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Comments
None of this is an admin stance, just some personal views given the topic is one that I have a vested interest in.
If you do find yourself in a position where you feel you have no recourse but to issue, I would probably work under the assumption that most reasonable IC resolution attempts would go something like:
- Do not immediately threaten to issue. This makes you look petulant and will almost immediately result in your issue being dismissed out of hand.
- Ask why you were killed.
- If the reason sucks, determine whether it was a misunderstanding. If it was, or the person doesn't do this overly often (to you), hire or let it go (with appropriate snark, if you're classy). Its worth noting we keep a record of all hire reasons, so you never really need to worry about there not being a clear line of evidence that you are trying to resolve the problems yourself if it does efventually come down to issues.
- If you don't believe a mark will have a good shot at killing said person (maybe they're some kind of badass or just a coward - both tend to lend themselves to this problem), rangle up the nastiest bunch of people in your city to regale with the story of your tragic death to said fiend. I'm sure just about everyone has a few people willing to go crack some skulls given a reasonable justification. (Cyrene may be out of luck, alas. Polite people do not good skullcrackers make.) This obviously has the issue that you're leaning towards a circular conflict, but if your killer is aware that you're going to set someone on him/her in retaliation, that's pretty cut and dry I'd imagine.
(Note: hire can always be replaced with go kill him/her yourself if you prefer and are able.)
Those are generally what springs to my mind at least when people talk about IC resolution. I'm sure people can get creative there. Maybe you could implicate the person politically. Engineer a situation where they're implicated for fraternising with the enemy, etc. There are far worse things to lose than some experience if you put your mind to taking revenge on someone in Achaea. Claiming credit for said revenge after the fact will likely be far more vindictively satisfying, as well. (It also makes you look awesome.)
Don't issue for a single offense. People make mistakes. They likely won't admit to this IC, and you should take any non blatently ooc responses in the role that they're supplied in.
Don't judge someone's actions against you by how they interact with others. Back and forths have a tendency to fester between people who pk against each other a lot, and you'll rarely get an unbiased account of someone by watching how they act against other people without knowing the full story.
Try not to allow your personal dislike for a person to colour your response. Probably the best thing you can do is ask yourself "would I issue if someone I generally get along with had done that to me?"
My personal opinion is that an issue should be your last attempt to resolve a problem with another player. If you have exhausted all other avenues of conflict resolution and they're repeatedly working against the spirit of the pk rules, issue. Its also smart to wait 24 hours first as well. Things tend to look much less issue worthy a day later once tempers have cooled.
Just some thoughts!
I can only assume from your suggestion that you do not defile/defend against defiling, since your suggestion is pretty farcical.
I think its worth digging up old announce;
Date: 12/19/2005 at 2:54
From: Maya, the Great Mother
To : Everyone
Subj: Shrine writs
I've just made a change to how shrine writs and witnessing works, so if
you're in a Divine Order or you enjoy passing the time by defiling
shrines, you'll want to pay close attention.
When you WITNESS SHRINE and obtain a writ now, instead of the writ going
directly to your Order, it will go into a list of writs you hold on
behalf of your Order. You can see these with the WRITS command, if you
have any.
While you hold a writ on behalf of your Order, you are allowed to attack
the person the writ is against. This allows you to defend a shrine
immediately when you find someone defiling it. If you'd prefer that your
Order call upon a mark member to handle the writ instead, you can WRIT
YIELD . If you do so, you can no longer attack that person.
Of course, what if you go to witness a shrine, gain a single writ
against the defiler, and find that the defiler has 10 friends with him
ready to jump in to 'defend' the defiler? To prevent this, HELP PKCAUSE
now has an addition under Section 4 for Defense, to state that if you
defile a shrine, you have initiated the conflict and are not eligible
for legit defense from retaliation for your act within a minute of the
writ being generated. If the writ holder goes to hunt down the defiler
later, though, and those 10 friends are with the defiler, they can
indeed defend. Hopefully that makes more sense in practice. :ph34r:
HELP WRITS and the writs section of HELP PKCAUSE have been amended to
reflect the changes.
In summary, if you witness a defiler now, you CAN initiate combat with
the defiler. If you liked it the old way where the Order hired a mark,
you can simply yield the writ and let it be done the old way. Let's see
how this works out!
Whether you're killing someone over and over instead of just the one time each writ allows (I think that is accurate anyway), attacking people beyond the 75 day hold date for the writ, or lying about holding a writ at all, you're being a jerk and having fun at someone else's expense. The questionable legality of such actions is difficult to even get into because those who defile can't see if anyone holds writs against them in the same way they can, at the very least, see bounties claimed.
I agree that it is also problematic that someone can hold a writ for nearly 75 IC days and then yield it for a Mark to finish the job. Yes, it's defiling. Yes, you should expect conflict to come from it. But for people who are hoping to dip their toes into the PK pool this way, it is a pretty stiff series of consequences.
[Edit: Morning brain. Typos. ]
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
Santar spoke earlier in the thread about easy ways to get into PK, and I definitely agree. If you're defiling in the present Achaean culture, you should expect to be get beat down pretty hard. Whether that's okay or not could be debated a good deal, but it is what it is nonetheless.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Edit: And if there are people in sartan Order doing that, should let one of us know. From what I see on logs when I check, pretty sure it isn't the case, though.
I'm not trying to boast here, just making a logical point, but I dropped like 75 shrines in the period of a few days a while back, by myself (almost every one of them on the mainland) and almost none of them were witnessed (I wanna say 2, maybe 3).
When defiling alone, it's pretty simple to avoid shrines being witnessed (assuming you don't leave them standing). When done with a group, it's virtually impossible for witnessers to show up on time.
So if writs are really that big of a deal for you, here are a few simple tips to avoid them:
1) Use bigger corpses
2) Block the route to the shrine (easily done with icewalls, gravehands, piety, etc)
3) Don't leave shrines standing (know how much essence you have before you start)
4) Bring friends (pretty easy to drop a shrine in a few seconds, and anyone can defile)
5) Drop a monolith / target indoor shrines.
6) lastly, if you can't handle writs on you or people showing up to defend shrines, and you (for some reason) can't do any of the above then don't defile.
[Edit: @Hasar - Yes, yes there is! It's not Sartan-related though. I've never experienced it myself, but my perception of others engaged in anti-Mhaldorian conflict has been that they exact quick and certain death rather quickly when someone holds a writ. ]
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
That being said, if you message Ashtan and go, "Okay, we've been tapped out and have stopped enjoying this" they will almost always stop, unless they have a real tangible goal to be doing what they are doing. They like to fight, which is why they start fights, but have almost always been reasonable. Mhaldor is less approachable in regards to this and that tends to be because they are pushing some overarching plot and are far more entrenched in the reason behind attacking than Ashtan. While they too enjoy combat, they are likely trying to start a war and continue pushing forward their group synergy they built up during the war with Eleusis. This means we have two highly volatile, well trained groups of people who enjoy fighting and almost all of our time is spent dealing with this.
You can say "Stop caring about shrines" all you want and it won't kick in for a long time for most of the people who are RP-serious about it. It's a mechanic we use for one reason, and is used against us for another reason. I know I am going to get attacked if I hit mindnet, walk into a room, or have a funny look on my face and I am near any aggressive groups, but for the average citizen, they can walk into or around your group, outside of the City or just near the shrine you are using to start a fight and get killed without being apart of the conflict, which to them feels illegal. And then it sets them in a bad place. And that is the kind of pk rule I care about, because the aggressors have a very clear way of starting fights that fits within the confines of the systems in place, and often this tends to still escalate to a way that someone feels abused.
I understand both sides of these situations almost completely. What feels over the top and tends to set people into a hysteria on the matter is the fact that far too often not only are they thrust into conflict someone else wants, they are punished for reacting often upwards of three hours after (in some extreme cases, they are hunted due to their choice to defend). There are some of you on each side, and likely some on mine, who will take the fight too far. If we made smaller skirmishes be over when they happen and not drag it out and go after someone later for reacting, they are far more likely to react later.
The most common complaint I get to mediate is that the duration of raids or conflict is too long and that too much experience was lost. I admit freely that often times the leader (which is often me) on our side is at fault for them losing experience due to a bad call, bad application, or misplaying / not expecting something. This is not just because people care about xp, but more in line with what Daeir said, they care about their time. And when all of their time is defending, fighting, being forced out of their RP (can't get a House ceremony in to save a life with the duration and frequency of conflict) they are going to stop showing up, and our numbers of well trained combatants vs yours will continue to have a larger gap.
tl;dr a lot of Targossians are just upset about having no time that they control. Being this faction is difficult - we are always under a microscope; we are vital to everyone elses 'fun' which is genuinely not fun for most of us. This causes us to react poorly. Experience means less than you believe for a lot of people.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
(not always the case, I do use issue me a lot for this reason, but in times it does not work, I issue the person)
ISSUE ME always works if you explain the situation instead of "X person did Y can he be issued for that" or whatever you're doing.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
I have never issued myself to ask if I can issue someone else. I ask the question very clearly, and in many instances the clarification required needs the person and I have been told as much. If it's a clarification on someones actions and I am asking for a ruling on how the situation is supposed to be handled, I am told to issue the person and 'let it work itself out'.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
Basically, if Jill is doing something that could ICly justify Jack killing her, but Jill doesn't know that (like being a soldier of a city that is being raided), Jack has to extend some sort of warning that city soldiers will be hunted and killed, like a SHOUT. This gives Jill the option to leave the city and avoid PK. If Jill doesn't leave the city, she can be killed ICly (as Jack has a reasonable expectation that Jill will attempt to defend, being a city soldier and ignoring the warning to leave).
Or, to use my prior example, if Jill is hunting in an area under the protection of Jack's organization, Jack has to extend a warning to Jill, giving Jill the option to stop. Unlike the city soldier example, Jack doesn't have to extend this warning every time Jill hunts in the area: If it's extended once, anybody belonging to that org has reason to kill Jill if she's spotted hunting in that area in the future.
REW doesn't give combatants another IC way to kill non-combatants, of course. Merely being in the same room as a combatant doesn't give that combatant an excuse to warn and then kill the non-combatant with no other IC justification. This is along the lines of COMMON SENSE, but the warning part is really crucial for both sides of the equation (combatants don't get to gloat about being subject to frivolous issues, non-combatants don't get to whine about being killed for not knowing they were doing something wrong).
This wouldn't technically change any PK rules. It merely clarifies good PK practices for both attackers and defenders.
If YOU'RE not sure, and nobody else (as in other players) are sure, it makes no sense to issue the other person for "clarification" without first trying things like TELL ROMEO Hi. I have a question maybe you can help me with? or MSG LATHIS Hi. I am not sure about how to handle a situation in regard to the rules. <your explanation> or ISSUE ME <explanation>. I think you have been told wrong because it sounds like what you currently do is no different than driving on the highway, writing down license plates of everyone you saw speeding, and then calling the police, giving them the license plate numbers and asking for "clarification" on whether or not they were speeding.
Achaea manages to have both a PK environment that is incredibly daunting to get involved in, and (unsurprisingly when you think about it) a large, politically powerful segment of the playerbase that is overtly or passively quite hostile towards PK - even in cities that are by all rights supposed to be more conflict oriented. Achaea has a big enough playerbase to allow for a city like Cyrene, which fulfills a very particular role, but I do think that the high bar of entry for PK actually has an incredibly negative effect on the status of PK in general. It puts those of you who *do* PK at odds with a huge portion of the playerbase, instead of bringing them into your fold, even if it is in supporting roles (which in most cases it will be). Historically, there was also an incredibly shitty attitude that "welp, you got involved in some group combat, prepare for every decent PK-er in Achaea to hunt you as much as they think they can possibly get away with". I *hope* bounties can help with this, because they create a sanctioned PK system with inherent limits on kills, but within the context of Achaea's PK system, they actually might just be one more punitive measure for people getting a foot in the door. The beauty of bounties is that you know someone is coming for you. At worst, someone is going to kill you once, and then you can go on living life as normal. It's actually pretty fun and exciting in Imperian.
Get rid of basic XP loss and replace it with other things/perks that only come into play at fairly high levels anyway (and aren't crippling if they're lost to kills). Get rid of infamy, too. EDIT: except perhaps for theft, since there are enough Achaeans who cling to the theft mechanism with a death grip.
Another note is that because Achaea is so huge, it would be nice to find a way to scale at least some conflict situations down to something that can feel like a fun battle... like 5 on 5 or something, still plenty of spam, to be sure. I realize there are people who can simply code around that, and combat focus, etc... but the one bad thing about huge battles is that yeah, it just feels like a computer compiling or something. I don't see that going away, and that's fine, but it would be cool to have some situations that are smaller, and it would also allow the most elite of the PK crowd to choose an all-star team to fight another all-star team.
With raiding, you're going from "Ok, KoTH in the arena, run to the hill, kill some dudes" to " Ok, totem in every fucking room, gotta avoid the guard stacks, have to insta-fly past archer rooms, don't wanna be in range of a shrine, damnit there's an indoor room between me and my destination, fuck I'm being radianced and I can't walk or fly out of here."
Dropping a shrine isn't a big deal, because reraising it means doing what like 50% of the Achaean playerbase does on a daily basis anyways. There's really no reason for a "no mercy" policy. If you don't like it, well fuck, you're not entitled to have 100 shrines up at any given time. You shouldn't feel obligated to grief someone out of conflict. Hell, if we all encouraged conflict, Achaea would be so much nicer.
The example others have cited, Imperian, is maybe not a direction Achaea should go PK-wise. I really like that death still has consequences. It makes victory and defeat mean a little more.
There isn't really anything RP-worthy in either of the two scenarios.
"You don't fear death because you're afraid of what happens when you die; you fear dying in embarrassing ways. This is why Khizan/Juran will fearlessly charge guards or enormous teams, and yet we will coordinate fights against Menoch and such with military precision. There is no shame in dying to the big side of a 9v4, but there is shame in losing a 3v3 to Menoch/Kryss/etc.
This is my OOC view on the matter, but it's also Khizan's IC view on things, which is how he justifies battle plans like "We're going to go in there and kill guards until we die, then we're going to come back and do it again." Death is a temporary setback; war stories are forever".
The reason XP loss is a problem is because most of us aren't good enough to not incur a net loss that will tend to increase over time - and we're not going to get "good enough" any time soon. No XP loss would also mean that people like Dunn could raid Cyrene with impunity (which is great, but might have to be looked at if the costs and annoyance got to be too ridiculous). That said, if the energy and skills of people like that were redirected towards other cool outlets (like a slightly different version of icons), it might not be a problem.