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Much steal. Very hide. Wow.
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Comments
I don't know if it does, to be fair! But if it blocks premotes (and it might not?) then maybe? I was just tossing a few things out that had occurred to me.
So is the argument now that you can opt out, you just don't like the ways that you can opt out?
The argument remains:
Things that you cannot 'get me' with while I am bashing, merchanting, and questing unless I further 'opt in':
PK
Ship combat
Shrine warfare
Political/elections
Furthermore, if I do decide to engage in any of the above things, then the consequences (and opt-in) exist within:
1) the same realm
2) a limited duration
EDIT:
And also you forgot
No other mechanic in the game works like this, and no other mechanic in the game - regardless of the odds, regardless of the time spent, the investment, etc. - has a comparable 'best case' for the attacker compared to a much worse 'best case' for the defender.
Wait, ignore stops an entire skillset? That seems.... very broken.
It does not prevent the skillset from functioning, no.
I think that for this debate to be productive we need:
Why wouldn't opt in work for theft when it essentially works for everything else? When the game at large is designed with that idea in mind? Theft is the only outlier in this regard and the game suffers for it.
Thieves just don't want to have any limit put on themselves which is understandable, but every argument presented by them so far has been utterly self-interested at the very least.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Ship stuff is the only thing I can think of remotely close, and that has LAYERS of things to do before you’re at risk and TONS of protections against any real loss to occur.
Gave up the classless bash-o-thon at 89(10%)
Opt in doesn't mean it is a config, just that there are specific actions that you can do that make you targettable by theft. You don't have to be involved in any amount of PK to opt-in to it, just saying something that could be perceived as insulting is opting in. Could be something along the lines of 'you picked up gold from the ground within the last month' and it would still be opt in because you could choose not to.
@Fairweather Sailing is better now that the primary use isn't trading, but when it was it was horrible cause pirates could cause you to lose 150k and a couple of hours of time and got almost nothing out of it.
To be fair, even if you "play" by logging in and 'literally doing nothing', you are opting in to a slow death due to starvation.
I wrote a long post but, there has been bunch so I abridged this one. Basically I tend to side with @Profit and @Eryl for different reasons and theft is a moral dilemna for me.
Maybe organize an "Opt out for theft" day/week? Everyone who seriously is upset can just not log in (therefore opting out, since that is how IRE wants to play it) for a week on any of their characters. Since the admin won't respond, maybe organize it and show them. Hell make it 2 or 3 or until they delete theft. You are paying them for the privilege of YOU being able to keep their world alive. Own that shit.
@Kog said:
Things that you cannot 'get me' with while I am bashing, merchanting, and questing unless I further 'opt in':
Furthermore, if I do decide to engage in any of the above things, then the consequences (and opt-in) exist within:
1) the same realm
2) a limited duration
Theft violates all of these completely, with no recourse. Even if you never, ever, ever get anything from me, it requires an investment of effort (1 time) and then dealing with you showing up and snapping your fingers at me, making me react or risk losing something from my inventory. There is no game system I can engage with to get rid of you. I can engage with you, directly, but that is rather akin to being told "well yes he's hitting you with your own hand, you should see if you can negotiate with him to make it stop". No other mechanic in the game works like this, and no other mechanic in the game - regardless of the odds, regardless of the time spent, the investment, etc. - has a comparable 'best case' for the attacker compared to a much worse 'best case' for the defender.
-----------------------------
Two of these I can agree with, but they're also the least problematic:
Ship combat: This is only true so long as you choose never to step foot onto a ship. This might be a truly opt-in part of Achaea, considering there's no reason you have to leave Mainland unless you want to.
Shrine warfare: Agreed, you can totally ignore shrines 100% if you're not at least tangent to an order.
However, your other two are most definitely not "opt in."
PK: I can come and PK you anytime I want. I might not be in the right for it, but as long I don't abuse it, your solution is hiring a mark. We see this play out all the time. People will be doing absolutely nothing wrong, walk by at the wrong minute, and bam you have 183 [insert faction here] sword in your bum. People make mistakes on infamy/enemy status/etc. People get pissed off because you looked at them the wrong way at the wrong time and backhand you into oblivion. That's not nearly what I think as an "opt-in" area of the game.
Political/elections: Even rogues have to deal with cities when they uphold various restrictions and the like, especially if you're a rogue who needs to buy things that some cities don't offer. Everyone is subject to political nonsense at least in some sort of way. That's not opt-in, that's just accepting how the world operates.
@Caelan, I don't particularly care for theft, no, but I accept it as much as I'm forced to accept that in real life I could be mugged on the sidewalk, my car be broken into, or my credit card number stolen at any time. That's why in real life, I take measures to ensure those things don't happen. I don't see anything wrong with that parallel in a game where people hold 4 hour long debates about moral implications of serving tea instead of kawhe.
@Eryl If any PKer behaved with the breadth of activity that your average thief did, they wouldn't be hired on.
They would be shrubbed. Once or twice, maybe. But attempting to PK multiple people without RP cause every day, I'd give them a few days at best.
@Eryl Politics is entirely opt-in. If you choose a non-factional class, don't interact with anyone when you enter a city, don't kill loyal denizens and don't join a city or house you will be completely insulated from it.
@Eryl I agree.
Morally I don't like theft. As I mentioned, to me it is IRE allowing theft of RL money using their game environment as a conduit.
But I am also a strong proponent of personal responsibility (as you mentioned). Thus, my quandry.
I suppose it could be said that IRE willingly coded theft, has promoted it as a feature, and kept it around. I think it is doubly bad simply BECAUSE it tends to effect established players more.
Theft HAS added positively to the game (see: Tenebrus) and I believe Profit is (or has/can be again) in this category. But in general, those kinds of players are few and far between and the negatives have been much greater. The RL money loss is my main issue. Otherwise herbs, some gold, letters, etc? whatevs
Another page without any input from admin, despite being the most active thread of the entire month thus far, and despite multiple being on the forums pretty regularly throughout the day.
Can we make it to 10 pages? Stay tuned!
Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.
smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.
@Eryl
So, sure, you can break the guideline and just randomly murder someone, and you probably won't get shrubbed for it. But if you make a habit of breaking the guideline, you likely will face some sort of punishment.
Additionally, the recourse for someone murdering you is to then engage back with them in the same way, or hire a Mark to do it for you. In general, I'm going to stay away from 'well I could just break the rules/ignore the rules', and 'accidents happen' doesn't really apply to theft either- it's not like they trip and accidentally steal a letter with your comm gold in it.
But, again, the problem is not STRICTLY that theft is not 'opt-in', it is that there are TWO conditions at play, the lack of opt-in AND the significant difference in scope of retaliation available compared to what is risked.
If theft worked like PK, where someone had to have a reason to try to rob you, there'd STILL be the issue of disproportionate advantage to the attacker (even in .000001% of the cases). If a thief risked 5k gold to get 5k gold from the target, there'd STILL be the issue of no opt-in mechanic.
EDIT:
The Jaguars (that's the thief group right?) is selling this golden medallion that gives you a boost to your gold drop (10%). Gold drops have been nerfed (10%) to compensate. Downside: it can be abused by someone who has a platinum medallion (500cr), to leech a portion of your gold right out of your pack through selfishness, if they get a 3s channel off, or snag a letter/journal with the optional PaperweightPlus(50cr) attachment if you don't have selfishness. Anyone with a platinum medallion who gets killed by someone they recently robbed loses the gold they got, though, and gets fined by the Jaguars 10% for being losers.
@Caelan I have the opposite reaction to you. Morally I don't care, people are gonna be dicks anyway and that is their choice. Mechanically I have big problems since there is no way you can punish them in the same way they hurt you, since they know exactly how to thieve and how to stop it. The best you can do is kill them a few times which doesn't get you any of your gold or items back.
Imagine having a game where the designers allow a single individual to have an artefact where 100% of the game can't track him.
Imagine having a game where the designers allow a single individual to have a his own private Cloud, with exits to islands, with a raido rune equivalent that allows him to get from Meropis to Nur with a single command.
Imagine a game with only around 100-150 people on at a time that divides it's areas up so widely it's almost impossible to know where someone is without a 2500cr artefact, only to find out they are a 30 minute sail away, and could leave the moment you get there with a single command, instantly.
Imagine having a slew of artefacts available (in a F2P game) at great cost that allow for reflections, instant travel, rooms you can only get to if you have the same 2000cr artefacts, talismans of various defensive attributes that you can only obtain via chance loot boxes by spending RL money totaling more than the latest Next Gen Console.
Imagine having a class that allows you to evade 100% of room hinder, through walls, and also allows you to phase and be undetectable by a vast majority of the available classes.
Imagine wanting to opt-in to conflict roleplay when it suits you and then being able to totally and unequivocally opt-out from any repercussions or consequences through a gamut of available options. (City guards, phase, ships, phased on ships, temples, housing, waiting out bounties / contracts)
Imagine numerous help files dedicated to how you can and can't inflict "damage" or kill opposing players due to the impact it has on the game environment as a whole, with people having been totally banned from their characters as punishment, but allowing someone to constantly and consistently follow you everywhere, all day, at all times, trying to forcibly take something from you you've spent a while earning in game.
Imagine intentionally, by design, allowing a class to steal 1000's upon 1000's of credits worth of gold and items from that same playerbase.
Then imagine being a thief who defends all of the above
Why imagine when we can observe? :D
just fucking fight irl and get this sorted out because it's 7 pages of the same shit and no one has come up with anything meaningful, lol.
This thread is starting to feel more like a Tumblr reblog chain of people airing grievances with the game's fundamentals versus constructively addressing anything involving theft.
@Eurice I think that is partly because when we talk about theft we also need to talk about checks and balances to make sure that having theft as part of the game is a positive experience given everything else it offers. This is clearly not the case.
@Eurice That's also because we've all made our cases as elaborately as we can make them. What's missing is some sort of input from the people who can actually make a decision. Everyone can air their opinions here but the reality is, none of us can change the backend to modify theft or make a policy call to keep it the same.
On that note:
Congratulations, everyone! We have now passed 200 replies in this thread without admin input!
The last theft grievance thread in August of 2019 only made it to 168 posts before the admins responded -- by locking it without giving an official acknowledgement of the problem. Before that, the casing thread got to 248 posts, but they were mainly discussing the new mechanics.
Other milestones to look forward to: In about 30 posts, we'll blow past the length of the riot we had regarding the Iron Elite Pricing scheme. By this time in that thread, though, we already had admin participation and one of the most legendary customer service quotes ever. Guess we don't quite have the angle on the pocketbook yet on this topic.
We're a little over halfway to passing by the Reckoning thread, but that thread had 10 whole days to get there and we've only been grinding this axe for 72 hours, so I applaud everyone's hustle.
Once we're past that, we're going to be taking aim at real heavyweights -- Achaean memes and other macro threads are on the block. Can we get to 1,000 posts without an official input? Can we get past WHTYT before the admins respond?! We're posting at roughly a 33:1 ratio to that thread, so there's no harm in dreaming!
Thank you all for the incredible adventure. Make sure to like and subscribe.
Edit: Should we make this like a Kickstarter? I'll come up with rewards for push goals for every 100 posts past 200 that the admins ignore addressing a deep, dividing issue in their community.
Every time you mention them, the admin gets their wings and fly the f away from this thread
this threat is like arguing politics. you think your arguments are going to change people's minds, but they fucking dont. instead everyone just bitches at each other and the sides become more polarized. 0 constructive output from this, 0/10 would not make again
Archy here is right, this thread isn't going to change anything.
That is why I said coordinate and just don't play for a week or two. It removes the content you create, it makes the game less interesting for new players, drops their TopMudSites, etc. You want to show them your convictions, do it. But to make jt so they don't wave it off, it should be en masse, not piecemeal. Otherwise it is just a bunch of theoreticals and bitching (which Im fine w to a point, but if you feel strongly, do something to get their attention).
There has been plenty of constructive input in this thread, Archaeon, your comments least standing among them, as per usual. You're likely right that this might not change anything, but there have been quite a few ideas thrown around in this thread to think about as potential balancing options.
you seem to have this fantastical idea that the admin can somehow come up with a system that makes both sides happy. you are wrong. you really have two options here:
so choose wisely
As someone who constantly complains about issues within the combat system and wanting things changed, you should understand that striving for balance with a mechanic that has long been unbalanced is a rather reasonable expectation.
i don't complain i merely inform others what the right opinions are.