Suggestion Discussion: Player Heads

[NPC Logger Number 2]

viewtopic.php?f=51&p=242783#p242783

Since this suggestion is "approved" I would like to make this thread to discuss it.

Personally, I am against removing player heads, or making them despawn after a set amount of time, for one simple reason: Players and their characters lie about the outcomes of PVP, both IC and OOC, a lot. I have seen cases where an entire faction got killed in PVP, where they lost badly, only to go around posting on every message board that they won immediately afterwards. I have also seen cases where people claimed to kill someone in PVP when they didn't, even going so far as renaming the giant head on a pike fixture to pretend it was the head of said player. In each of these cases, no one other than the combatants themselves would have ANY way to determine which side was telling the truth if it was not for player heads.

Basically, if this suggestion makes it onto the server, this is the kind of scenario I imagine happening:

DM Grumpycat: I corpsebashed Irongron lol he is such a n00b
Irongron: That didn't happen Grumpycat I killed u stop making stuff up
DM Titania: Okay one of you is lying didnt u behead them for proof?
DM Grumpycat: I did but it despawned 6 months ago
Irongron: See I told you Grumpy was lying!
DM Titania: I don't know who to believe!


Obviously this is a joke example since DM's don't murderhobo each other and if they did they could just check the logs, but just imagine this kind of scenario with regular players without access to those tools. I do not want word of mouth or popularity to become the only determining factor in PVP, to where mechanically weak characters can get killbashed every other day yet still go around bragging that they won every PVP encounter and convincing people that they actually did. Having player heads is a great way to shut up the liars and show everyone what REALLY happened. Take them away, and a lot of people won't take deaths in PVP seriously anymore.

[Mattamue]

Lying in game about losing a fight 100% makes sense for some characters. Believing or dis-believing those characters is also something that happens in game.

I got this story 2nd hand, but I'll share it because I think there's a good bit of roleplay advice in it. A group of drow lost a fight. One of the players on the "winning" side went on to play another character later as a drow. The player encountered message boards and other drow characters talking about how the fight was won. The player pointed out ooc to someone that he'd actually been there and seen the drow lose. One of the other drow players made a good point. What drow (or drow faction) would ever admit defeat? Of course an evil drow would lie and manipulate to appear strong.

I think that this is where player heads can styme rp somewhat. If the character's goal is to do more than simply pvp another character -- if the character's goal is to undermine another's power, then it takes intrigue and organizing something like a public assassination. It takes something like tricking an opponent into a public duel so there is no doubt about the outcome -- or for the losing party, now there's X people to intimidate or payoff to say you won.

All of this potential is lost just because someone can poop out a head. Feels like a stretch to say that heads are good for rp.

[The GrumpyCat]

Ha! Shows what you know! Irongron Corpsbashes me all the time. So frustrating!

But seriously... I'm actually not really considering getting rid of all proof.

The simplest idea I can come up with (and I'm open to others to come up with their own) is:

Replaced bashed heads with say, a finger. Ideally using a unique icon. Like a bashed head, the finger will say the name of the person it belonged to, but won't give away race, gender ect.

The reasons for this are
a) I've always found it super wierd, immersion breaking and irritating that you can run around with someones severed head, and yet that person can be around. I get that some will argue 'but how do you know it's such and suches finger!' I get that that's an immersion argument, but I think it's less of an immersion argument than the above.

b) Right now skulls can be renamed/redescribed to players heads. That basically means that they arn't usable as evidence anyway.

c) Whilst I've little issue with someone telling the race of another creature (which may have been hidden) via an actual body - using the head (which is in effect perminent) to do that seemed a little harsh. This would prevent that.

The idea of the finger degrading after time is also a good one, if it's possible, to prevent such trophyitus, so that there's only a certain amount of time to boast of your victory.

[Kuma]

If it were just somehow named "Trophy" rather than a specific body part even, but with a unique icon and confirmation of the character's identity, that'd be a good replacement.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

If people want to lie about PVP that is fine. I just like having an IC method of showing everyone that they are a liar. If that method expires and disappears from your inventory after X amount of time then it turns the outcome of literally every PVP into a high school popularity contest from that point on. As much as it makes sense for a drow to lie about defeat, it doesn't make sense for them to put their head back on immediately after having it lopped off and go spray painting their name all over their killer's home town out of spite. That's just not taking death seriously nor is it being a good sport OOCly. Acting like a jerk to where it negatively affects other people's enjoyment OOCly because "That's what my character would do." is being a wangrod.

Ha! Shows what you know! Irongron Corpsbashes me all the time. So frustrating!

But seriously... I'm actually not really considering getting rid of all proof.

The simplest idea I can come up with (and I'm open to others to come up with their own) is:

Replaced bashed heads with say, a finger. Ideally using a unique icon. Like a bashed head, the finger will say the name of the person it belonged to, but won't give away race, gender ect.

The reasons for this are
a) I've always found it super wierd, immersion breaking and irritating that you can run around with someones severed head, and yet that person can be around. I get that some will argue 'but how do you know it's such and suches finger!' I get that that's an immersion argument, but I think it's less of an immersion argument than the above.

b) Right now skulls can be renamed/redescribed to players heads. That basically means that they arn't usable as evidence anyway.

c) Whilst I've little issue with someone telling the race of another creature (which may have been hidden) via an actual body - using the head (which is in effect perminent) to do that seemed a little harsh. This would prevent that.

The idea of the finger degrading after time is also a good one, if it's possible, to prevent such trophyitus, so that there's only a certain amount of time to boast of your victory.

The finger thing would lead to the same issue explained in the thread's OP. To put it bluntly, I think people just need to learn how to deal with losing. I understand it sucks to have your head displayed as a trophy after losing a PVP. It sucks even more to have your "head" displayed after winning a PVP and not even dying. in the latter case, player heads at least set the record straight and allow the winner to you know, actually feel like the winner. I think we should just disable the renaming of skulls, let the record speak for itself so everyone can know the truth instead of hiding the truth to pander to players who don't want to take death seriously.

[AstralUniverse]

I snuggybear love the heads

There's no ego boost in this game like tossing a bunch of heads at the chancellor's feet and "job done boss".

[NPC Logger Number 2]

I snuggybear love the heads

There's no ego boost in this game like tossing a bunch of heads at the chancellor's feet and "job done boss".

Or tossing a bunch of drow heads at the Coronal's feet.

[Baseili]

If people want to lie about PVP that is fine. I just like having an IC method of showing everyone that they are a liar. If that method expires and disappears from your inventory after X amount of time then it turns the outcome of literally every PVP into a high school popularity contest from that point on. As much as it makes sense for a drow to lie about defeat, it doesn't make sense for them to put their head back on immediately after having it lopped off and go spray painting their name all over their killer's home town out of spite. That's just not taking death seriously nor is it being a good sport OOCly. Acting like a jerk to where it negatively affects other people's enjoyment OOCly because "That's what my character would do." is being a wangrod.

The finger thing would lead to the same issue explained in the thread's OP. To put it bluntly, I think people just need to learn how to deal with losing. I understand it sucks to have your head displayed as a trophy after losing a PVP. It sucks even more to have your "head" displayed after winning a PVP and not even dying. in the latter case, player heads at least set the record straight and allow the winner to you know, actually feel like the winner. I think we should just disable the renaming of skulls, let the record speak for itself so everyone can know the truth instead of hiding the truth to pander to players who don't want to take death seriously.

Just to clarify; winning a fight isn't enough to feel like a winner, you must have tangable, eternal and undeniable proof that someone has lost with the ability to whip it out at a moments notice for validation?

[Gouge Away]

What if player heads just lasted 24 hours, if that's possible?

I think they're great for proving you won the battle and bragging rights... Right after the battle. When I get irritated is when six months later that damn head pops up again or they're still showing it off even though we're all on to new things.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

Just to clarify; winning a fight isn't enough to feel like a winner, you must have tangable, eternal and undeniable proof that someone has lost with the ability to whip it out at a moments notice for validation?

Just to clarify, losing a fight is such a damaging blow to your precious ego, that you must have all evidence of it permanently erased from the server forever so that nobody can ever know about it? See, I can ask loaded questions too.

What if player heads just lasted 24 hours, if that's possible?

I think they're great for proving you won the battle and bragging rights... Right after the battle. When I get irritated is when six months later that damn head pops up again or they're still showing it off even though we're all on to new things.

It is also irritating to hear the loser still bragging that they "won" six months later when we're all trying to move onto new things. The fact of the matter is, player heads give us the truth, which is sorely needed sometimes to have resolution. Without any kind of concrete proof it is one player's word against another, which can indeed drag on for six months or a year or longer. Once you show a head though the debate is over and the verdict is in, and people can start to wrap up the narrative in a way that makes sense instead of being confused over what amounts to mostly OOC lies and being hung up over the same unresolved conflict for months at a time.

[Gouge Away]

That seems more reason to remove heads entirely to me. The sheer pettiness of someone still arguing about a PVP victory six months later is exhausting. If the result was important enough story-wise then you shouldn't have to prove it. if it wasn't important enough for anyone but the two of you to remember then move the heck on after half a year.

[Drowboy]

That seems more reason to remove heads entirely to me. The sheer pettiness of someone still arguing about a PVP victory six months later is exhausting. If the result was important enough story-wise then you shouldn't have to prove it. if it wasn't important enough for anyone but the two of you to remember then move the heck on after half a year.

This. I am, once again, amazed at what sort of wildly different game some of the people who post on this forum must be playing from me.

[Diegovog]

I like it to be on a timer. And the longer it takes, the less information it should give. Skulls are important IC tools but they can become griefing venues too.

First it could lose gender, then race, then finally after a long time it becomes an undistinguishable skull.

I think it's important to be able to tell the victim's race, but it should quickly time out.

1 RL day - loses gender
2 RL days - loses race
2 RL months - loses name and skull becomes undistinguishable

[CorsicanDoge]

That seems more reason to remove heads entirely to me. The sheer pettiness of someone still arguing about a PVP victory six months later is exhausting. If the result was important enough story-wise then you shouldn't have to prove it. if it wasn't important enough for anyone but the two of you to remember then move the heck on after half a year.

This. I am, once again, amazed at what sort of wildly different game some of the people who post on this forum must be playing from me.

This pretty much sums up my feelings too.

Do you guys not have better things to put in your inventory slots/storage than a bunch of skulls? I don't like accidentally glitching my towershield.

[Baseili]

Just to clarify, losing a fight is such a damaging blow to your precious ego, that you must have all evidence of it permanently erased from the server forever so that nobody can ever know about it? See, I can ask loaded questions too.

I'm glad we could come to an agreement that this, at its heart, is a clash of egos and prompts an utterly absurd event of showing someone their own head or several.

[NauVaseline]

just to clarify; winning a fight isn't enough to feel like a winner, you must have tangable, eternal and undeniable proof that someone has lost with the ability to whip it out at a moments notice for validation?

it'd be absolutely silly if you couldn't prove you killed someone

[Ninjimmy]

Some players suck at PVP but they're good at RP.

If their character would lie about the outcome and they're charismatic enough to sow doubt about the result then that's their character.

Probably shouldn't pick fights with the guy who's going to have the kinda influence to pull that. Same reason you don't square up to a noble even if you could wreck them because, oh boy, now you're pariahed even though you didn't break the law (not an actual event AFAIK, but could be a fun story). Basically, there are consequences beyond "I won!" every time and the loser lying about the event isn't even the most egregious I can think of.

I mean... it's hard to take PvP deaths seriously when someone's got a backpack full of snugglin SKULLS of the same person to show how tough they are. It looks an awful lot like you AREN'T great at killing them and also petty enough that you need everyone to KNOW you killed them. If what you care about is the rep for the killing, like Mattamue said, you need to EARN that poop, do it in public, risk being exiled from a settlement, arrange a duel with witnesses in the coliseum since that achieves the same end.

If all you want is to be able to rub it in someone's face you won and they can't RP their own take on it, then that's... not really a great reason or player motivation.

[Ninjimmy]

just to clarify; winning a fight isn't enough to feel like a winner, you must have tangable, eternal and undeniable proof that someone has lost with the ability to whip it out at a moments notice for validation?

it'd be absolutely silly if you couldn't prove you killed someone

This did make me realise that PvP kills here is kind of like claiming to have slept with someone. In that lens, needing proof feels almost... tragic.

[AstralUniverse]

This thread is amusing. Its like most of the arguments here are perfect arguments to save for In Character. This just makes me want the heads to stay even more. Maybe even add more body parts to the PC corpse 'loot' inventory. A finger, a 'trophy' item of some sort, whatever. The Barbarian will likely want the head more than the finger. The assassin vice versa.

[The GrumpyCat]

I mean... it's hard to take PvP deaths seriously when someone's got a backpack full of snugglin SKULLS of the same person to show how tough they are. It looks an awful lot like you AREN'T great at killing them and also petty enough that you need everyone to KNOW you killed them

That's why I dislike the skull system. A trophy of a finger or some sort? (Esp if it only lasts a short amount of time) Yeah ok, fine. I see that. But skulls are just silly.

Also - I'm going to share a little magic secret with you about my observations from memorable and feared villains.

Let's name a few. Vance Gavelle, Vippin, Lavok Xun'Viir, Katar Black (shuttup I'm that old) Hastone Rayne, Sarog Penthanos...

These guys? They weren't famous because they won a lot of pvp and then threw around severed heads going 'ol I won lol!' Sure they did PvP, some of them are even exceptionally good at it - but honestly? I think the PvPs where they took heads were probably seen more as failures than anything.

The REAL victory PvPs were where they got to talk to the perople after. Gave them great rp. Gave them awsome experiences. Left the loosers thinking 'OH MY GOD THAT WAS EPIC!'

Head taking? That's honestly a sign of failure in many cases. Because a good chunk of the time the player will go away thinking 'UGH what a jerk! Well I'll just continue my rp anyway...'

Success? Isn't just winning the PvP... but being good enough that the other player is happy to roll with that win and goes away after saying 'Yeah, that was awsome.'

Of course there'll be folk who arn't like that, but in my experience if you work towards winning against the lowest denominator, you tend to end up with a pretty terrible situation.

And if someone is repeatedly ignoring their pvp deaths - then you can always report it to us, besides.

[Anime Sword Fighter]

Rename heads as "Token of [character]'s body"

[NPC Logger Number 2]

Some players suck at PVP but they're good at RP.

If their character would lie about the outcome and they're charismatic enough to sow doubt about the result then that's their character.

That's called being a wangrod, doing things to ruin everyone else's enjoyment because "That's what my character would do." You can still be charismatic and get people to sympathize with you and be on your side while admitting defeat. In fact I would say that is much better RP and a much more sensible narrative than putting your head back on and proceeding to declare to the heavens that you won. And I'm not even against you being able to lie, but for you to be able to lie without God-moding there needs to be an IC way to prove you wrong, or else it's like giving you the Bluff skill and removing Spot entirely from the game.

I want you to take these two scenarios and reflect on which one you think would make for a better RP server:


SCENARIO 1:
Player A kills Player B.
Player A corpsebashes Player B.
Player B goes and posts on the message board in town that he killed Player A and that Player A is a big doodoohead.
Player A shows everyone Player B's head ICly making Player B look like a fool and proving that he is a liar.
Everyone forgets about it in 3 days and people go about their business as usual. Player B might be salty but they actually started the fight anyways so who cares?

SCENARIO 2:
Player A kills Player B.
Player A corpsebashes Player B.
Player B goes and posts on the message board in town that he killed Player A and that Player A is a big doo doo brain.
Player A has no way to prove he really killed Player B so everyone in town picks a side and argues about it until it spills over OOCly.
Player A shows screenshots over discord to all the other players in town so they OOCly know that Player B has been lying.
Player B continues to go around posting on message boards claiming he is invincible and telling everyone Player A is a doodoohead. Everyone OOCly knows that Player B is a liar so ICly they just ignore him and continue to RP with Player A.
Player A eventually gets fed up with Player B not taking death seriously after corpsebashing him for the fifth time this week so reports it to the DM's.
DM's put a MOD on Player B.

[Ninjimmy]

Some players suck at PVP but they're good at RP.

If their character would lie about the outcome and they're charismatic enough to sow doubt about the result then that's their character.

That's called being a wangrod, doing things to ruin everyone else's enjoyment because "That's what my character would do."

That applies equally to the head thing though (EDIT: As in, being a Wangrod). Like, consider these takes on the scenario's you gave.

SCENARIO 1:
Player A kills Player B.
Player A corpsebashes Player B.
Player B goes and posts on the message board in town that the fight was dishonourable and eggs on a rematch
Player A shows everyone Player B's head ICly to show that he killed him and doesn't interact with the rematch request.
Player B tries to find Player A but since A isn't sure they can win again they avoid them like the plague.
Player A shows everyone Player B's head 6 months and several level ups later to show off how tough they are.
Player B still can't find Player A
Player B becomes a well known presence in the criminal underworld, feared and respected.
Player A shows everyone Player B's head to show he's just a scrub, lol, can't even build right, pretending he took down this imposing figure recently not years ago, impacting months of RP.
This continues until Player B quits the server.

SCENARIO 2:
Player A kills Player B.
Player A corpsebashes Player B.
Player B goes and posts on the message board in town that the fight was dishonourable and eggs on a rematch.
Player A can't prove they won so if they care enough they fight again with witnesses or continue the narrative IC to see what comes of this mendacity.
Player A or B is free to disconnect from this narrative at any time but now it's a matter of proof the PvP win must be followed by an RP win.
What happens next might be interesting.

[-XXX-]

The heads don't matter. It's not a necessary item to create great conflict RP.
Furthermore, the awkwardness that these items create in combination with the respawn system aside, they've been misused so often and in so many ways in the past, that many players take them with a grain of salt and/or straight up disregard them.

More often than not they can be seen as a proof that the player presenting them is competent at PvP and incompetent at RP.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

The heads don't matter. It's not a necessary item to create great conflict RP.
Furthermore, the awkwardness that these items create in combination with the respawn system aside, they've been misused so often and in so many ways in the past, that many players take them with a grain of salt and/or straight up disregard them.

More often than not they can be seen as a proof that the player presenting them is competent at PvP and incompetent at RP.

This whole dismissive attitude of, "They killed me in PVP so they must obviously suck at RP!" does not help.

I can type multiple paragraphs with flowery descriptions all day long if I want. I can create interesting characters and story arcs. I've done so in the past. But soon as I see an animator and tell him to get rid of the undead and he refuses to take the out I generously offered suddenly I'm a terrible RPer because I corpse bashed them and all that other good RP I did with other people no longer counts apparently.

I'd argue if someone can't take a loss in PVP and write a story around that then maybe they are the one who needs to work on their RP skills. Some of my best stories have come from me losing and that has lead to some interesting interactions and character development. But when I lose I actually take the loss and act like I just got my butt kicked ICly, I don't show up at my killer's door with flaming bags of gibberling dung and spend time trying to OOCly convince everyone on discord I actually won. I've even done the whole gain sympathy and ruin their reputation angle.

There's probably a couple of ash trays in Sencliff and Anundor made out of my old characters' skulls and I'm fine with that. If there's any awkwardness around player heads it is probably because of the person getting killed still walking around refusing to accept that they ever died, not because of the person who killed them. I'm tired of hearing about how corpse bashing and head taking is "bad for RP" when it is more often the losers of a PVP encounter who resort to rule breaks such as griefing, metagaming, god-emoting, not taking death seriously, etc.