Regarding Skaljard pvp counter/writ system update

[TimeAdept]

I don't have a lot to substantially add to the topic except my voice saying that this is a really terrible idea, and Joe, Zav, and more have very succinctly summed up why "solutions" like this should be removed from the server and not reconsidered for the future.

[Queen Titania]

I'm curious to know what counts as a "PvP incident". What's the statistic about? Is it a hostile? Someone killing someone else? Does a party of three killing another party of three count as 3 separate incidents or just 1? Before knowing the answer to these questions, any debating of these numbers is just a theory.

Oh, I forgot. What about driveby knockdowns on party members, accidental or not? Does that constitute an incident?

Strictly X killed X Deaths.

[flower]

Nymann next time someone sends you mocking tells just report them no one has a mandate to do that and sooner those smartasses learn it.

And Nymann is right my own friends expressed how much frustrated are. Not by PvP itself. Just because it is of kind ok they got one of ours we spent moth working to save our buddy and then what when you gather force they run off and return in hour or when you crashed them in damn fun battle they are back in action few hours later. Over and over.

People are annoyed by it and when message about raiders reach them they ignore it or log off going to play different game.

[Queen Titania]

The intent of the system is to reduce PvP, as currently the numbers are a little high in our opinions, by giving less incentive to commit it in a serial fashion. Nothing happens after a first death for this very reason.


How successful this specific attempt will be is to be determined. I think the current set-up is not adequate enough because it punishes /good/ PvP and PvP in defense and does not specifically target the specific bad symptoms we want to root out, but this is far from the final version (IF it still is even kept) as Grumpy stated.


Some resolutions come under our DM table, we can throw out plots to distract to create more narratives out there and reduce the singular PvP ones (Such as UD/Surface conflict, or Skal banditry, etc.).

[Aftond]

I'm curious to know what counts as a "PvP incident". What's the statistic about? Is it a hostile? Someone killing someone else? Does a party of three killing another party of three count as 3 separate incidents or just 1? Before knowing the answer to these questions, any debating of these numbers is just a theory.

Oh, I forgot. What about driveby knockdowns on party members, accidental or not? Does that constitute an incident?

Strictly X killed X Deaths.

Alright, thanks for the answer =].

[Drexyl N~drass]

It's important to remember that people can't just be enslaved. It has to be an OOC agreement. So if enslavement happens as a result of an encounter, IC That salves friends should be distraught, but ooc they should understand that what evolved was part of the story that group, now including the slave, is telling. In a world full of monsters and pirates things are going to go bump in the night.

To my knowledge raiding an actual settlement needs dm oversight and approval, so by that standard you aren't likely to see Pirates, underdarkers, etc raiding your hovel every Tuesday at 3pm EST. In the two years I've been playing there has always been an element of danger to travelling open roads at night on the surface, or returning from raids in the underdark, and the Sea has never been a "safe" place.


There are villains as well as heroes which populate the world, and they certainly can't give you a "Your money or your life" scenario in the Cordor government district. If an out is given, such as "Your money or your life" It's still an out. It may not be the most ideal for a toon, but sometimes roleplay has unfair consequences. There is also nothing stopping team good guys from seeking vengeance, laying traps, or any number of creative ways to handle a wave of evil-doers and nae-er-do-wells.

I wouldn't want to hear of a strong group just repeatedly powerhousing a starting area like Skal, and would personally find that in bad taste. PvP on the server is just as important as a story about love, or loss, triumph over some internal or external force, and failure. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and just like in real life it would be great if no one was ever mugged coming home from work. Sometimes it happens, and you have to be ready to and willing to protect yourself, even if the world around you tells you that it should be safe.

[Huschpfusch]

Maybe it is time for a more detailed overall "what-is-expected-from-you"-kind of FAQ concerning specifically the topics of Conflict RP and extreme alignments and interactive/collaborative-storytelling?
And a collection of how-to's giving ppl ideas how to make conflict interesting for ALL parties involved and without PvP?

e.g. Paladin walking into Necromancers - does he have to mouth-off every time resulting in a direct PvP encounter? Nay, he could note down their character appearance go back to his fellow paladins and RP a plot to surveil those shoddy characters to expose their entire necromantic chapter. Thus both preserving the necromancer player's playtime that day and his own holy characters moral integrity.
e.g. Not happy how the latest election turned out for the one you voted for? Move the winner's statue and put it somewhere else leaving clues to make a scavenger hunt instead of stupidly bashing statue.
e.g. Are you breaking into someones house to intimidate that character? Don't bash all the fixtures. PUT IN a threatening fixture or a spooky rp-item like voodoo-doll and of course a message note.

Basically just think ahead how to meaningfully include characters in conflict with your own character-concept WITHOUT imminent PvP...
It ain't rocket science...
it's just storytelling...
All it requires is some creative thinking...

[Durvayas]

So I'll admit, I'm not surprised about the PvP numbers on Skal. Its a rough and tumble frontier town, you're dealing with a large number of people new to the server. There is going to be fighting by its very nature.

I've never, in all my time playing, ever seen a corpse depot in a temple look like this.


I'm not sure what the solution is. I'm honestly not sure we should have a solution. Perhaps Skal just needs more DMs specifically to watch over skal and keep things above board. As the place with the most newbies, I feel they're the ones that need the most scrutiny anyways.

As for the people complaining about the UD attacking the surface, and the piracy on the high seas...

The UD attacking the surface is 80% your own fault. Surface parties coming into the UD and harrassing people at our local dungeons, surface parties raiding Andunor and the hub, surface goodies patrolling Sibiyad to try and force all the evil people down into Andunor... Good job! You united the sharps and the table in their aggravation and animosity to surfacer hijinks, and its come full circle to bite you in the booty.
The UD has largely put a moratorium on fighting itself, because the surface made it nescessary.
The scales of power up there have long been tipped in the favor of team good ever since wharftown was destroyed and its population funneled into Andunor. If you're going to use PvP and IC means to force your evil under a rock, expect a whole lot more attacks to come from under those rocks than in the past.

For years, we've been told to change our RP to make the surface fear the denizens of Andunor because we weren't being taken seriously. Now, while I do see more outcasts than I'd like(by sheer numbers, they're a slim majority at this point), I do not see as many tourists in the UD as I used to. I can't say its a bad thing. I recently had a drow on the surface, and for the first time in years the reaction was not "Oh hey, its a drow", it was "Oh shite! That be a drow there! *nervously pulls a weapon*".

If people are running behind the walls of their forts at night because they're worried raiding parties? Thats good RP. Thats normal in FR.
If people are hesitant to use the ships outside of large crews because they're worried about pirates? Thats good RP, thats also normal in FR.

If it really takes frequent raiding to get those who play the surface to take the UD seriously, then I hope we keep up the pace. And there are IC reasons WHY the UD has drastically increased its skirmishing with the surface of late. Its up to you to figure out exactly WHY, and how to convince the dark to ease up through RP.

The other 20% of the 'problem' is dev related.

The uptick in piracy is expected, and unrelated to the UD. There is a pirate faction now. Sencliff has an ample number of pirates to actually do pirate things at this point. It didn't used to. It didn't used to be organized enough to do it. The dearth of piracy in the past was largely a result of the environment being new, the characters being new, and the factions being new.

And again, the whole destroying wharftown and pushing all of team evil into the UD without giving them any real viable alternative...thing.

[TimeAdept]

I wouldn't be surprised if most of those corpses were duplicates or random PvE deaths. That's what 99% of the 'corpse pileup' in Skal was every time I was there and played there.

[flower]

It is not PvP what people are angry about.

But that when they submit and agree to captivity their friends must spend hours and hours dealing with consequences where the opposing side just disregards any consequences, like getting killed yet being back few hours later harassing someone else. People i talk with believe that UD side plays just for PvP and PvP kills and that it is just all their plot they desire after.

And only a note no UD player is owner of UD so thing "you come to our UD dubgeons" is pretty off.

[MissEvelyn]

My biggest take from this change is this:

There are many other ways of playing out conflict, and we'd like people to consider those.

No one is taking away the ability to play out conflict. You can still do writs on the side while having conflict. But PvP is being 'nerfed', you could say, and in my opinion that's a good thing. It will encourage people to use -subdual more often. You can still win* at PvP without killing off the other player character.

My question is, why can't we have more conflict RP rather than flat-out killbashing? It seems rather lazy and it doesn't build upon a story. Rather it concludes it before it can even begin to spire to become something more.
It's almost as if kill-bashing is the "I don't want to roleplay this conflict out" solution. I'm speculating, of course, but more often than not, in my own experience, the people who are prone to kill-bash with one-liners are exactly that.



*If you consider killing another player character WINNING, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate what a Roleplay server Arelith truly is.

[sad_zav]

i've discussed this at length with a lot of people and i'm also going to be somewhat echoing some of the sentiments shared here

this treats a symptom, not the source. very often, pvp is a result of other forms of conflict resolution not working. and even then, pvp is often insufficient--because people respawn.

i've seen on message boards several times lately "x killed me, then x killed me, so here i am to tell everyone". what did the pvp really accomplish, then? i hear "redemption arc" come up as an alternative, but what if the person has had 3 redemption arcs already? should we put in a script to limit redemption arcs? (i'm only halfway serious with that suggestion and it also wasn't originally my idea)

FR is a setting in which gods literally tell you to kill people or they will forsake you. i don't pvp that often and i often give people outs despite this (i just let a pickpocket run away today, even). a change like this invalidates (and frankly demeans) a totally legitimate form of RP. i think it's just as much a problem of people wanting to "win" as it is a problem of people being mad they "lost". that's why so many people retreat to social RP--because there aren't winners or losers. pvp is often the only way to actually bring some semblance of (temporary) finality to something. despite people giving lip-service to the rule of death being serious and important, it really isn't. not when you can shout to the world 10 minutes later that somebody killed you.

i think this leads to a lot of impotent anger, where the only form of actual resolution (especially when it comes to old characters) is just learning to tolerate each other. if x and y have hugely conflicting ideals and their deaths don't really matter, there's nothing else to do but begrudgingly sing kumbaya.

this is a push towards a more social/political server. it's much harder to win/lose in that setting. it's also not as conflict-oriented, which is weird, because this is supposed to be a conflict-driven server.

i know that pvp can be a salt-fest and I'm sure that it's a huge portion of the DMs' workload. i'm all for finding a way to make it easier, because I'm sure dealing with the fallout of PvP isn't fun. i just don't think this is the way to do it at all.

[LittleWeasel]

Alright... the Mayor conversation script had been live since last Tuesday (6 days).
In that time frame, it did not fire once.
Not a single person killed more than 2 people within 24 hours.

Posting the update about it was as much about extending the run on it, with people knowing it was there, as it was to see if people would find ways to abuse it once knowing about it.

Since the script obviously isn’t needed anyway (as I said: it didn’t get triggered once in 6 days), it is going to be switched off again sometime later today.

[Sockss]

Gottem

[Aodh Lazuli]

Alright... the Mayor conversation script had been live since last Tuesday (6 days).
In that time frame, it did not fire once.
Not a single person killed more than 2 people within 24 hours.

Posting the update about it was as much about extending the run on it, with people knowing it was there, as it was to see if people would find ways to abuse it once knowing about it.

Since the script obviously isn’t needed anyway (as I said: it didn’t get triggered once in 6 days), it is going to be switched off again sometime later today.

I have to admit this strikes me as a little bit odd. Firstly the quiet implementation as a test, and second the reveal of it to check if people would find ways to abuse it once they were aware of its existence. I won't make any conjecture as to the motivation behind those two choices, but I am certainly interested in the motivation and reasoning behind creating the script in the first place.

If you scroll back through this thread, you'll find a post where I asked a few questions to Grumpycat, following Grumpy's post here. Could you try to give an answer to a few of those?

Basically, I'm wondering what problem the script was intended to resolve.

(Although, given some of the rather sensational claims made in this thread, the fact the script didn't fire even once, is really very amusing.)

[dominantdrowess]

This doesn't feel okay to me. It feels deceptive and actually makes me OOCly angry in ways that I find it hard to express. Social experiments in which the participants are not aware they're being manipulated are totally unethical.

[Nobs]

It did get triggerd on my toon Zalzan defending some guy in Skal , The mayor said something about my actions and i could not writ for 24 hours.

[Ork]

I'm disappointed. This strikes me as a policy that punishes the whole over the few. The severity of the consequence isn't what galls me. It is the precedent. We have had 5 rules that guided play on Arelith for over 15+ years, and I believe they have served this community very well. The rules don't label specifics. Players have to use their best judgement and DMs adjudicate between those lines.

By defining PvP as an unacceptable behavior (i.e. If you have killed 2 or more other characters within 24 hours, then consequences) the incentive is towards a more "safe" and social environment.

[Halibutthead]

This doesn't feel okay to me. It feels deceptive and actually makes me OOCly angry in ways that I find it hard to express. Social experiments in which the participants are not aware they're being manipulated are totally unethical.

*discretely puts away clipboard*

i think it's a stretch to call it a social experiment. i think little weasel was describing more of an unannounced test run of a script, rather than an experiment on the people

[Face]

The UD attacking the surface is 80% your own fault. Surface parties coming into the UD and harrassing people at our local dungeons, surface parties raiding Andunor and the hub, surface goodies patrolling Sibiyad to try and force all the evil people down into Andunor... Good job! You united the sharps and the table in their aggravation and animosity to surfacer hijinks, and its come full circle to bite you in the booty.
The UD has largely put a moratorium on fighting itself, because the surface made it nescessary.
The scales of power up there have long been tipped in the favor of team good ever since wharftown was destroyed and its population funneled into Andunor. If you're going to use PvP and IC means to force your evil under a rock, expect a whole lot more attacks to come from under those rocks than in the past.

This just seems a bizarre, unhelpful mindset to me. There is (or there bloody well should not be) no 'Team Good' or 'Team Evil' on Arelith. There should just be players telling stories through interaction with their characters. If you've been irritated by sub-standard stories from surfacer characters coming down to power-fantasy in UD, that doesn't give you an excuse to waltz up and power-fantasy all over us surfacers that have never even visited. By power-fantasy, I mean use conflict and PVP without any real storyline goal other than emphasizing how strong and scary your characters are.

If it really takes frequent raiding to get those who play the surface to take the UD seriously, then I hope we keep up the pace. And there are IC reasons WHY the UD has drastically increased its skirmishing with the surface of late. Its up to you to figure out exactly WHY, and how to convince the dark to ease up through RP.

No, it's not up to me at all. That's your story. I'm not going to be a prop or NPC for your story unless it's interesting and inclusive. If you want to repeatedly raid surfacers without any hint of a story other than "gosh these drow are getting violent aren't they" then it seems to me that the likeliest way that the dark will be 'convinced' is through a ramping up of Surface -> UD revenge raids. The devs and DMs clearly recognised this, which is why there was that reminder/warning that you need DM approval before you raid a settlement. The mindset you're espousing here would turn Arelith into a MMORPG where we just cycle through bashing each other.

The more raids to the surface there are, the less meaningful and interesting they become and the less people are interested in RPing their consequences. The last time this level of raiding happened it lead to the Brog Dominion vs UD war which, while fun to begin with, eventually got pretty dull for us because it did not feel as though our victories had any consequence. The raids just kept on coming regardless of how many times we whack-a-moled-it down in the UD.

Obvious disclaimer: Good, well-thought-out conflict storylines are the lifeblood of Arelith. Good drow raids are fantastic. Good pirate raids are fantastic. Monster races should be feared. But if we're getting raided multiple times per week without storyline it loses all meaning and consequence and isn't fun. We want to be parts of the story, not just NPCs for your terrifying villainy to be reflected off. Honestly it's really disappointing seeing that this kind of mindset coming up from the UD, because it's what we often expected was driving the increased raids but were desperately hoping not to be the case.

(This writ rule is an obvious mistake though. There's already too much of a sense that PVP is restricted to Level 30s only and this hammers down on that even more. The people overdoing PVP aren't going to care about access to writs.)

[JubJub]

This doesn't feel okay to me. It feels deceptive and actually makes me OOCly angry in ways that I find it hard to express. Social experiments in which the participants are not aware they're being manipulated are totally unethical.

How was anyone being manipulated? You weren't be tricked to do anything, people were acting normally because they didn't know it was active. They weren't secretly trying to manipulate you.

[dominantdrowess]

By notifying people after the fact in order to get a reaction -- a difference between a control group and other groups -- and then by calling a social experiment afterward. =/

[Spyre]

Just a reminder:

Arelith is in the hands of the admins for development. It’s their sandbox to decide what goes in and will freely implement changes as they need or feel they need to. When you join, you accept all these changes to the world - it’s part of going forward.

Feedback threads exist for a reason to gauge how changes impact the players. So let’s not debate what is ethetical or not - and lets constructively review changes.

[Ork]

The whole "GOT YA it's already been live" after people voiced their complaints is a little underhanded.

[TimeAdept]

It did get triggerd on my toon Zalzan defending some guy in Skal , The mayor said something about my actions and i could not writ for 24 hours.

Devs? Comment? So now we've been manipulated into a 'social experiment' for an incredibly unpopular scripted effect, and lied to about its test time.

Very cool update.