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Contracts
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I think people should be allowed to choose their Champion or Assassin again. Some people actively get a reputation for either being a good mark or a bad mark. If somebody is known for getting the job done, will people not prefer that over it getting selected for them?
I think it would be a good middle ground to allow the option of letting the organization select a mark. Maybe sweeten the pot a bit, such as by lowering the price for using this option. Some people don't know about marks or maybe would be fine for a random choice.
But there are people that establish a working relationship with a particular mark, and I think that makes the most sense for most people.
This devolves into the old meaningless system where being a Mark has no value to it, apart from the small handful of players who complete contracts.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
@Jarrod : I'd say to me that is less meaningless than having my contract assigned to a person who either has no chance of completing it or chooses not to.
That's a fault of the Mark Org for employing ineffective Marks (which they'll eventually removed due to poor performance).
Your suggestion is to remove the Mark Orgs as a thing, and instead just have individuals you pay to kill.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
@Jarrod : I never said remove Mark Orgs. I said go to the old system with the player having the prerogative to use the new system if that player so chooses.
To be completely honest, it's people like me, that is fairly helpless non-comms, that hire on people like you, that is prolific combatants and thieves. This is kinda starting to sound like that part in the Landmarks discussion where you were trying to advance a certain argument, then Lisbethae as a major shopkeeper came in and demonstrated how your line of thinking would make it easier for you to rob even really vigilant shopkeepers. Your line of thinking was scrapped at once. Similarly, helpless non-comms should have more say in how Mark Orgs work than people that prey on them. I don't imagine you'll need to hire 1/10th of the times that i do.
If you change to your system, the Mark orgs are as good as useless, because it doesn't matter that they exist, just that you can hire an individual. And yes, the Mark system will inherently promote people who can kill the prolific combatants and thieves, otherwise they will slowly lose points until those who can't kill them will get demoted. Heads up, I think @Terra was one of the only people who ever completed a contract on me before the system got changed (she was 1-1 for them, I killed her when she was afk, she killed me when I was), every other contract I can remember I cancelled. The old system is actually much better for me because it means I can easily know who will have contracts on me and cancel them.
Re: Landmarking, you literally have no idea what you're talking about. Lisbethae's point was that novices would walk into shops potentially on accident, which should not have been able to be forced (and was fixed to not be able to be forced), and something I could never have used. My line of thinking was never scrapped, not sure what you're even talking about here.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Your line of thinking was allow people to walk to people from their cities in shops. She demonstrated how this would help you rob shops. @Tecton almost immediately announced people could no longer be walk-to'd while they're in stockrooms. Maybe you don't remember that, but I do.
http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/2209/two-landmarks-suggestions/p3
I don't hire that much, but it's my only recourse if I get killed randomly or robbed. My point is, the system should be most amendable to the needs of the people it serves. Regardless of your claims of being immune to marks, I won't really comment on that because the system doesn't exist to hunt down Jarrod, it exists to hunt people down who do the things Jarrod does. Which is a helluva lot of people.
Are you honestly an idiot? Lisbethae was talking about citizens being able to walk to her. You're either suggesting I would use an alt to rob a shop, given I've robbed double-digit shops without doing that, or legitimately have no reading comprehension at all. As a non-citizen I couldn't walk to her regardless, please stop bringing up things you obviously have no ability to comment on.
The system is designed, currently, to boost those up with the highest capability for killing those who do things that get them hired on, while at the same time making the Mark organizations a relevant group. Your suggestion is to make it so that once again, anyone and everyone can be Mark with zero resposibility, and the Mark orgs mean absolutely nothing.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Like, I just want to know who got the contract. I don't even need to pick the assassin.
But oh well. Someday I hope to become an assassin. Dx *Hope*
She was talking about you hiring a person in her city, especially an alt, to help you rob a shop.
Yes, I am.
I'm also about 100x better at stealing than that assumption makes me out to be, because that method is incredibly slower than how I did things when I stole, and much more insecure.
You are uninformed and speaking with someone with RL years more experience with it than you, it's not a surprise you're completely out of your depth, you should just stop talking though, instead of making yourself sound worse.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Dude, shut the fuck up. Go talk to somebody that is your friend or who gives a damn. I am neither.
Always good for a laugh when people argue over a topic and then talk about how much they don't actually care about it.
If you don't like getting smacked down with reality, perhaps don't bring shit up that you have 0 idea about.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
You really just sound like a pathetic thug that's flailing all around with substandard language. I don't feel smacked down, more like you're bleeding on me with your idiocy.
You brought up an irrelevant point about something you don't know about by someone who doesn't know anything about it in an attempt to cast my points on the Mark system in a light to make it seem like my suggestions were purely for my own benefit.
You have no idea how things work, shut up and let the big boys talk.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
@Aalm had a fairly good point. The changes implemented highly favor the marks over the people actually hiring them - it makes it possible for newer marks to get into the business more easily, with the downside that there's no guarantee, at any level, that a contract will actually be fulfilled. The previous system on the other hand favored the one hiring the mark, by letting them choose exactly which mark they'd like to hire.
I disagree, though, that the new system is irredeemable.
Its problems can probably be broken down into:
Problem 1 can be handled by a number of means, generally involving activity. Problem 2 might be solved by, instead of directly giving someone a contract right as soon as it's bought, queueing it and waiting until the target is sufficiently online, and picking from marks that are also around at the same time.
Problem 3 is a bit more complex, but can probably be solved in the long term by using payment amount as a means of letting the buyer pick how good of a mark they want, preferably in some transparent way so they know what they're getting. This is more of a sales problem than anything else, really, and as long as the mark organization is now handled by automated systems, it's on the admins of the game to resolve it.
Of course, there might be other solutions (and other problems). However, falling into ad hominem attacks will likely just get this thread closed, as that seems to be the usual administrative approach lately, and then there wouldn't be a medium to discuss this issue at all.
I think problem 3 is one of those things where any way you could restrict it would remove the variability, which imo is a good thing. I don't think there's a good way to split it up that prevents you from gaming the Mark system. It should eventually handle itself, where those who can't take out the top tier people will fall down and rank and only have shots at the lowest viability for contracts. This is a problem where (as a Mark member seeing contracts come in) there simply aren't enough contracts being put out regularly to quickly push the system to that end-game. I don't think there have ever been a huge amount of contracts, but I'd guess there's probably a few less now than there were before the change (due to people not wanting to use the new system).
I think the problem 2 solution has some merit for sure, something that could possibly be monitored and tied in with the random-delay before offering the contract to the first person (from my idea combined with Terra's). During that 12-24 hour delay, if the target is online, pull all Marks that are online at the same time in the Org it was hired to and weight them higher in terms of contract viability. My only concern with this is it might lead to people staying online on ships 24/7, even when not around, to increase their odds of receiving contracts. Ideally this wouldn't happen, but if you give a known way for people to game a system eventually someone is going to do it.
I'm all for constructive discussion, but nobodies telling me that my suggestions are purely for my own benefit need to get the fuck out, because they clearly don't know me.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
The whole point behind transmog/cage is that its a reincarnation, not a death. Its a class perk just like soul rezzes for an entire faction and beckon and blackwind and countless other things. If you let contracts complete on mog/cage, you are destroying the entire purpose of the skill. There are ways around these defenses (at least for transmogrification)
While a forestal can soul rezz themselves, their death would still count for the contract. As mentioned above, it gives a free "do-over" to necromancers and occultists. You already have the perk of not losing any xp, making it a better burst (which matters more due to the limited number of starbursts you can have now too), so I don't think it's too much to ask for transmog/cage to have a deathsight and count towards contracts to level the playing field.
And I'm also pretty sure soulcage at least can't be bypassed in any way, as I've seen it trigger on a behead, which would bypass starbursts.
I think that a more stringent definition of 'active' would lead to a far greater completion rate of contracts. I got five or so in a two week period, completed them all and haven't seen a contract since. It has been a couple of months. Looking at the rankings list, though, there are people on there that I haven't seen fight in any capacity for months, but log on and remain as Marks.
TLDR redefine 'active' to something actually active.
Dunn said:
We did this recently (ANNOUNCE #4128), we're also in the process of adding some additional weighting to the mark selection process (taking into account things like similar organisations, online time similarities etc.)
We're also going to re-introduce the natural ranking decay on a smaller scale.
I happen to know the system is being used and there are multiple contracts out. I think the problem really is the people getting the contracts are 1 not active enough to have gotten them or 2 not capable of fulfilling the contracts that they get. I know of 18 contracts right now that are just not getting filled. Something has got to change because otherwise it's just a waste of gold every time you hire.
With the decay reintroduced, as well as better weighting, it should separate the wheat from the chaff in pretty short order. Ineffectual marks are weeded out, increasing the rate at which contracts are completed.
Something's up with the contracts. I got a contract on someone who was unranked, and the contract was already at 13 days.
So confused.
I think somebody quit the mark, so their contracts probably just got redistributed to other marks.
Thanks @Iakimen