Change To Contracts / Marks

Kayeil

I can see the validity of both arguments as to why it should and shouldn't be allowed to hire a Mark that is an enemy, but I'm leaning more toward being against getting a Mark that is an enemy of my org. I've hired a wide array of Marks in the past for org business, but always avoided hiring one that was an enemy.

Also, if a Mark can't be hired on someone they share an org with, can they be hired on someone in a city they are allied to?

Katzchen

Really not looking forward to a full list of contracts I can't get on at the same time as to even challenge. And odds of that are pretty high since I can only really play regular oceanic times now.

Shecks

@Katzchen I'm pretty sure it only hires you if you're logged on, and on the same plane.  So theoretically they should play around the same time as you - ish.

Zeon

Marks that fail to kill their targets will eventually stop getting contracts due to the ranking system. If anything this fixes the problem and makes it so the only people that can complete contracts stay mark, whereas before those people could keep mark status and collect easy contracts on occassion.

Makarios

Few points to consider here.

The old mark system had the same five people being hired across the game for pretty much 95% of contracts. You were looking at a "die, hire x2, get xp". While this makes some sense (you'd obviously want to get the best person for the job if possible), its also not particularly engaging and turns the mark orgs into an exclusive club.

If you fail contracts, you take significant reputation hits. You also lose reputation (down to a capped amount) every game year, so if you're failing consistently and not taking contracts, there's going to come a point when you're not going to be getting any. Admittedly you'll have to be pretty terrible to hit that final point of no contracts going to you.

I can definitely see wanting some more restrictions for Ivory Mark people though. Quisalis won't be getting any. We don't really want to let people blanket exclude orgs (the Marks aren't tied to a city and I doubt they ever will be, but doing something for champions to have some more flexability there is probably a good idea).

Its all still very in the formative stages, so no need to panic about this being the final way it'll work.

Antonius

Jarrod said:

You're not doing jobs for your enemies. You're doing jobs for the Ivory Mark or the Quisalis Mark. Each of those orgs has implications. Ideally, they would put something in to make Ivory slightly different, or appeal more to lower might/ranked people. Cost less but alerts the target someone is out to get them sort of thing. If Targossas doesn't support the Quisalis money for dead people philosophy, then they shouldn't have Quisalis Marks (they do).

Again, stop thinking about it as assisting your enemies. Start thinking about it as assisting the Ivory Mark, an organization that champions those who cannot fight for themselves in a situation.

I think the problem is you believe there's a difference between the two situations, and that's not really the case. From a roleplay standpoint, Targossian Marks need to have a reasonable expectation that the Ivory Mark is making reasonable decisions - that won't conflict with their personal beliefs - about who requires, and is deserving of, championing. That's really not the case, since from a necessary mechanics standpoint the Ivory Mark doesn't have any restrictions other than "Does this person have the gold?"

Citizens of Targossas are expected to dedicate themselves to the Bloodsworn above all else, follow their teachings alone, and apply knowledge of those teachings and their own common sense to inform their decisions. They definitely don't defer to an unaffiliated organisation when it comes to deciding who they can or can't accept contracts on or from, or any other matter.

Targossians obviously need access to the Mark system, but we need access to a Mark system that doesn't demand we piss away what's already been established for the city.

Jarrod said:

The city-mate only contracts is exactly what this change was put in to stop. Why start suggestions at reverting the biggest part of the change?

That seems to be contradicted by Makarios' post stating that the intention was to stop the same few people being hired for almost all contracts. If Targossian Marks could say "I will only accept contracts from Targossians" that doesn't mean that all Targossians who attempt to hire will end up with a Targossian Mark, unless every single Mark indicated that they'd only take contracts from their city mates (this seems incredibly unlikely to happen). That means it's only half a fix, but it might be enough of a compromise that it would be workable.

---

My other concern is how this new Mark system interacts with writs. HELP WRITS doesn't appear to have been updated (possibly ever), and still lists the old REQUEST <person> AS CHAMPION FOR <target> FOR ORDER syntax, but I have no idea if that's actually correct now. I don't think it's that uncommon for Orders to have some kind of Champion position, appointing a single person who is responsible for handling most, if not all, contracts from writs. That's definitely been the case in the two Orders I've been a member of (Pentharian's and Aurora's).

The only way for that to continue to work is to ignore the Mark system entirely, and simply treat the existence of an Order writ as suitable roleplay justification to attack the target. That, however, seems like something the administration aren't going to allow.

Silas

I don't agree with the assumption that assassins should be willing to kill whoever and whenever. 'Assassin' is a character identity, but it doesn't automatically turn you into somebody with no standards or integrity. Saying the mark orgs shouldn't be affiliated with any city doesn't change the fact that people in different cities can and should be able to play their characters as assassins.

Limiting certain cities to only one or the other of the mark orgs, when both "orgs" exist as mere flavour text to assist in character development, seems unnecessarily stifling. There's no IC reason why you couldn't be a Targossian assassin, for instance, but that would be impossible from a mechanics standpoint, since there's only one way to be recognised as an assassin, and only one source of assassination contracts - the Quisalis Mark.

I'm not really a fan of mechanics that get in the way of character development, and see no reason why the admins couldn't just include something to broaden the availability of these systems to everybody.

Santar

I just looked over both mark lists in full. There's roughly 81 total mark members. Out of that list, I counted 41 that haven't touched a fight in at least the last RL month or are generally incompetent/useless.

I was being nice when I made that count, too. If I wanted to be a jerk, probably could've raised that number to 75%.

Sucks for the people that are hiring that all their contracts are going to get eaten up by that 50-75% of marks. Hope the system balances out.

For me personally, it's a big hit, because I pretty much got any and all contracts I wanted before. Where now I'm going to be getting a very small percentage of that.

Also, lol'd:

(Argent Ward): Silas says, "I'm going to stubbornly refuse to quit mark."

(Argent Ward): Silas says, "And keep the honours, and keep wasting people's 

contracts."

(Argent Ward): Silas says, "That's 5k gold those people will never see again."

Silas

I'm going to be a goldsink and singlehandedly fix the credit market.

Shecks

If some well-known marks keep bringing well-known teamers to settle contracts, I'm sure the contract distribution will soon be back to where it was before.

Dunn

This is exciting as balls.

Cynlael

Shecks said:

If some well-known marks keep bringing well-known teamers to settle contracts, I'm sure the contract distribution will soon be back to where it was before.

It's okay, buddy. One day you might get to be a well known mark, too. Hang in there!


So hard to type that with a straight face

Synbios

Silas said:

I'm going to be a goldsink and singlehandedly fix the credit market.

@Silas - the hero that the Achaean Credit Market deserves.

Shecks

Dunn said:

This is exciting as balls.

Actually yeah - There has not been enough happiness expressed, I think.  For me personally, I love this change.  I can see where a few people wouldn't like some things, but some of those things, at least, were changed intentionally.  And as was said, we're looking at a few changes down the line.

Bluef

Sena said:

Dji said:

Sounds interesting, but with the contracts handed out at random, what's to stop a mark getting a contract on a friend and then just not bothering to try to complete it?

It's not like no one in Achaea is friends with someone in a different city.

That was already possible before, you just had to be proactive about it and not be well known to the hirer.

As it is, it looks like the only real deterrent is the reputation loss. I'm not sure how significant that is.

Edit: Jarrod answered this.

Jarrod said:

If you make a habit of ignoring contracts, you'll lose reputation and get progressively fewer contracts.

Contrarily, if you're exceptionally proactive about contracts, you can get a high rank and will get more contracts. This means that you could potentially have a higher chance of getting a friends' contract, and effectively use your reputation to pardon them. You'll still be penalized, but we don't know how weighty that is.

Shecks

They really, really, need to show who hired, in game.  It's entirely possible for people to just anonymously hire marks a thousand times in a row, without cause, with zero consequence.

Jovolo

What's the message you get when you get killed by a Mark for a contract? 

Makarios

The messages for contract failure/fulfillment are the same as previously, just with an appended reason for the death.

Jovolo

So you get the "This assassination was paid for by hirer" message? Surely that makes it not anonymous.

Shecks

Apparently it was a bug, caused by contracts from before the change not having a reason supplied.  All good now.  I thought that was supposed to be how it worked... which would be aweful.

Antonius

Shecks said:

They really, really, need to show who hired, in game.  It's entirely possible for people to just anonymously hire marks a thousand times in a row, without cause, with zero consequence.

I'm pretty sure that:
1. You can only have one contract per person at a time.
2. You can only have a total of five contracts at any one time.
3. You find out who hired on you when the contract is resolved.

Also, minimum cost of a contract is 5k, so "a thousand times" would be 5 million gold. Could they hire on you a lot? Well, I suppose so, but if they don't have valid reasons those are going to be pretty clear if the admin get involved.

Strata

Silas said:

Offshoots of the Quisalis mark in the same sense would be nice.

ETA: If the local chapters specifically distanced themselves from their parent organisations, naturally.

...

I don't understand what you're asking for. On one hand, you want "openness" in the Ivory Mark aka cut out the middlemen because of the possible conflicts of interest. Then @Feral mentions a really good idea to make Ivory Mark "local chapter"-based. Since, from what I'm reading, your RP has issues with the new mark system, you are asking for Ivory Mark to essentially be no different than the entire system pre-changes. And THEN, on the other hand, you ask for something similar for Quisalis - the same organization that presents a conflict with your RP?!?!

The only thing that makes sense to me out of this is, because you all don't have houses yet, you think you can present your victim cards and somehow have your cake and eat it too. It's mindblowing.

Sobriquet

As someone who tried hard to differentiate between the two Mark factions (admittedly a few years ago now) I'm not keen on this change essentially lumping them even further into bed with each other. I know @Makarios has said other changes are coming for the Ivory, so we'll see how that goes down.

I loved being Ivory back when I could actually fight and had a great time playing the Champion the way I saw it. I wasn't in it for the xp increase (which marks had at the time) or to be able go on random fighting trips, but more to actually try and play the -role- of a Champion and being able to pick WHY i took contracts, not just on who. I was in the minority though and Marks became a way of people saying they were up for a fight in a time when the PK rule book was bigger and more ambiguous than The Bible.

Having 80 odd current Marks, and only 4 or 5 people being hired regularly across the board,  people are going to the top notch fighters such as @Santar, @Jhui, @Rangor etc because they know they will get the job done. Quite frankly, what's wrong with that?  Their reputation has been earned IG by fighting, death sights and word of mouth, not by another fixed game mechanic which is now in place. Albeit, these guys will still be at the top of that chain. 

Mark was one of the major reasons I joined Achaea at the start and even though I'd never claim to be top tier fighter at any moment in my game time, I loved playing it, and it's got the potential to be amazing on the RP front. But please, don't take away the opportunity for someone to be Mark for their own reasons, and have to maintain that by being constantly in combat. 

Strata

Santar said:

I just looked over both mark lists in full. There's roughly 81 total mark members. Out of that list, I counted 41 that haven't touched a fight in at least the last RL month or are generally incompetent/useless.

I was being nice when I made that count, too. If I wanted to be a jerk, probably could've raised that number to 75%.

Sucks for the people that are hiring that all their contracts are going to get eaten up by that 50-75% of marks. Hope the system balances out.

For me personally, it's a big hit, because I pretty much got any and all contracts I wanted before. Where now I'm going to be getting a very small percentage of that.

Also, lol'd:

(Argent Ward): Silas says, "I'm going to stubbornly refuse to quit mark."

(Argent Ward): Silas says, "And keep the honours, and keep wasting people's 

contracts."

(Argent Ward): Silas says, "That's 5k gold those people will never see again."

I think the system will balance that out for sure. Though what you're saying will likely be the way things are for a while until that happens.

And for situations like your paste, there should be a special honors line for the lowest 25% that says something like "He/She is only in the Ivory/Quisalis Mark for the honors line." 

Jarrod

@Silas the funny the is, nothing has changed in what this means for Targ. You're still supporting an org that employs those people or you're not. You're no longer allowed to glaze over the fact by not thinking about, but that was the case in the past and that's the case now.


Edit: You can say you don't support how the Quisalis spends money. It's pretty laughable when 75% of Targ's contracts go to Quisalis though. You can also say you don't support funding enemies, when the other 25% of the contracts fund an organization that (rightly) employs Jhui. Either way, you have no leg to stand on. There were no changes made to what it means to hire a Mark from either org, you're just complaining because what it means is obvious now.

Bluef

It would be nice if people who purposefully didn't fulfill contracts not only took a reputation hit but as they neared the bottom tiers came closer and closer to that final rank where another failed contract simply ended in them being cast out of the system all together and unable to rejoin for a specific amount of time. 

Jules

This is a great change, and really, I think it addresses the most glaring kind of arpee pitfalls.  I have no problem with an enemy "taking out" another enemy through an anonymous contract.  Not knowing absolves me of all responsibility, just like in the real world :P  In all seriousness, I do think it's the best way to get things done here.  Like Makarios said, they're willing to tweak, but the bones of it look sound because they take typical player behavior and imbalances in which orgs have the most skilled Marks into account.  Mark never had a stellar RP aspect anyway, and the bits it *did* have were directly counter-productive to Mark being a viable tool of retribution for most.  

Silas

Jarrod said:

@Silas the funny the is, nothing has changed in what this means for Targ. You're still supporting an org that employs those people or you're not. You're no longer allowed to glaze over the fact by not thinking about, but that was the case in the past and that's the case now.


Edit: You can say you don't support how the Quisalis spends money. It's pretty laughable when 75% of Targ's contracts go to Quisalis though. You can also say you don't support funding enemies, when the other 25% of the contracts fund an organization that (rightly) employs Jhui. Either way, you have no leg to stand on. There were no changes made to what it means to hire a Mark from either org, you're just complaining because what it means is obvious now.

You're dumb.

Targossas's most active mark is was (edit: lol) Quisalis, yes, but this discussion was ongoing in Targ before these changes happened because of that, with ideas on how to get around the weird pseudo-RP of the Mark orgs already being proposed. The Ivory Mark employing Jhui really has no bearing on Targossians being in the Ivory Mark, because he's paid only by the contracts he fills, the gold from which comes directly from the people that hire him. The orgs themselves take a cut of the hiring fee, though, which is why it's problematic for Targossas to have Quisalis Marks, an issue brought into focus by Santar being Quisalis and there being no IC reason why he (and others in Targossas who prefer the RP of assassin vs champion) should have to be champions rather than assassins.

If you still don't understand the difference, then, like Achimrst, you can assume I'm not talking to you and we'll both be the happier.

Jarrod

There's a difference between being an assassin and being a Quisalis Assassin.

If you don't understand the difference, then you'll never be happy with Mark changes and you should quit while you're behind.

Edit: Also lol'd at is/was change.

Silas

I fully agree that there's a difference between being an assassin and being a Quisalis Assassin. My point thus far regarding that has been that I find mechanical restrictions that stop people being able to be hired as assassins, with the only org that offers assassination contracts being the Quisalis Mark, pretty lame. But that's only really tangential to the underlying issues caused by this change.