Arelith

snuggaboo

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Lorkas wrote:

Scurvy Cur wrote:I oppose the idea unconditionally for being bad.

If Mithreas ever asks for a public reanimation of this horse, I will supply detailed explanations as to why.

I... disagree, but will try not to be such a dismissive snuggaboo about it as you have been here. It would solve a bunch of problems and the only problem it would create is that people don't like the idea of characters dying.

Mith has stated categorically and repeatedl that he's against forced MODs. So am I. Because barring exigent circumstances that the DM team as a whole feels call for a Mark of Despair, it should always be the player's choice when a character's story is over. Even if other players think differently.

To me the high-level MoD would not be about ending anyone's story early so much as making that story better along the way. Lacking a fear of death is a recipe for terrible stories, and I don't just mean in PvP.

I understand why there is resistance to the idea though. I'm perfectly okay with differences of the opinion on the matter, and I thank you for expressing that disagreement in a reasonable and mature way.

Lacking fear of death is a rp thing, but shouldn't be forced. You can't force someone to fear death. If a player is determined right having been crushed by an ogre to go to Red Dragon isle, nothing you can do.

Lorkas, my disagreement with your statement was kept terse not out of dismissiveness of the idea (though I genuinely do think it is bad), but because I have hashed out mostly the same arguments several times across the last 5 or 6 years, usually once every time someone seems to legitimately believe that any sort of mandatory or quasi-mandatory. It is also a lengthy response.

TL:DR version, because the full post could crush a turtle: The suggestion isn't going to make good RPers out of bad, and thus won't fix the problems you most want to suggest, and it will give the nastier sections of the community a way to kill off higher level characters that they do not like. Additionally, the "cost" is lower for those people who are good at grinding to 30 in the space of a month or two, and far steeper for those people who take longer to get there, simply due to the fact that the former group is used to high character turnover anyhow. As a result, I can't find room for even the slightest bit of agreement with the notion that this idea both fixes problems and is problem free in and of itself.

Anyone who does not have patience to slog through one of my longer posts should skip out at this point, and head to the bottom of the post for the suggestions on changing MoD and ways to make high epic level death more impactful without a MoD. This is not a short disagreement, and I very strongly believe in every individual point raised.

Alright, a more detailed list of problems it would create:

1) Currently, MoDs work because they cater optionally to a very specific set of players, who enjoy rolling up a concept and seeing how far it makes it on a fixed timer. They enjoy this style of play, and it's good to give them a way to handle it. Your proposed system would also cater to the people that aren't much interested in mechanics, but would like their character to last for as long as they feel like playing that character. Arelith caters to a wide range of players, though, and not all of them fit into those two categories. In particular, this sort of setup goes a long way towards making the server feel unwelcoming to those players who enjoy the experience of largely PvE progression, or narratively-driven player conflict. The former get told that they can't experience the upper range of character levels without being ready to lose what they're working on before they're ready to set it aside. The latter frequently value being able to conclude a story when the narrative "feels right" for it to end. These players get narrative freedom removed from their stories, by tying it to a MoD.

2) It particularly hurts people that are not very efficient with their builds anyhow. As a general rule, eventually even thoroughly mediocre builds will get good enough to do most of the things in the module by level 30. In making epic levels (or really 26+, if that's when you hand out the MoD) no longer safe levels, you're going to encourage people to try fewer experimental builds that otherwise would be possible, just because 30 character levels fix a ton of sub-optimal setups.

3) We're billed as a 30 level RP server. If you want to RP here, and stay clear of worrying that being clumsy with mechanics is going to cost you something significant, you can do that. The worst thing that being bad at NWN will do to you is slow your progression down. In effect, this system would split the server into casual and hardcore content, and tie a large part of the server content to PvP, intentionally or unintentionally.

4) High level PvP becomes SRSBSNS. You've raised the stakes on winning. If you thought the complaints you hear about people being cheap about hostiling before a fight, or about hitting the hostile button a split second before their first attacks chain up, or about people refusing to hostile until fully buffed to shelter themselves from AoOs, or about people employing engine exploits are bad now, wait until it becomes a matter that characters can get deleted over. People will cut corners more often to win, and it will be a bigger issue when we do. I think what sportsmanship we currently have for PvP will go out the window, because you have placed such a high weight on winning.

4.5) This might not be a big issue if the entire community was great, but it’s not. There are always a few people who are going to be bad sports, jerks, and otherwise rotten apples. I’m aware of at least two separate pvp incidents within the past couple of weeks in which at least one participant did something I would personally consider a mechanical exploit in order to win. We have people like this on the server, and ignoring it does nobody any favors.

There are, additionally, at least a few people still playing here that I would not trust not to do their best to selectively burn the MoD charges off of potential IC opponents at the lowest level they could find to do so. There have been a couple of cases in the server’s past when characters have been singled out for some pretty intense griefing over a MoD. This will get used at least a few times to selectively target characters for forced retirement, good intentions for the MoD or not.

5) PvP becomes srs bsns, and losing it becomes even moreso. I currently find losing a relatively drama free experience. If I find the RP leading up to it satisfying and meaningful, it's going to have an impact on my character that will influence the course of that character's story. If I feel like the RP simply wasn't there and that my opponent was trying to force a fight (as happens from time to time), my character gets to experience the respawn hangover, and develop a highly temporary aversion to doing anything else for a while, but no lasting consequences. At most, I submit a report so that the misbehaving individual has someone watching to see if he goes and does that stuff to someone that minds it more than I do. If I feel that the other party used a mechanical exploit, or followed engagement protocol badly, I report them for that too. I am generally content at this point to just trust that bad behavior will be addressed as it has to be, so that is the extent of my concern as a player.

A mandatory MoD sort of ruins that ability to shrug off the crap, and embrace the good RP. It also will intensify the DM headache surrounding adjudication of PvP disagreements. This community has enough issues with PvP that doesn’t have any lasting major consequence.

6) I’m less sold on the notion that it actually solves any sort of concrete problem. It will force retire some characters, but a lot of the core problems we’ve got are player centric problems. It won’t resolve the grind farmers: in fact, it’s going to be much less a serious burden on people who cycle through level 30 characters every 2-3 months than it will on those who take a lot longer than that to level up. It won’t resolve the terrible special snowflake characters. We’ll replace old snowflakes with new snowflakes. It’s also a kinda shaky metric to accomplish what we want to. We’re interested, ultimately, in ensuring that characters get retired when their story arc is done. Making sure that everyone eventually dies will ensure that eventually stale characters die, but it doesn’t make sure that active characters are fresh and interesting, and also has a propensity for retiring characters while they are still active and vigorous.

7) Less a specific disagreement, and more an observation that the system we have now works pretty well. People interested in a MoD can have one, and are happy with it. People who want no part of one do not take one. This voluntary participation is a merit all of its own, as it helps ensure that as many possible playstyles can coexist with access to the full content of the server. I don’t think this should be discarded. I know that it is the intent of your suggestion to make this MoD “Optional” by allowing people to opt out simply by avoiding progression past level 21 or 26. I’m not quite willing to agree that this is quite in keeping with the spirit of optionality that we currently have: there is currently nothing that characters miss out on by passing up the current MoD. If we did this, we’d change that. It would be a quid pro quo arrangement of “If you want to experience the last part of character progression, you have to accept permadeath”. This may suit some people, but I’d rather keep the MoD a completely strings-free arrangement.

Thoughts on Improving MoD: I do agree that the MoD could be made more compelling to take. I think this should be done by either improving the reward, or changing how the charges are removed. I think, for instance, that removing charges on respawning, not on death, or making an optional MoD that offers reduced bonuses, but only counts pvp deaths, or taking both options would help.

Thoughts on Death Consequences at 26+: If the community is absolutely dead set on stiffer mechanical penalties for the death of high epic characters, I would suggest a solution that potentially creates RP out of the death instead. Rather than limiting a character to 10 deaths in the high epic level, assign a permanent negative level penalty of 1-2 negative levels that cannot be removed without either paying a hefty XP cost sufficient to drop a level (representative of the negative level becoming permanent), or getting an intervention from a PC cleric capable of casting level 9 spells conducting a ritual with a hefty material and piety cost.

Once more, Scurvy manages to articulate fully what I think about something better than I do.

All that post, one hundred times agreement, rub my face all over it, thank you.