2019 3:08 am

magistrasa wrote:
Thu Jul 18, 2019 3:15 pm
I sympathize with the complaint about uncatchable thieves not adding to roleplay, but I'd caution people to consider what happens to the thieves that DO get caught. Thieves that get caught tend to have their names and description posted up on every board, alongside a bounty far above what they've stolen, and are then (from what I've seen) almost always targeted by a relentless killbash campaign. I've seen it happen time and time again, and I've seen people roll or quit over how miserable the experience becomes. Getting caught as a thief can mean the end of your character. And these are characters with rich and varied personalities, with unique motivations behind why they steal and who they target - I genuinely miss a lot of the thieves I've seen vanish over the course of my playing on Arelith.

People in game, and certainly people in this thread, are often swept up in the fabricated value of their digital privacy and wealth. And that leads them to do some crazy stuff to the players they think have infringed upon that. I think it's going to lead to merciless and personally targeted abuse if any system were put in play that just outright told you who stole from you. An alarm system is one thing - I actually think that idea could be interesting to implement - but any form of "evidence" mechanic that could easily lead back to the perpetrator treads on dangerous ground. No system should be added without first considering this extensively.
From my experience, if you impose on people in a manner that they feel they have been disrespected, you're almost always going to get some serious backlash for it unless you were 100% in the right.

Show up out of nowhere to threaten or attack somebody?
Berate a character for a poor decision they made?
Be overly suspicious of somebody?
Cause trouble for somebody that people view as harmless?
Insult a character?
Accuse a character of wrongdoing?
Take more than your share of the earnings from a dungeon trip?
Have your character hold racist/xenophobic/intolerant views?
Successfully detect evil on somebody?
Evict somebody from their house or shop for IC reasons?

And finally

Steal from another character when the player is not aware?

The potential backlash from any of these could easily make a character very unpleasant to play. It triggers a visceral reaction in people, that causes them to want to get revenge or remove the offender. Almost like all of these things are considered griefing, in a way. They may as well be, with how powerful the backlash can be. People will hunt down thieves because they treat them in the same way that they treat griefers - that is, they see them as people who enjoy taking advantage of others and profiting from their misery. Mainly because it is difficult to differentiate between somebody doing these things for IC or OOC reasons.

Generally I find that if a particular character has a player that is understood to be harmless or a swell guy OOC, they find it easier to trust that person's intentions. The point I'm trying to make is, it's not something that happens to just thieves and it is a big part of how the server functions, for better or for worse. If you'd like to rob people and make decent RP from stealing from them, you need to make it clear to the players that you are robbing that you are not doing it maliciously and that hopefully, you intend to make it worth their while. Those are the kinds of characters that will avoid the witch hunt, mostly.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by magistrasa » Fri Jul 19, 2019 3:55 am

Mr_Rieper wrote:
Fri Jul 19, 2019 3:08 am
for better or for worse
I'm going to go ahead and say it's for worse. And because it's for worse, I'm cautioning against any system that enables that kind of behavior.

Theft isn't griefing. It just isn't. There's rules and mechanics in place to keep it in check, and people have been doing it with no major issues ever since the server started. Just because you feel upset that it happened to you, doesn't mean it's against the rules - nor does it mean you're perfectly justified in feeling upset in the first place. Jesus, why don't we just disable PvP under that mentality?

It's crazy that this behavior is basically being justified with, "It's okay, they're just really upset, surely you understand." The people who believe theft constitutes griefing need to be called out whenever they're found overreacting. Because you know what IS griefing? Repeatedly killbashing someone with the goal of forcing them to delete their character.

Should someone's OOC disposition really have a bearing on how you treat their characters in-game? Come on, man. Listen to what you're endorsing. Arelith has NEVER necessitated OOC communication to justify roleplay - if anything, it's always advocated the exact opposite - because making judgments on an OOC level is exactly what creates those exaggerated, hyper-sensitive reactions to a perceived loss.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by magistrasa » Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:29 am

For clarity on my, let's say, "passionate" response:
No one needs to have the way people think and the reasons why they act or react to theft explained to them. We've all been around the block. I just don't think those attitudes are healthy - and unhealthy attitudes shouldn't be defended or justified or used to dictate server policy.

People think theft is griefing. They're wrong. People regularly counter-grief thieves until the character is rendered unplayable. They shouldn't. Sometimes thieves can go unscathed if they've got enough OOC friends to vouch for them or if they send enough smiley faces through tells. That's unfair. These shouldn't be controversial statements, because none of them are untrue. And since this is the reality, it should be accounted for in any change that might come to theft mechanics or policy.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Hazard » Fri Jul 19, 2019 5:03 am

Ending someones life because they stole a thing is a pretty severe overreaction. I would poke a DM and depending on circumstance and what was stolen maybe that character needs a nudge towards chaotic or evil.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Drowble Oh Seven » Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:11 am

magistrasa wrote:
Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:29 am
People think theft is griefing. They're wrong. People regularly counter-grief thieves until the character is rendered unplayable.
I've had two interactions with characters that made use of pickpocket. The first nudged up to me while stealthed; made (and failed) a pickpocket attempt, and ran off before I had time to so much as type a line of dialogue in reply. This was extremely irritating.

The second was a fey-trickster, who used pickpocket to steal my character's ring, while in the middle of ongoing and enjoyable trickery RP, and then worked the opportunity to get that ring back into the roleplay. That was fantastic and welcome and, as the victim of it, I was delighted to have been a part of it. I didn't end up getting the ring back, and that was a-okay, because it was the result of a choice my character made.

The difference here, the key difference, was that one of the two involved me as the theft-victim and let me reply, and that makes all the difference. Any roleplay that imposes on a character with no buy in or opportunity for reply - whether it's chest theft, wanton PvP, or wide-scale fixture bashing - leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

I know you give people the whole buy-in, magistrasa, and I love your thief for it; but I feel as though people are totally justified in feeling frustrated when a narrative is forced on their character (particularly if what's stolen is, say, a rune, instead of a neat painting that I'd be happy to try to hunt down as a long-term thing). I get that it's a shared world, and that compromises have to made in narrative control, but that cuts both ways. There's much more fun to be had with a story that both parties want to tell.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Mr_Rieper » Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:12 am

magistrasa wrote:
Fri Jul 19, 2019 3:55 am
Come on, man. Listen to what you're endorsing.
I don't remember endorsing anything. You've completely misunderstood the point of my post. Explaining why people do things doesn't mean you approve of the behaviour.

I'm saying that people have the same reaction to theft as they do to griefing. They may not admit it, but they do. People treat a lot of things as though they were griefing. Getting PvPed tends to ruffle feathers. So does getting evicted. There are many things that generate a similar reaction.

Because people like to jump to conclusions and then act indignant about it. Go figure.

The "for better or worse" thing was me being facetious. Of course it's for worse. I offered ways to get around it, but of course it's a negative thing for the server when people are excessive in how they handle things.
Last edited by Mr_Rieper on Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
CosmicOrderV wrote:
Sat May 11, 2019 4:55 pm
Be the change you want to see, and shape the server because of it. Players can absolutely help keep their fellow players accountable.

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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Aodh Lazuli » Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:23 am

magistrasa wrote:
Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:29 am
People think theft is griefing. They're wrong.

Theft in and of itself is not greifing. Correct.

Most quarterbreaks are.

In roleplay environments such as this, a player whose character who commits an act to the detriment of another player character is, or should feel, obliged to involve the victim in some direct manner, through actual interaction... and is responsible for making that interaction an enjoyable one for the victim, going out of their way to ensure that is the case.

Theft/quarterbreak "rp" does not often do this. And therefore can usually be described as greifing.
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Re: Quarter doors: A brief feedback.

Post by Nobs » Fri Jul 19, 2019 9:22 am

Im some one who played a few 'thiefs' and i always found i extreemly hard to leave clues that dont out right out your character.

I dont some art thiefing and made emotes in shouts so the people presant knew something was up. (Like a tearing sound when a painting was getting ripped of a wall stuff like that).

When it comes to breaking or sneaking into houses or guild halls it becomes a bit harder...
Do you leave a signed note?....no ofcourse not , only some one that wants to get jailed does that.
Do you show your self to the person if he is in his house?...no ofcourse not , unless you want to get pvped.
Then again i may not be the best rper out there and all i could come up with is leaving a unsigned note with the name of the faction on it that my toons where a part of.(Feel free to help me out with tips should i ever want to make a thief again:)

What i personaly would like to see is some -investigate option after a theft just like with blood stains or broken fixtures so we can see some propper detective rp.

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