Simplified PK Discussion

Veldrin

Orklanishkal accidents happens (room attacks for instance) and that's a consequence of it, but they shouldn't be directly targetted if they aren't doing anything.

@Nadiel Shallam would do just fine without Evil, Darkness and Chaos, in fact the teachings state that the ideals Shallam stand for would be standing even without the opposite to 'define it'. They are Eternal and are not defined by their opposites, if anything the opposites are defined as by going against the teachings. Shallamese are supposed to be upholding Good, Light and Creation because it's the natural order of things, not because it's 'right'.

Jarrod

Following Veldrin's flawless logic. I'm going to quit mark and stand at Skirting and issue anyone who attacks me.

I'm just standing there, I'm not raiding.

Veldrin

Jarrod said:

Following Veldrin's flawless logic. I'm going to quit mark and stand at Skirting and issue anyone who attacks me.

I'm just standing there, I'm not raiding.

Go ahead? The ones attacking you in that instance would be the ones in the wrong (Unless they got cause on you obviously)

Xer

You're putting far too much onus on the raider in an OOC sense @Veldrin. It just doesn't make sense RP wise to try and attack a city, and leave all innocents alone. In addition, there's a danger to raiders even if that person is just "sitting" there. You can't say that the presence of an extra body is meaningless. Say you enter a room with a lone monk. He's not doing anything so you don't attack. Then some other defender comes in, prones you, and then that monk executes a BBT and kills you.

By the time we can retaliate according to how you would prefer raids to go, it's too late for the raiders (which of course I realize, is something you would prefer), but when such actions are just plain silly in a RP sense (i.e. you should have just killed all enemy citizens if you're raiding), you're taking things too far.

Obvious novices are one thing. Higher leveled, older monks who have been around for longer don't have that same standing.

Delphinus

@Nadiel: The Shallam versus Ashtan conflict appears to be going just fine, and even thriving, for lack of an extermination-style mechanic. It does this via strength of character and compelling storylines.

I agree that Oakstone would no longer have a purpose, but ideally, that would get the same treatment.

Nadiel

Veldrin said:

Orklanishkal accidents happens (room attacks for instance) and that's a consequence of it, but they shouldn't be directly targetted if they aren't doing anything.

@Nadiel Shallam would do just fine without Evil, Darkness and Chaos, in fact the teachings state that the ideals Shallam stand for would be standing even without the opposite to 'define it'. They are Eternal and are not defined by their opposites, if anything the opposites are defined as by going against the teachings. Shallamese are supposed to be upholding Good, Light and Creation because it's the natural order of things, not because it's 'right'.

I guess clarification is in order - I didn't say that Good, Light, and Creation would no longer exist, or no longer be defined. You just can't defend them if there's no threat. You can't champion them if everybody is on the same page. If there was no opposite, there would be nothing to fight over, and everybody in all of Sapience would serve Good, Light, and Creation. All sentient beings would be innocents, leaving hunting pretty scarce. The knights would have nothing to fight over except for fun. No point in honing your skills if you'll never have to use them to champion anything. Conflict would basically cease to exist. All there would be left to do is snuggle, and maybe have a power conflict in politics, though I imagine there wouldn't be too many decisions to be made if everybody in all of Achaea was focused on Good and the betterment of Creation.

Gerohold

Many people here seem to think that boosting conflict steers Achaea into the right direction. The Achaea that I know is A LOT more than just conflict. It's a whole universe and conflict is only one of its aspects. Conflict also doesn't necessarily have anything to do with PK. I can only support Veldrin in saying that purpose in fighting others should not be forced upon anyone.

Peak

Veldrin said:

Jarrod said:

Following Veldrin's flawless logic. I'm going to quit mark and stand at Skirting and issue anyone who attacks me.

I'm just standing there, I'm not raiding.

Go ahead? The ones attacking you in that instance would be the ones in the wrong (Unless they got cause on you obviously)

No such thing as cause anymore.

Veldrin

Xer said:

You're putting far too much onus on the raider in an OOC sense @Veldrin. It just doesn't make sense RP wise to try and attack a city, and leave all innocents alone. In addition, there's a danger to raiders even if that person is just "sitting" there. You can't say that the presence of an extra body is meaningless. Say you enter a room with a lone monk. He's not doing anything so you don't attack. Then some other defender comes in, prones you, and then that monk executes a BBT and kills you.

By the time we can retaliate according to how you would prefer raids to go, it's too late for the raiders (which of course I realize, is something you would prefer), but when such actions are just plain silly in a RP sense (i.e. you should have just killed all enemy citizens if you're raiding), you're taking things too far.

Obvious novices are one thing. Higher leveled, older monks who have been around for longer don't have that same standing.

I'm not putting enough onus on them, far as I'm concerned raiding should only be done when it's directly involving an event of some kind. Raiders are assaulting the main site of whatever faction they are raiding with 5-10 persons, in the case of Ashtan, Shallam, Hashan, Cyrene and Mhaldor you have countless of nameless denizen citizens and Eleusis also got a bunch, sure some of them might be cowards, but in the term of guards they should all be storming them at once the moment they hear of enemies being inside the city (be it a city loyal that spots them or a player calling for help). It simply shouldn't be possible to attack a city that way in a normal day to day manner. The only reason they don't is mechanics, which is the same with the PK rules.

Cooper

Please, Veldrin, just quit Shallam entirely. Your opinions and ideas are 99% your own and not backed by the immense majority of the game and Shallam. You bring Shallam down with your opinions and actions, and it would be a much better place without you.

Sohl

I'm not sure where this idea that these changes will force PK on people who don't want to get involved in it is coming from. The same way people avoided PK before apply exactly the same way now.

Sena

In the non-defending monk scenario, I'd possibly consider the monk to be assisting even if he doesn't take any direct action aside from following the defence group, since the threat of just being there makes a difference (assuming he isn't low might or otherwise an obvious non-threat). Consider the extreme example of 10 people in the defence group, with only 2 actively participating in defence while the other 8 are just following them and not assisting. Those 2 defenders are in a much better position to defend than they would be if they were alone, because the raiders will be more cautious of the larger group. The raiders can't know that the other 8 aren't going to defend at all (and in some cases won't even know that they aren't currently defending).

And with anonymous ranged attacks, you don't know for certain who's attacking and who isn't. Even if the raiders do have a few monks, it's not even close to practical for them to use sapience on every potential defender to make sure they're actually attacking. For that reason, it's entirely reasonable to think the monk in the defence group might be the monk that's attacking you, and treat him as a threat.

Veldrin said:

Raiders are assaulting the main site of whatever faction they are raiding with 5-10 persons, in the case of Ashtan, Shallam, Hashan, Cyrene and Mhaldor you have countless of nameless denizen citizens and Eleusis also got a bunch, sure some of them might be cowards, but in the term of guards they should all be storming them at once the moment they hear of enemies being inside the city (be it a city loyal that spots them or a player calling for help). It simply shouldn't be possible to attack a city that way in a normal day to day manner. The only reason they don't is mechanics, which is the same with the PK rules.

I agree with that, it's pretty unrealistic that an entire city with thousands of people is being invaded, and there are only a handful of defenders and most of the guards do nothing. Raiding should realistically be orders of magnitude harder than it is. None of that has anything to do with PK rules though.

Veldrin

Sena said:

Veldrin said:

Raiders are assaulting the main site of whatever faction they are raiding with 5-10 persons, in the case of Ashtan, Shallam, Hashan, Cyrene and Mhaldor you have countless of nameless denizen citizens and Eleusis also got a bunch, sure some of them might be cowards, but in the term of guards they should all be storming them at once the moment they hear of enemies being inside the city (be it a city loyal that spots them or a player calling for help). It simply shouldn't be possible to attack a city that way in a normal day to day manner. The only reason they don't is mechanics, which is the same with the PK rules.

I agree with that, it's pretty unrealistic that an entire city with thousands of people is being invaded, and there are only a handful of defenders and most of the guards do nothing. Raiding should realistically be orders of magnitude harder than it is. None of that has anything to do with PK rules though.

No but what they are saying is that RP wise what the PK rules prevent is unrealistic and I'm likening it with the mechanics of city defense making absolutely no RP sense either, in both cases it's an OOC thing that prevents the RP scenario from playing out in a way that would make sense.

@Sohl nobody have actually said that they WILL be forced into PK situations, just that they can be much more easily. Before the rules prevented it, now they don't. And that's the issue.

Vasool

@Veldrin makes one plausible argument. From an RP perspective, it is kind of silly that when a group of powerful beings enter a city to raid it, the city guard doesn't rush to attack them, just the ones in the room/nearby.

Unfortunately, that's not how Achaea works, V, sorry. My advice, man up and accept you're not playing this fantasized version of Achaea, and instead you're playing IRE's version. 

AND you're in an aligned faction...

AND you're the minister of security...

AND after looking at your honours I'm a bit confused. Your character seems to have stormed some of the depths of the most dangerous places, looking to take the fight to the most dangerous villains in the game. It would seem, based on your honours, that you're the type that likes to "bring the fight to others." Yet you unfairly judge raiders when they bring the fight to you? I mean, you're the one that brought up the RP perspective of it. Just seems that you're being a bit ridiculous.

Nadiel

Delphinus said:

@Nadiel: The Shallam versus Ashtan conflict appears to be going just fine, and even thriving, for lack of an extermination-style mechanic. It does this via strength of character and compelling storylines.

I agree that Oakstone would no longer have a purpose, but ideally, that would get the same treatment.

I guess the comparison I was drawing was one of threat. I'm willing to admit that I do not know, and have no way of knowing, the intricacies of the Nature faction's roleplay. I hope I can be forgiven, then, for not understanding how the threatening of Nature could be created through roleplay alone. From my (admittedly very limited) perspective, the role of extermination in the Nature conflict scenarios is akin to hunting, enslaved NPCs, and contracts with beings from the Chaos plane in Shallam's conflicts. I don't think the Shallam/Ashtan conflict is 100% free of game mechanics.

Jarrod

I also think it's silly that you can't tell half the soldiers in your home city (the NPCs) that it's time to attack and take them with you into the enemy city.

See how it works both ways?

This has happened before during events, and those NPCs absolutely crushed. The two events being the Mhaldor/Ashtan forge event where the army of knights killed a pile of Ashtani, and the Ashtan/Shallam event where the Merovinogian was released and rampaged for a few minutes before getting called out of the city by Babel.

Delphinus

Sena said:

I agree with that, it's pretty unrealistic that an entire city with thousands of people is being invaded, and there are only a handful of defenders and most of the guards do nothing. Raiding should realistically be orders of magnitude harder than it is. None of that has anything to do with PK rules though.

Agreed. But I'll also note that Achaea's mechanics (locating and sensing presences, fast-travel) often skew things in favour of finding and uprooting enemy presences.

@Nadiel: There's a substantial difference, but this isn't really the place to get into it.

Veldrin

@Vasool

I'm a PvE guy, not a PvP guy, least with PvE stuff I can trust there's an amount of restraint in what happens because it's defined by the game mechanics. The PvP guys have long ago proven themselves not worthy of any such trust. Sure you can change simplified PK to 'You're only allowed to do any PK at all if it's coming after a satisfying RP session for all parties and makes sense in that context' to fix that problem, but that'll never happen.

And the fact that I, the player, is against PvP stuff because I find it more repulsive and moronic than anything else that's ever been thought up by mankind, doesn't mean my character doesn't defend his city does it? The fact I'm having my character participate in it at all should say quite a bit I'd think.

While my character might think that Ashtani and Mhaldorians are not worth any form for acknowledgement, it doesn't mean that I as the player thinks the same about their players right? Heck I'm talking with players of Ashtani and Mhaldorian characters in this thread.

Cahin

worldburn is pvp

Veldrin

Yes so? It's the fastest way to end something that's also pvp, boring and would otherwise last much longer?

Lucine

I don't know of any person who is in a forestal org that wouldn't want a change to the exterm conflict.  Now, I'm not saying we have to get rid of it entirely, but if the only thing that the nature organization has to keep it going is exterms and holocausts all the time?  Then it probably isn't worth keeping.  I also don't believe that if people weren't able to exterm that there would be no conflict in nature.  It just would have to find a different avenue. 

As it is, it's my hope that there will be a change that, while keeping exterms in some form, makes it so that we don't end up sitting in a grove for the next five days because someone exterms and runs away.  Recently, though, things have been more toned down, and for that, I am appreciative.

Zeon

good Nature conflict should come in the form of events (Shala-Khulia event), or normal conflict (skirmishes/shrines wars/raiding) after other factions do some harm to Nature. The present system where any 18 year old with a single transcendent skill can roam around the forests doing massive damage to a force that is far stronger than any mortal, forcing an entire faction of warriors to defend is just wrong.

Zeon

This is pretty off topic though, and I'm not sure how I feel about derailing this otherwise lovely thread, with talk of ghillie suits and broken game mechanics.

Tagg

good conflict...

SK event...

does not compute

Sherazad

@Veldrin: I'm curious what's the IC difference between PvP and PvE.

Veldrin

Sherazad said:

@Veldrin: I'm curious what's the IC difference between PvP and PvE.

There isn't any IC wise? I'm failing to see what it has got to do with anything. The overall problem clearly is an OOC issue in that some of the playerbase just doesn't like PvP and only participates in it because of the RP and those who do enjoy PvP are asshats OOCly for forcing it onto people who doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

Aerek

We get it, dude, you don't like PK. You can stop saying it over and over.

Melodie

Speaking as someone who generally does not enjoy PVP in almost any form, @Veldrin, I can't really agree with you.

You bring up some points, but a lot of it is either mostly possibilities that may happen (and if they do, they should be punished for it), or things that have happened to you, in which case I can't comment terribly much on.

Now, take this as you will, being as I'm from Cyrene - but since my return to Achaea late last September, I've been more involved with the conflict side of things than I ever had in years. This includes defending Cyrene several, several times, sometimes for hours, and even defending Shallam a handful of times, something my character has never done until recently. All that said, I've never once been ganked outside of these raids for no reason.

I can think of a couple of times where I was attacked outside with no "cause", but they had defined RP reasons behind them, such as Hirst pitting me when Amunet was getting rid of the people in the area after Flair was "fixed". It made perfect sense to me to have such done, and I had absolutely no problem, on an OOC level, with it, even if there was nothing I did to grant this glorious cause.

Moral of the story, as long as people are reasonable, these rules will work out just fine. I think it's a wonderful step in the right direction - if someone if going to have a reason to attack me, like Hirst pitting me, or Rakon slashing at me, or whatever else, then bring it. Maybe for once, I can start fighting back.

I think you need to have a little more faith and let the playerbase have a chance to prove themselves. If there's asshats, fine, they get taken care of. But this step is good for the overall game - Achaea is not meant to be WoW. where you pick if you play in a PvE or PvP server. This is Achaea, where the things you do have consequences, for good or for ill. If you don't wish to get involved, then best to stay out of positions (such as Minister of Security for an aligned faction) that require your participation.

Zeon

I'd argue that PvP is an essential part of the immersive world that is Achaea. It wouldn't be a realistic fictional (how ironic) world if there weren't fighting between players.

You don't need to dedicate your character's life to it and you aren't forced to take part in it, though avoiding it completely should be incredibly difficult. (Go to and island and sit there forever. Don't join a City/House/etc).

It's like playing a shooter and wanting to get through the levels without firing a gun, sure it's do-able, and the world allows for it, but the world certainly wasn't made for that kind of play style.

Cooper

Veldrin, you REALLY need to remove yourself from the faction(s) in the game that "force" PvP on you.

No one is "forcing" anything on you, you are choosing to participate. 99% of the time you qq or hide off plane/on a ship/in a bed when "forced" PvP comes to you anyway.