Irongron wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2024 6:04 pm
Babylon System is the Vampire wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2024 6:16 am
Weird, if I were forced to say what creates the black and white effect on arelith as opposed to the shades of grey you are describing here my gut reaction would 100% be because the setting doesn't set the tone. "Team good" and "Team evil" form because teaming up for pvp is what level 30s do, and since the npcs are more or less irrelevant those level 30s fill in the void and end up setting the tone in the npcs stead.
I can't tell you what you should do- Well, actually, I could, but I think our opinions vary enough where you wouldn't listen. But I did think pointing out the opposite point of view was important, because it would be tragic if your fear of x happening actually causes x to happen.
Unfortunately I'm all too aware that many build for level 30 pvp, indeed it's pretty much what all the spreadsheets being shared, and discussions are focused on. The process of the levelling itself is trivislized both by the speed of levelling and the build plans themselves.
I'm also aware that PvP is what many players default to in the absence of a top-down narrative. The times I most often see lulls in that is when we have events like the recent weatherstone crisis.
But please don't think I I won't listen because our opinions differ. Like almost anyone on Arelith I have strong opinions, for sure. I also, quite naturally, spend time trying to build towards the game I most want to see, but I do value player input, and understand I can often be wrong (for instance I stopped a subdual system for many years as I was convinced it would lead to 24/7 carnage).
Sharing (politely) ones opinion is not wrong, and I worry when a player is reluctant to.
(Though your wording does make me wonder if you want to advocate for a return to hefty death penalties - a time when PvP was rampant and a source of much OOC bitterness)
I don't think anyone can consider me someone who is reluctant to share my opinions. It probably took me about six months of playing Arelith before my first opinionated thread, and with this being post number 915 I guarantee 900 of them were filled with things that i think could make a good game better. And that's not even counting my initial forum tag, where I probably got folks even more fired up with my opinions because many of the issues that are prominent now were just seeds back then that many wanted to deny existed. But that's also why I said I can't tell you what to do, because if you were going to take my advice there has been plenty of opportunity to do so already.
As for what I am advocating in this particular thread (I do try to stay topical though I often fail) it has nothing to do with the death penalty. I simply believe that adding a stronger npc presence (not oppressive to player initiative, but also not nonexistent like it is now) would do wonders for the server on so many levels, but in relation to this thread potentially solve a lot of the issues that cropped up here as well. I really do believe that a current chancellor defining the entire tone of a city as opposed to just being a cog in how the city works to use a simple example leads to more homogony, not less, because people want to fit in with a group. The trick is variation from spot to spot, be that settlement to settlement or section of a city to section of a city depending on what works in that particular instance, so that every variation of character can find a spot to say "This must be the place".
Again, focusing in on this thread, I never thought a new surface city where dead and monsters walked freely was the right idea. A city with a "evil" (for simplification purpose) npc backdrop that opened the door for a more nuanced evil character however would be aces. A good comparison would be say Baldurs Gate (traditionally good) and Amn (traditionally neutral with a evil slant). Thats not to say that both nations, or nation and city state respectively if you want to get technical, don't have a mix of everything, but rather this is the prevailing backdrop.
I think I got where you were getting the harsher death penalties, because I did mention permadeath for the aggressors of raids in the other similar thread regarding surface slavery equivalents, but even that wasn't technically about harsher penalties. Instead, the idea was intended to slow down raids to where you almost had to have a narrative driven reason to do it, or at the very least months of planning to try and make sure you survive. That to me ultimately seems far more preferable than a group hitting 30 with the mechanical prowess to take on swaths of players and raids becoming a thing for the next few weeks.
Now, its probably true that if you and I said "ready set go" and wrote down our visions of what a perfect arelith would be, my vision would ultimately be more draconic than yours. But I would hope the fact that I am self-aware of that, and it is something I try to make clear every time I give suggestions, would also tell you that I know I need to temper said suggestions for what would work for Arelith and not have them focus exclusively on what I think would be best for the server personally. And I really do a lot of editing of my own personal preferences to suit what would work here given what's already in place.
And as a final note, I know that these threads are not the optimal place for some of my opinions because they are often trying to focus on the topic at hand and that sometimes end up as incomplete thoughts. But this is the venue I have. I have considered writing super long threads about changes I would make to try and make them into complete thoughts, but I often talk myself out of it somewhere between before starting and two hours into writing it, because it feels presumptuous. Ultimately ideas are a dime a dozen, and the people that would be implementing it should have their own creative license on what they think will and won't work.
That's why I try and focus on general concepts instead of specifics, but that brings us back to incomplete thoughts....
Also, as the real final note, I am happy to see that you see the correlation between dm activity with a major plot line that level 30s can chase down and compete over and the slowdown of pvp that happens during that time. Thats something that several of us have brought up as a potential solution to the "bored so pvp" level 30 dilemma for a few years now.