Suggestion Discussion: Player Heads

[Drowboy]

What this dolphin up here said. Given that we're at a point of saying "oh I dunno about this update, people might use it as an excuse for extremely low effort pvp because that's what the playerbase is like, shrug," I'd be mad hesitant about making pvp death penalties any worse' till we get the whole "murdering someone and disfiguring their corpse over, basically, nothing," player culture problem fixed.

[Anomandaris]

Ah, so you were suggesting the respawn penalty?
We do have that already.

Last time I checked respawning characters suffered crippling temporary penalties to prevent players from just rushing back into the fray and disregarding the PvP rules.
It also incentivizes them to log and cool off a bit without making it mandatory.


Since short-term mechanical debuffs are in place, what other kind than long term or permanent mechanical representation of scars is there to discuss?
I merely voiced my opinion that any form of those would deincentivize any form of interactive and ongoing rivalry between characters.

Hypothetical scenario:
A and B get into a quarrel.
A takes a cheap shot at B, crippling them for the forseeable future.
B's player realizes that they can't compete and abandons the storyline entirely.

As you can see, mechanical consequences can lead to less RP consequences.

Possibly. I stated somewhere in the original post that it was more 24/48/72 hours. So... mid-term? Something lighter than the full death debuff. The issue is often it's a trade on a 24 hour timeline. The death penalty as it is serves the purpose you articulated wonderfully. Log off, cool off, do something else for a bit. The 24 hour timelines does the same. I was just exploring the hypothetical of what if you were weaker in pvp for a couple days after getting PvP'd. You'd kind of have to resort to other RP means to continue the narrative than just show back up after 24 hours for more PvP. Just food for thought, not married to it.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Regarding harsher DM punishments, there's 2 sides to this whole issue and I don't think "people who PvP a lot" should necessarily be punished. Because "attack the villain" is the ONLY way a lot of people are willing to interact with big bad guy characters.

I've watched a lot of people talk MAD smack and refuse to back down, and escalate situations needlessly because they want to be "right." Some people make PvP the only option because they don't want to back down, their pride is too big.
Some people straight up refuse to acknowledge their character losing. In these cases I don't think people who turned to PvP should be punished, because PvP is the only option others have left them. I saw this with the Banites on more than one occasion, where people would refuse to back down even if they couldn't win the fight against them, and would just brush off losing the battle. Where people would go out of their way to antagonize the Banites and act like the Banites were brutes for defending their honour. "I punched the hornet's nest, it's the hornets who are evil for stinging me."
In cases like this, the victim is being a poor sport, and not allowing the villains the opportunity to RP.

On the other hand, people are not mature enough to have head trophies. There's a post on the Sibayad board right now gloating about corpsebashing. Like it's not enough to win, you want to go and tell everyone to go and look at the bashed corpses. Which IMO is the same vein as people hoarding heads to show them off months later, it's unnecessary and is being a bad winner. You're not adding anything to the server narrative. It doesn't make you a better villain.

A lot of people complain the server is too PvP heavy, but in my experiences (on the surface), it's because people escalate things and refuse to back down. I don't like PvP so I don't push for it every turn, and surprise surprise, I don't get into a lot of it. I was PKed once at lvl 15 because a jerk crashed an event I was holding, and that's it.
I don't shy away from conflict RP, two of my characters now have had death threats against them, and Garrett was actively hunted. But I'm not going around being an absolute smirklord refusing to accept other players in the world. I'm not going out and picking fights with people. And if someone threatens my character, I take it seriously and play more carefully, because my characters don't want to die.


Since pride is one of the issues at hand, I like the scar system proposal because it makes it harder for bad losers to hide their loss. If pride is at stake, people might be less willing to engage in fights they can't win. I'd love to think it'd help get people to RP more with others rather than turning into a brick wall and refusing to RP any time conflict comes up.

[Aradin]

Just want to chirp in and say I like the idea of the scar system. I was semi-recently killed in PVP and I thought to myself "What a great opportunity to have a permanent scar or mark of some kind to show the trials of battle." I didn't even consider it as a sign painted on me saying "I'm bad at PVP", I just thought it would be a neat RP thing to have.
If I see a tough-looking character whose bio mechanically shows them as missing an ear, a bunch of fingers, etc. then my first reaction won't be "Ha! What a loser.". It'll be "Oh jeez, that's someone who would strangle me if I looked at them funny." Or, if I saw a delicate elven maiden of incomparable beauty who has a horrendous wound around her eye, then that's a great conversation starter.

I'll also say I like the idea of needing epic-level healers to fix the deep, lasting, PVP scars; that way you get some agency over whether to keep the cool scar you earned or not. There's one drawback I see, however. If we start the precedent that only mechanically-enforced scars are "real" scars, then it might remove player agency to concoct their own wounds/deformities as part of their backstory or on-going stories.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Some interesting stuff.

That interesting stuff lead me to some questions.

What if the person who won't back down is just playing a character that won't back down?

Why does the guy who just kills someone who won't back down get a pass on the potential influence of their ego? Why are they not judged under the same scrutiny of their ooc motivations?

I ask these because your opinions after seem to be heavily slanted toward "guy who won't back down is wrong, guy who kill bashed him for it is the hero", and that leaves me wondering what puts them in those roles? If its about Roleplay, then potentially both should be the heroes because one person could be playing the type of dude that doesn't back down (I suspect a pretty popular character type in a fantasy game) and the other person could be playing a take no nonsense sociopath on the outskirts of society, and if thats true they both played their roles to perfection. If its about an ooc clique exerting their dominance over a upstart character despite not fitting the social outsider that kills at will role, then its definitely the killer that's the zero and is likely labeling them as a player who won't back down because of their ooc ego because they are projecting their own ooc behavior upon them.

Now, I'm not saying you do this or even most people do it, I'm just trying to present an alternate way of looking at things. OOC player Ego infecting a characters IC ego is a real thing on nwn servers. But so is group think, and I think the later is far more of an issue if you are truly trying to sort out who the villain in your situation is. Its very easy for Timmy the long time Arelith player to say "this guy wouldn't back down despite me giving him a chance so I pvped him and now he's complaining" and get all of his friends and likely some dms to believe that the guy who wouldn't back down was the issue, and that would be the gospel. But by using a bit of critical thinking you will often find the opposite to be true. Every situation is unique of course, but the question should always be "who stepped out of character during this interaction", because that's the guy or gal in the wrong here.

[Ork]

You're entirely off the mark here, Babylon. The issue isn't that the guy "didn't back dkwn", its that he complained about it later. That shows the OOC mindset of that particular player. If youre playing a "guy that doesn't back down" first, hella 1-dimensional & 2 recognize that you're going to lose sometimes and roll with the punches.

[-XXX-]

It doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong at this point. BOTH of these are tropes that have been played out so many times, that they usually make all the other players witnessing such behavior roll their eyes and cringe.

It all boils down to the "but that's what my character would do I'm just staying in character" excuse - it can be applied to both characters in the above example. It can also be used to justify a wide variety of other nonsense.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

People not backing down IS the problem. There are some cases where paladins or whatnot might put themself in an unwinnable situation to protect others, but that's extremely rare. To the point where I'd consider it a strawman argument to evade talking about the real issue of people not wanting to RP being "weak" or "losing."
It's one thing to be proud, but, would your character be so proud that they'd be willing to die for it? There's no guarantee IC that we will return back to life.


My point is the problem is people not RPing being at a disadvantage. Such as being hugely antagonistic and talking trash, and escalating things needlessly.

Like right as I was typing this reply I was walking in Cordor and saw someone being stopped by guards for being -covered. And yeah hoodcheck RP is lame, but, the disguiser was being antagonistic to the guards, making threats and insulting them. If you're at a disadvantage in the situation, why trash talk? Why be a jerk? Why escalate things further? The guards let her go once she pulled her hood down, but she insulted them as she walked off, she just had to get the last word in.

This is why things always escalate to PvP. The guards decided to let it drop and let the person go, but they could have easily kept going. And the person in the disadvantage was very clearly itching for PvP, they made some direct threats against the guards.


I stand by what I said, I don't think the server is innately PvP heavy. I think attitudes cause things to become PvP heavy.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You're entirely off the mark here, Babylon. The issue isn't that the guy "didn't back dkwn", its that he complained about it later. That shows the OOC mindset of that particular player. If youre playing a "guy that doesn't back down" first, hella 1-dimensional & 2 recognize that you're going to lose sometimes and roll with the punches.

I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I also can't fully agree with it because it assumes a lot. My post doesn't label either side wrong or right, since as I said every situation is different, but it does make the point that more often then not its the guy who kill bashed that broke character. I still stand by that point. I suppose a debate could be had on what's more important on the server, staying ic or fitting in on an ooc level, but since it is a RP server my post also assumes that the person who broke character is the most in the wrong.

I also agree with what you said, xxx, but I have been playing nwn servers for close to 20 years now. There are things I consider tropes and overdone that people who weren't alive yet when I started playing are seeing for the first time. Just part of the sandbox.

[The GrumpyCat]

People not backing down IS the problem. There are some cases where paladins or whatnot might put themself in an unwinnable situation to protect others, but that's extremely rare. To the point where I'd consider it a strawman argument to evade talking about the real issue of people not wanting to RP being "weak" or "losing."
It's one thing to be proud, but, would your character be so proud that they'd be willing to die for it? There's no guarantee IC that we will return back to life.

I basically agree with everything you're saying Midnight, but I'll add that I think it's not just the pre- pvp rp, but also post. Being the hero who stands up against the Tyranical!Guards is fine - especialy if you actually rp the injury after. Take a day or two to rp that you're sick, injured, show a little concern about such happening again ect.

People starting fights, dying, and jumping right back in the day after arn't heroic or cool or interesting. It's two toddlers running at each other and bashing dionsaur figures together yellilng 'NO i WON!' Until inevitably on eor the other gets hurt and starts wailing for mummy.

[Arigard]

Personally, I would like to see more serious consequences and action from the DM team against those that initiate PvP frequently. The fact that we as a community try to be as open and welcoming as possible to players who are learning roleplay is great, but those that fill that void of roleplay talent with PvP actions have had an overwhelmingly negative effect on the server as a whole and need to be dealt with more harshly.

Don't agree with this at all. The actions of a warrior to strike someone down with a sword is 100% their roleplay. They aren't a warrior without a sword and nor are they if they never swing it. Role-play isn't just about how good you can write a story, it's about how well you embody a character. That means all of the tools too as those provide context for the identity in their role. As long as rules are not being broken, then PvP should be looked as what it is, an extension of a characters role and not as some unaffiliated activity to role-play. Raging as a Barbarian -is- roleplay. Casting magic as a mage -is- roleplay. etc etc and if there are invisible rules to say "Hey you can do all this versus everything else in the world, but magically not against those people". Then we're not immersive at all. It makes zero sense.

Add to this, if you make punishment higher for PvP, you will actually have the opposite effect of what you are trying to accomplish here. People will walk around with abandon playing their characters however they like, fully in the knowledge that nobody can do anything against them, or give them consequences for their actions to the point it becomes unnatural. I can insult you all I want? Why, because nothing is going to happen if I do. There's no consequences because you'll get punished for trying to make any.

The real issue here is not PvP, but role-playing consequence and unfortunately very few people actually do this unless they are forced to by mechanics.

Paladins being unafraid of fear? Fine roleplay, they literally have abilities on their character sheet that say "immune to fear". A 5th level rogue squaring up against a character clearly 100x more powerful than them with no fear of death, or injury? 9/10 times it's terrible role-play "Well i'll just get spat back out anyway!", rather than a character that will accept the consequences looking for a story arc. "i.e I wanted him to start out mouthy and get brought back down to earth so I can focus on learning as the character etc etc".