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PK Updates: Announce #5364
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Comments
You should instead try to realise that this is a living, breathing world, and murdering someone's dad/brother/mother will have consequences.
how about killing the same person 100 times because they paid you to
Issues are a last resort option only to be used after IC resolution fails. Try talking to the offender, attack them back, or hire on them. If those things prove unsuccessful in preventing the same problem from happening repeatedly, then Issue against them.
We all like formulas... this all boils down to a simple formula:
@Synthus In general we would advise using your discretion. If you were killed by mistake or walked into a raid party and were caught in the crossfire (i.e in character reasons), then seek in character resolution.
If you believe someone is deliberately (and repeatedly) going out of their way to ignore rules and murder uninvolved bystanders in order to advance their raid ambitions then filing an issue against them is fine. The admin team will look into it and handle the situation appropriately.
The extreme rarity of the latter situation is one of the primary reasons we went ahead with this specific adjustment after looking at data and discussing it among the producers. As I said in my prior comment, deliberately doing this is not something we approve of. I don't anticipate it becoming more common with the changes, and we are happy to come down hard on people who do it, if it does.
Argwin said:
Issues are a last resort option only to be used after IC resolution fails. Try talking to the offender, attack them back, or hire on them. If those things prove unsuccessful in preventing the same problem from happening repeatedly, then Issue against them.
Why does the onus of resolution fall upon the aggrieved party?
Also, "attack them back" is not really an option for non-combatants to seek recourse against someone that inappropriately targeted them. To clarify, I'm not talking someone that just "doesn't feel up" to PvP at the moment, I'm talking players that actively avoid it as much as they can because either they absolutely hate the PvP in Achaea or PvP gives them panic attacks.
Hiring is a weak consequence to attacking a non-combatant and doesn't even feel like a slap on the wrist.
Ictinus said:
The extreme rarity of the latter situation is one of the primary reasons we went ahead with this specific adjustment after looking at data and discussing it among the producers. As I said in my prior comment, deliberately doing this is not something we approve of. I don't anticipate it becoming more common with the changes, and we are happy to come down hard on people who do it, if it does.
I'm sorry, can I ask how you are quantifying an 'extreme rarity'? This has been an issue that has occurred multiple times since I started playing two years ago and continues happening to this day. I understand something had to be done in the event when a raid had already been sanctioned and non-army defenders were not counting toward tank progress, but I, and at least three other players that I have spoken with today, are still exceedingly concerned that this change will cause non-combatants not participating in raid defense to be indiscriminately targeted in order to charge tanks; that because there is no established punishment with enough gravitas to deter such actions, it will continue to happen and the offenders will just shrug any sort of recourse off.
@synthus: What punishment would you deem fair and just then?
[Post edited to respond to the thrust of your complaint.]
I've linked three pictures in a row, this will probably cause the forums to be down for the rest of the day- sorry in advance.
I think these changes are a little odd and all over the place, but 'generally' I'm pretty fine with them. The ship combat seems weird to me just because how hilariously it's going to chain out (and how many people are going to go right back to counting cause)- you were on x ship that I fired on, sank, then came back on a different ship? See you soon. I'm sure the playerbase will handle that with their usual grace and restraint.
Kog, you're not a non-com. You have lead/participated in raids, ganks, and roaming zerg death squads (during the Reckoning). You're not even close to a non-com
There's a type of player who enjoys the occasional peekay but doesn't enjoy being open to arbitrary attacks. The soldier change is a hit to this kind of player. It also furthers the RP/mechanics disconnect when being in your walled, guarded city is a liability to personal safety.
Ammar said:
@synthus: What punishment would you deem fair and just then?
First time is a warning, after that your character gets a Collar of Pacification slapped on them. The collar prevents you from taking any aggressive action against players, similar to walking in grace. Each time you have to have it put on, the amount of time grows longer and longer, and for those that do really egregious attacks, like breathraining or waving crossroads/CC/atop, it gets slapped on permanently.
If you can't take the time to properly assess your targets and ensure you are only attacking enemy combatants, then you don't need to be attacking.
Now, I realize that brings into question "Well, what about a non-combatant standing in with the defenders?" At that point, a non-combatant needs to move to a safe area. If they are standing in the room with the defenders for an extended period of time, they are not protected. If the defenders get pushed into a room with non-combatants, then it is on the enemies to discern who is and isn't an enemy and target appropriately.
And if you read that and say, "That's just killing all the fun of it" well then, welcome to the game for those of us that don't like PK and have it shoved on us, getting told to hide on a ship or log out or go journal or otherwise not play the game when it happens. 😕
The main thing I like of this update is that there are actual consequences to wiping out a denizen village/town. I mean, you're coming through like a homicidal maniac, killing them in the streets and in their homes, there should be consequences.
I do agree bounty hunter denizen should scale to the individual they're hunting, so it's an actual challenge and threat, but, if you beat them, eyyyyy!, cool for you. The prey bested the hunter. Maybe they drop a bit of gold to make it worth the battle, but not near enough to make it worth the whole ordeal of getting hunted. I mean, you shouldn't look forward to being hunted down for murdering a village. Unless your character is evil like that, I suppose.
Though, if there's a hunter for the Forest Watch buckawns, I'll just have to get good enough to beat them. I dislike the buckawns so much, and won't stop hunting them just cause a target is pasted to my back. They're evil.
The intricacies PVP and ship stuff flies so far over my head though, it might collide with an airplane. Guess I may learn the hard way. Good practice though...
Issue them. That's what I do for breaches of defined rules and I haven't lost one thus far.
To clarify, I mean explicit stuff like, 'retaliating against the defender of a raid after the fact' or 'attacking a non-soldier uninvolved in city defense'. There are clear cut rules stating that these are not allowed.
Stuff like, 'I was standing at New Thera and someone randomly breathrained me', you should just handle in game.
I can't wait for those two Dauntless NPCs to get contracts put out on them.
Couple of hot takes:
NPC contracts offer an avenue for easy farming of Mark "score" points between you and a friend, which technically isn't currently illegal as mark points aren't exp, gold, or convertable to gold. I'm curious to see how the Quisalis/Ivory split works.
I think NPC contracts are going to generate a bunch of Issues, as people who famously never touch anyone are going to start getting attacked, and if they aren't crystal clear about why, they're quite likely going to instantly assume the person is violating PK rules.
I very much appreciate the mindset behind the Relic/Guard interaction.
The raid and Mark changes are IMO fantastic. I don't think this comes close to closing the book on needed changes to Marks but it's a big step in the right direction.
I think Army Rank must be displayed in number format after the text string, now that that number essentially makes people open PK. I think there will also need to be some restrictions on how often AR can be changed, if there aren't already restrictions. We don't want to see people "turning it on and off" to abuse this system.
The AR3 rule specifically mentions "boundaries" and this makes me really uncomfortable because I already know people AR3 and above are going to abuse the hell out of this. All they have to do is sit at defendable playing this "You can't touch me" BS, while popping in and out of the city to attack people. And before anyone else says "not true, common sense applies here" - no it doesn't as I've been ruled against for attacking someone 10 seconds after they attacked me in their city then Duanathared. Simply put, I think the rule needs to stipulate that abuse of boundaries is not permitted, or that the Open PK status lasts for a bit after they leave the city limits. Without one of these things, people will abuse it.
Not sure if people noticed this, but this is actually new. It used to be that hiring as a Mark was prevented by the mechanics of the Mark system, not an actual rule, so you could store up your PK cause then quit Mark/Dauntless, then hire. People could and often did do this legally, and I'm glad it's gone.
7. Membership of the Quisalis or Ivory Mark, or the Dauntless, is sufficient reason to be attacked by any player at any time. Members of these organisations may pursue retaliation, but may not file contracts in order to seek retribution.
Regarding "counter-retaliation" / circular PK - I just think this whole concept is massively flawed, because it only works if you assume that in all cases, both parties agree on who started things. That is, in my experience, rarely actually the case. Person A kills an NPC in Isle of New Hope. Person B kills them for it. Person A thinks that's reason to hire a Mark. Person B does not. According to Person A, retaliation is not circular. To Person B, hiring would be circular. The rule doesn't work if people don't agree on whether or not "the right to kill" is warranted, and now that we have essentially zero clarity on when that actually is, it's going to cause a lot of problems, especially with the snarky/lazy "Filing an issue is almost never the correct response to a PK related scenario" stance.
One last thought. A lot of us buy credits / Elite / promos etc. That revenue goes to three main things: Investor/Owner, Network/Operational costs, and admin staff. The owner is gone. The network and server are frequently failing. With this last update, now we are told the admin staff are sick of dealing with issues? Well I'm sorry, I'd just like to know where our money is going if it's not on reliable ISP / Network maintenance, and it's not going to admins to enforce the insanely blurry PK rules (if you even want to call them rules at this point). I know that we're not entitled to know how the money works in the company, but in a game where we're paying $500 for a text sword ostensibly to keep the lights on, you're also not entitled to get our money if we don't have faith that you're actually keeping the lights on.
I think these are awesome changes and that people frivolously file issues or lodge complaints based on the flawed sense of entitlement. In honesty, this game has become stale and as far as conflict and pvp goes, it's been pretty much handcuffed to the radiator by overly stifling and convoluted rules which promote conflict immunity over a living breathing world where actions have consequence. So I welcome this and think it's a good thing.
Arguments such as "I pay to play this game, I am entitled to such and such" are flawed. Nobody made you pay, it's not subscription based. You got exactly what you paid for when you made a purchase. Sorry Shecks, but that's a rather negative and toxic outlook on things. I buy credits too and I don't reflect your sentiment. The whole thought process behind "I pay you, you better listen to me" is absurd and leads to a game that's not fun for everyone or inclusive. I pay for credits and arties too, but I don't share your sentiments. I think you need to take a breath and just realize that taking some of the burden of responding to a ton of bogus issues gives them more time to work on things which improve the quality of the experience here.
"Obviously, the oceans are no org's territory and so there are no 'defence rights'."
*cries in Nerai*
On that note, I'm interested to see what this means for Sea combat, and if it will ultimately lead to less conflict at Sea (as a number of us who fight out there do not like land combat).
@Raiya I'm not going to deep dive on your comment, I'm just going to say that you're reading what I wrote completely incorrectly. I'm sorry if my language wasn't clear enough. I clearly said I am not entitled to anything, but tbf it's a big post and people often reply to things without actually reading them around here -shrug-.
I don't expect anything by buying credits other than receiving credits. Period. What I'm saying is that the reason I'm buying credits is to keep the lights on and to keep the admin doing what admins need to do. But if the lights are flickering and the admin are giving up on regulating their PK rules (which mean nothing without umpires willing to show up and umpire) then my reason is now gone.
I think that if anything it will hopefully lead to more meaningful combat at sea, opposed to the "I see a ship and I'm gonna shoot it....because I can" driving force of sea conflict that has predominately been used. Hopefully actual motivators become a more prevailing reason for attacking someone at sea.
@Kresslack - I'm kinda thinking this isn't going to change anything at all on open seas. People are still absolutely going to attack each other "just because they can" (most people who'd do this cast off in the first place with intent to do this from the start). I think the only change here won't be on the seas at all, it will just be that people can now follow up later instead of just getting killed then having to pretend it didn't happen IC.
I always thought it was a little weird that you get infamy, Thief mark, and hired on for stealing a vial, but it's totally fine to just murder people and sink their ship costing 5 or 6-figures of gold, with no retaliation permitted. If it were me, I'd go a step further and allow retaliation for sinking a ship, even if you're not even on the ship (ie. retaliation for the ship sinking, not only for death). Probably that's allowed though under the new PK rules, which as far as I can tell are "If you think you have PK cause, then you do, except when you don't".
Rule 1:
@Kresslack My main concern is its fundamentally a discouraging people to PVP on the ocean. The best case scenario I can see is people ignore it and stick to how it was. Now, any time I try to muster a crew to hunt a pirate ship, people are going to be more reticent given they can be attacked on land afterwards.
Regarding the denizen bounties, I think it would have been cool that the bounty boards were set up by the village themselves, though that would be hard to implement. Guess the mark system needed to get propped up? I remember a discussion about it earlier and there being lack of contracts.
Shipmate85835 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate295869 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate259589 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate395868 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate29464 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate947326 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate264743 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
Shipmate247935 aboard The Offended has filed a contract for your life with the Ivory Mark.
x60
Weeeee seafaring PK and denizen hiring.
I like these changes, but can see the responses means there are already too many rules and caveats for people to worry with and will try to be gamed in some way (I forsee lots of army quitting only to rejoin in a year to circumvent the stated desire of the army change).
Let's just quit playing with the line and jump across it already. Anyone is open to attack at any time by anyone, limited by frequency. You get two chances to attack someone in a window (1 hour, 2 hour) that isn't dictated otherwise (mark/dauntless, contract, etc), if they get away you can't attack that person again for the remainder of the window or you are now harassing them. Create a PK/Non-PK flag that allows people to opt out of this behaviour, but they also cannot attack anyone with the flag up. If you turn the flag off, you're subject to this status for two weeks minimum.
You log into this dangerous world where every denizen and enemy city is trying to kill you, that's what you get. If you don't want to participate in that gameplay, then you can opt out of it entirely but that also means you now cannot defend your city either. Make a choice, and stand by it.
Let anarchy reign, imo, and quit coddling people with layers of nonsense. You're either 100% in, or you're 100% out and there is no in between.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Sadly I think your takes are fairly tepid, friend @Shecks. A smattering of examples:
"NPC contracts offer an avenue for easy farming of Mark "score" points between you and a friend, which technically isn't currently illegal as mark points aren't exp, gold, or convertable to gold."
In case you were unaware, Mark contracts also award gold and experience to the winner.
"I think NPC contracts are going to generate a bunch of Issues, as people who famously never touch anyone are going to start getting attacked, and if they aren't crystal clear about why, they're quite likely going to instantly assume the person is violating PK rules."
False. It is very clear when someone takes out a contract on you- you even get a message about it--before and after! [Edit: You may not know precisely who but you will know that you have a contract out and it should be clear from their HONORS whether they are a Mark and which one they belong to.]
[Some incoherent thoughts on how money is spent.]
The only sentence I could find bearing on this was, "Filing an issue is almost never the correct response to a PK related scenario and that is the stance we will be continuing to take going forward." I don't know how that indicates that, as you say, "the admin staff are sick of dealing with issues". It is equally reasonable to conclude that the admins feel there are enough in-character avenues for redress in most cases. Perhaps you missed their post outlining more strenuous definitions and punishments for discriminatory language--something far more important (to my mind at least) than issues over how fast someone said Duanathar.
Can we go with @Atalkez ’s idea?
It’s not like I log in or post here with any frequency anymore, but I don’t like these changes. Any of them, really. So I’ll see y’all later when I forget that I quit and get dragged back by addiction only to continue the cycle in perpetuity.
I played a MUD that went with something similar to what Atalkez suggests, where people could declare themselves Pacifists and not be able to attack or be attacked. All it really did was cause complications with people under Pacifist protection running their mouth towards other people for various reasons, and then people get mad can't kill them, etc. Same shit different toilet. I don't see anything wrong with guidelines and having PK have to have some semblance of RP justification, as this is supposed to be a role play environment, even if it is lightly enforced.
Like... first you guys say that if someone don't want to be chased around, then don't get into combat situations in the first place. I agree with that, it does make sense... But now you are forcing PK into non-coms who just want to level and get experience? Like... why even? Denizens are a part of the world, yes, but it was you guys who made 'denizen murderhobo' a standard way of levelling and gaining experience for all these years that Achaea existed (outside of PKing that is and maybe hunting seamonsters). Don't ruin it for people who just enjoys hunting.
I really do hope that those 'high profile denizens' are limited to honours mobs only because if it is the random chief of some village around or whatever that people hunts to just level and get experience then this is going to be really crappy. Well, except for the marks of course who will rejoice in killing a bunch of easy targets to pump their scores.
Like, I do get that you have to please your PK whales so they don't leave the game and continue throwing money at you, but don't do that at the expense of your other players.
You notice a terrible smell in the air and see that Zoot, a leafy humgii is trying to look inconspicuous.
A Tsol'aa archer exclaims, "Ahhh...how nice to breathe the fresh air of the forest!"
So you don't want RP in your RP game? The leader of a village is just supposed to ignore you committing genocide against his people every other day for literal years at a time without doing anything about it? I couldn't care less about PK'ing some level 80 trying to get Dragon, but some of you kill more things in a day than I have in months and don't think that warrants a response?
Seems weird to me.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
If you don't want people to murder everything then stop lining their pockets with gold.
Also, denizens are not the same as adventurers in any aspect of the game...this faux outrage over their wellbeing is ridiculous every time it comes up.