PK Updates: Announce #5364

Archaeon

this is the definition of beating a dead horse

Treyal

well don't worry because now the horse can hire a mark on you

Archaeon

haha so funny lol

Shirszae

Okay so, I have a suggestion on an entirely different vein.

I know there is a reason why we can't see the name of the person who hired, but would it be at all possible to allow us to see the name of the org when the contract is denizen originated? Knowing that could facilitate some bit of rp and unlike with player generated contracts there's little to be gained by purposefully foiling it.

And yes, before someone says it, I am fully aware we get to see the name after completing it.

Inuad

well don't worry because now the horse can hire a mark on you

I would like to meet this apparently intelligent horse.

Honestly I'm disappointed that killing only certain NPCs triggers a contract? I feel as though that eliminates some of the risk of slaughtering entire villages for power and wealth.

Having said that, I wouldn't mind the alternative of some kind of increased hostilities (thus keeping it PvE). For instance, give NPC villages a kind of font. It may require a rework of the FEELINGS system, but at a certain level, you are now hit with volleys from hidden archers, or wracked with random afflictions, or so forth.

@Ictinus On the contract as it stands side, is there a way to direct allied village hirings/contracts to the city-state they are allied to? It would seem weird if say someone from Hashan received a contract from the dwarves of Blackrock.

Tahquil

@Elyon @Shecks funnily enough I have gone mark before. I was killed. A lot. Very easy target and all that, easier than bashing for XP. When I left it I was Divinely cursed for over a RL year with random afflictions/inst-kill every time I did an aggressive action. So the answer is : Yes! I've been a mark before! Being killed randomly while trying to do mundane tasks SUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKS.

Elyon

I totally agree it sucks. When I was thieving before I couldn't really do anything other than thieve because within 3 minutes some guy would show up and try to kill me . But that I suppose is the"meaningful consequences" of actions which people wanted

Cooper

Yes, that is exactly the meaningful consequence we want, I'm glad you understand now!

Tahquil

But.. I opted out of Mark and that line of roleplay? Unlike theft? I told the god of suffering to fuck off and BOY WERE THERE A WHOLE YEAR AND SOME OF CONSEQUENCES. It sucked, but I worked it like a boss. (I did complain about it at the start because I couldn't hunt for dragon, but I learned to roll with the consequences.)

Moroa

This is a bit belated, but I do want to share this issue response for the record. I don't have the original text of the issue I filed (SHOWISSUE doesn't work if it was resolved it seems), but it should be self-explanatory. Emphasis is mine.

Generally speaking, if you have two reasons to kill someone, you can kill them twice. However, we tend to advise against cause counting in a way that drags out a conflict for multiple days. Regarding starbursts, this is entirely context dependent but for the most part we would consider one true kill (i.e a death, a starburst, then a second kill) as one event. Please don't hesitate to use ISSUE ME <your issue> if you have any further questions or concerns!

Sobriquet

Good to know, given I killed someone twice in one command (starburst and truekill) for a contract, and they hired on me for it.

Shecks

That is a massive change that overrules 20 years of precedent. It also doesn't work at all with the Mark or bounty systems (and associated rules).

Adrik

Not really.

If an ability kills multiple times: See, god kills. Nocturne... it is fine.

I think the difference here is Lock into behead right after the voyria tick.

Nocturne is really the only ability that comes to mind that can kill someone more than once in one command that doesn't rely on voyria into timed insta?

Shecks

This definitely isn't just in the context of things that kill multiple times instantly. This statement clearly says that if someone dies and burts you can just start over and kill them again until they true die. Of course they threw a "for the most part" in just to stay consistent with the refusal for clearly understandable rules.

If player A kills player B twice through a starburst, I can guarantee they will reach opposite conclusions about whether or not the second death was contextually ok or not, pretty much every single time. This is why having some rules is good.

Moroa

I mean, you could even argue "I can kill you as many times as I want until you embrace death", which could lead to even more "justification" for kills if someone uses a soul resurrection ability.

Honestly, the thing that bothered me more about that response is that it tacitly approves cause counting as a thing that can be done. I'm personally of the belief that once someone kills another person, every justification that that person had to kill them is now void (this more applies to me killing someone than the other way around... not that that happens much). That is, if I have two reasons to kill Adrik, they're both simultaneously satisfied as soon as I kill him. It seems this couldn't be farther from the case in actuality, though, which is a shame.

Grandue

I read it as “one event” as far as issues go. They also said it was context dependent. I would imagine if a Mark kills you for a contract then kills you a second time you absolutely would get cause off the second kill or else every mark would be killing through burst every time.

Dynos

I think the context here is time between each kill, within reason (ie. Less than a second and not needing multiple followup hits)

Though I don't have a particular side of whether Voyria into timed behead is considered the same 'event' or separate kills that generates a pk cause for the person dying the second time, I think at the least, with either answer, it's not an issuable thing- so long as there was cause to go after someone for a first kill. If it were issuable, then true kills in a duel just got paywalled behind the Town crier's bell (2000cr) which insta-kills through burst and gives corpse, and Anima's Thirst (2500cr dagger) which stabbing someone with strips all starburst defenses including tattoo. Both of which can be easily used after a true lock.

Aegoth

Tome to go on a doublekill rampage. Wheee

Caelan

Lookout, Mhaldor!!

Accipiter

Burst is a kill. It has the exact same penalty as any other death except you get insta-rezzed. Cage, transmog ect remove the penalty so they don't count as a death. It is nice a simple and easy to understand.

This it a horrible policy change that makes no sense.

Caelan

Well, it makes sense if your point is to stop answering emails and issues about cause and PK. Well, you still answer the issues, you just dismiss them as 'working as intended'.

Eurice

Moroa's explanation of roleplay justification and the whole "I kill you once, we're good" thing is exactly how I've also been operating as well.

This has to be how it works, unless people are really okay with the insanity of noting down whoever shoots you during a kraken fight and violently murdering them on land until you recoup the number of times you were killed, or by proxy, the same situation in raids too. Does every engagement in a raid generate a hanging death that you're now allowed to pursue outside of the conflict unilaterally? That can't be the case.

I've exhaustively labored on the fact that death has no real penalty and people shouldn't take it too seriously, but being tremendous cocks to one another over it is going to generate OOC enmity that invariably will spill over into the IC just because of how our community is.

Dominius

Yeah ok.. so if you hate some character and wanna see them burn suffer and die, I get it. A true kill feels more like a win. But a contract or bounty that gets completed the moment you burst does not seem like it should be continued from there. You have a job to do, you do it and once its done you go for another kill you have no contract for? Seems farfetched and will likely see even more players leave the game. At least all the top tier whales can still kill eachother, their bait will just run out soon. Sad development, I find. Don't have coding skills or someone to write you up a good system? Don't feel like engaging in combat? Then go hunt explore and roleplay, not too rudely though cause then someone will come kill you. Not just once though. And if you run away you'll be insulted and targeted even more. Fun game to play on a stressful day to escape real life for a couple hours. Not saying this is the norm, but it happens.

Cooper

Marks can't continue killing through burst. Their reason to kill the person is the contract, and the contract disappears on starburst.

Eurice, idk why you would assume any of that is what happens. Defending your city inside of the city/defendable will not result in deaths outside of the raid (exceptions: some chasing things that will happen during the raid, and if you choose to chase them outside of the city).

You also can't count every attack as a separate event, so unsure why you think ships would be different. But yes, people that shoot others during kraken fights should definitely have consequences for that, so killing them is okay.

Instead of imagining worst case scenarios and assuming that's now perfectly acceptable, read the rules and note that there is always a "generally" or "with context" or "with exceptions" rules, and realize your worst case scenarios are part of those exceptions that aren't going to be allowed.

Eurice

This is going to sound like a trite question, but do you actually play the game at the moment, Cooper?

Shecks

I guess I take my PK rule notes from game admin before I take them from people who stopped playing before the existing PK rules even existed. Not even a jab, just literally true on both points.

The quoted admin clearly explained that multiple deaths in a single fight leading to a truedeath are one "event", and clearly indicated this was a generalization for the game overall and not just this one situation - and as I pointed out earlier, many single contracts are hired for multiple deaths (since you can't do it twice) so this actually (coincidentally probably) works out quite nicely that marks can "true kill" targets, more often than not, for "true killing" the person that hired.

More likely than not someone is going to backpedal on this. I hope so. But it doesn't really matter anyways because it has the "for the most part" clause which means that you can still get screwed for doing what you think makes sense as long as some other person didn't have their mocha latte Frappuccino® on the day they read your issue, or if they just don't like you. I just stopped PKing anyone who basically isn't actively hitting me in the face, because short of that everything thing could make someone feel violated and entitled to OOC punishment against you, and once it's in an issue there's a 50% chance you're going to lose it pretty much regardless of the circumstances, with these (lack of) rules.

Someone should come up with some kind of Council of Achaeans who could advise game admin on matters related to Combat. That might really nip some of these weird situations in the bud before they hit production. Ideally, those players should like, actually be involved in the game in the last 10-ish years.

Ashlei

After reading everyone's comments I truly think the biggest issue is that people, like always, just need something to whine about. If you have a reason ICly to kills someone, go ahead and true death them. If you can't, hire and pay for it and upon burst you get experience back and the satisfaction of Justice. If that's not enough for you, learn to fight yourself. You're all supposed to be playing in a role playing game. Life is not fair irl, people will shit on you irl and you can't return the favor 100%, so is it this way in a life-like rp game.

Everyone is hung up on cause and if its allowed, when if you actually immersed yourself in your character and RPd like the game was designed to originally be played, you wouldn't run to forums, discord, or issue everytime something happened that wasn't a positive outcome for you. And before you point a finger to someone paying to be killed a hundred times or that the game is RP optional, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about you. Bouncing off of ooc actions IG to justify your own helps no one, including yourself.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, if the game causes you that much grief just go play something else. If Proficy kills you because you took a foray, issue him and let the admins look back to see who was right or wrong. If Proficy kills you because you're a so called non-com that tried to help defend in a raid, get over it.

The toxicity of the outspoken, bored, and unhappy players in forums and discord will continue to harm the game over time. The sad thing is, based on what I've seen it's a very small percentage of the player base that can never be satisfied.

Tirvai

Not too terribly long ago the Lupine Hunting Grounds were closed. After that, the Mhuns of Moghedu started defending against PCs. Then some NPCs started hiring directly. After around 10 contract kills I started getting tired of being hunted by PCs. I started logging in less and less. Most of what I liked here revolved around hunting NPCs. Most of the good places now involve PVP in some way unless I actively try to avoid it. The Underworld and Annwyn make total sense but it has been made very clear recently that more PvP is the direction that the world should be going. For those of us that enjoy PVE but not PVP...do we have anything to look forward to?

Saonji

@Tirvai LHG closed because the God they were attached to, literally died. It was attached to His temple.

Not sure what you mean by "Mhuns of Moghedu" defending against PCs. Unless you mean the GOM, which is a separate entity entirely, full of PK-happy people who are so bored they want more people to kill, these days.

If you managed to get 10 contracts on you, that's more on you than anything. There's pretty major warnings that you're going to get hired on, and it's only very select NPCs in an area. You can murder 3000 Mhun, but leave the Mhunna alive, and they won't do anything. None of the non-Open PK areas "involve PVP" unless you make them involve it.

Tbh it's stupid that it's a thing to begin with, since the game has been all about killing NPCs literally since it was created. Changing facets of the games without adding anything meaningful in exchange, is a pretty questionable design choice, as Namino already described. But whatevs.

Gallida

I'm looking forward to the inevitable conclusion where people start making alts solely to defend the pixies and gnomes in the newbie areas.