Change To Contracts / Marks

Strata

Eld said:

Lolwut. I wasn't making any argument one way or the other about your and Strata's perceptions of the assignment of contracts, just responding to your seemingly general statement about randomness. But perhaps where I thought you were waxing philosophical about much more interesting things than the allocation of contracts, you were actually making a claim about the specific implementation at hand; in that case, my apologies for the confusion.

We're not claiming anything about the implementation. These are all hypothesis made up from asking various marks and hearing that all of them have been active and none have received any contracts.

Jovolo

Ask for some official numbers, such as - @Makarios, how many contracts have been taken out since implementation for Quisalis and Ivory, and how many have gone to Jhui, Proficy, Santar and Xer? Is there a flaw in the mathematical distribition of contracts at the moment and if so, will it be rectified?

Shecks

I'm not going to pretend it matters, really.  90% of mark targets are marks, who are either going to hide on guards until they expire, or lame you while you're bashing or dueling, with or without a contract on them.  The only thing that this really affects are the 2-5% of contracts that are both legal and not on marks.

Nim

Eld said:

Shecks said:

Or it's random, and we're really, really unlucky.  One could argue that randomness is sortof mathematically flawed.

Rather, people's common sense interpretations of randomness are mathematically flawed.

Related, probably.

Jarrod

I think people are failing to realize that, most likely, single digit numbers of contracts have been put out for Quisalis and Ivory, and in Quisalis at least there are 43 contract-capable Mark members currently. The majority of the contracts completed under the new system were taken out before the change.

It's extremely likely that, if you are a Mark member, that you have not received a contract under the new system yet.

Edit: I accidentally'd letters.

Shecks

edit:  Oh nevermind, I keep forgetting about prior contracts.  

Katzchen

For the record, I've had two contracts given to me since the changes came in, one was withdrawn within a RL day, and the other given somewhere around the same time the first was withdrawn. I haven't seen either of them online since I received the contracts.

Unless I'm mistaken, I'm not actually Iakimen/Jhui/Xer/Santar. :P

Kross

I haven't gotten anything yet .

I closed all of mine/had one cancelled on me before the changes, so I don't get to make reputations happen.

Cathy

Kross said:

I haven't gotten anything yet .

I closed all of mine/had one cancelled on me before the changes, so I don't get to make reputations happen.

That's what you get for being a good mark. You should try slacking instead.

Jhui

What Jarrod said.

I haven't received a new contract under this system yet.

Makarios

Pretty much the above, yes. Very few contracts have been put out since implementation, the vast majority of reputation gains/losses have been due to previously held contracts.

Strata

This math makes sense. So now it's just a sociological thing. Prior to changes: "he/she looked at me funny" = hire Santar/Jhui twice. After changes: "damnit. i can't hire for no reason anymore."

Shecks

Jhui != Santar.

Nim

Makarios said:

Pretty much the above, yes. Very few contracts have been put out since implementation, the vast majority of reputation gains/losses have been due to previously held contracts.

I wonder if there are less contracts now as a result of the change, since reduced mark effectiveness was a concern, or if people just had a backlog of contracts.

Makarios

Contracts were slow pre change, as well. There really aren't that many ever active at a time, even if you include all the ones that are on inactive people.

Strata

Shecks said:

Jhui != Santar.

Was re: Quisalis/Ivory. The / was the separator in that context, not meant to imply "aka". Much like your != implies "is not" or "not equal", which is common among many languages... however:

In the context, it is assumed that the majority of readers are using mudlet.

Lua provides the following relational operators:

    <   >   <=  >=  ==  ~=

Xith

I think Strata was written in Lua.

Achilles

Makarios said:

Contracts were slow pre change, as well. There really aren't that many ever active at a time, even if you include all the ones that are on inactive people.

Would it make sense pre-existing contracts to be cancelled by the Mark?  Are those contracts being held against them in reputation (and will they be held against them in 30 some odd days when they expire)?  

Shecks

@Achilles Yes, and yes.

Antonius

The only contracts I still have are those taken out by the Order, the one personal contract I had disappeared even though there was still 70+ Achaean days left on it. I assume the personal ones were removed because they don't have reasons attached, but Order ones were left behind because there's only ever one reason: it came from a writ.

Makarios

A lot of old contracts remained. Contracts you had on people who were pretty much inactive got removed so as not to penalise you for those.

Antidas

I've gotten four contracts under the new system so far. Three of them are on the same veiled person who I probably wouldn't have much of a chance of killing even if he -didn't- have a veil, unfortunately. 

Bluef

Antidas said:

I've gotten four contracts under the new system so far. Three of them are on the same veiled person who I probably wouldn't have much of a chance of killing even if he -didn't- have a veil, unfortunately. 

So basically, spend 2,000 credits on a veil and you can be above IC repercussions. I might liquidate some less vital artefacts and try this. Might as well finally live up to Bluef's terrible reputation since hiring seems to be as useful in these cases as it was before the changes were implemented.  

Dunn

Fortunately there are Marks with veils.

Cough.

Shecks

Bluef said:

Antidas said:

I've gotten four contracts under the new system so far. Three of them are on the same veiled person who I probably wouldn't have much of a chance of killing even if he -didn't- have a veil, unfortunately. 

So basically, spend 2,000 credits on a veil and you can be above IC repercussions. I might liquidate some less vital artefacts and try this. Might as well finally live up to Bluef's terrible reputation since hiring seems to be as useful in these cases as it was before the changes were implemented.  

If legitimate IC repercussion was how marks were really used, there would be significantly less veils in the world.

Zeon

What's up with all these marks complaining about veils? Mark for like 6 rl years and the target owning a veil has -never- been a deciding factor in whether or not I was able to complete a contract.

Xith said:

I think Strata was written in Brainfuck.

ftfy

Anedhel

Edit: Nvm. Was going to post something snarky, but.

Would it be impractical to implement something not unlike the current combat rankings system so that marks can fight each other in arenas and raise their rank that way, in addition to the fulfilling-your-contracts thing? Maybe only in duel to the deaths, or something, because being a Mark is (supposed to be) dangerous.

Zeon

Then the rankings wouldn't tell us who the best mark is... only who is the best arena dueler? Contracts are rare compared to general purpose pk. Any sort of general means of raising rank that just involves killing other marks is going to happen way more than actual contracts, which means your ranking will become primarily the number of other marks you've slain and not how many contracts you've finished successfully.

Eld

Anedhel said:

Edit: Nvm. Was going to post something snarky, but.

Would it be impractical to implement something not unlike the current combat rankings system so that marks can fight each other in arenas and raise their rank that way, in addition to the fulfilling-your-contracts thing? Maybe only in duel to the deaths, or something, because being a Mark is (supposed to be) dangerous.

Don't know about impractical, but fairly pointless, imo. As has been pointed out, mark rep should be based on effectiveness at completing contracts, not ability to win 1v1 duels under controlled conditions.

Anedhel

Fair enough, although it kind of seems a bit luck-of-the-draw at the moment. If mark X gets five contracts, all on artied, hide-in-City types, and mark Y gets five contracts, all on midbies, that also doesn't tell you who the best mark is, but I guess there's no way to work that out, probably.

ETA: How quickly you get fulfill a contract doesn't affect your rep at the moment, does it?