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PK Updates: Announce #5364
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Comments
@Thaisen if you really think this is an actual problem then issue him the next time it happens.
I thought w the recent changes they said they basically won't do shit about PK issues?
Bit disappointed to find out the contracts thing is only if you attack one certain dude. Killing his entire village/family not worthy of hiring though? I don't think that makes the game feel more alive, it makes it feel more game-y to me. I understand it's probably necessary to do it this way to leave an opt out for people that don't want to PvP, but after reading that this is how it works, I'm of the opinion that it doesn't really add anything to the game.
People saying noncoms are open season in raids because they charge tanks please get a hold of yourselves and stop the baseless fear-mongering. Reality is if you got tsunami'd into a raid group before the changes, there's a solid chance you'd be killed, and that won't change just because the tank charges. It's hard to determine who is and isn't defending in a raid when someone pops into your room, but I've seen plenty of situations where even deplorable PK griefers like Eryl/Aegoth/Mizik spam.the party to not hit someone that got pulled in accidentally and isn't involved.
I've had a solid 50/50 on that. Sometimes I'm the guy who finds himself in the middle of a crowd of Mhaldorians all looking at me waiting to see if I hit someone, and sometimes I get killed by a crowd of Hashani because they're skirmishing and I flew to Clouds trying to get somewhere. But, I also often defend, so it's somewhat understandable to assume I'm with whoever's fighting. Either way, taking a moment to breathe before going all stabby can usually make things more clear, and if that moment somehow makes the difference between me killing you or me dying, you're already doing things all wrong.
So, if I understand things right, these denizens that hire are just specific denizens in areas and you don't even get anything special from it? Like give them a chance to drop the mark-themed talismans or something. Just another mechanic in Achaea that will never be used I guess.
I think that the NPCs who want to hire should be hiring other NPCs with about their same skill level. That handles removal of the "No repercussions" issue, while not turning the masses into canon [sic] fodder for the folks who come just to pretend to RP so they can kill people.
- To love another person is to see the face of G/d
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The entire point of the change was adding additional PK avenues. These ideas that remove them are non-starters. You can come up with additional stuff on top of what they added, but if you're trying to remove the PvP from the changes, I feel like you're barking up the wrong tree.
Pk wasn't the entire point. RP and making the world feel more alive was in there as well.
These changes were made in a large batch with additional changes to PK policies and mechanics. It is clear that the intention was to encourage more PK. Coming up with ideas that remove the PK aspect goes against what the change was clearly made to do, and while they may have merit on their own or in addition to what was implemented, aren't relevant when it comes to changing the mechanics unless they keep some aspect of encouraging PK.
@Makarios
Since the changes were added wherein a denizen will give you a warning, could we get two things?
Or, y'know. Option 3: Have it be something you can see when LOOKing at the target. "This target will hire upon you should you assault them."
Ah yes, IF TARGET IS KAREN (true)
I don't know how to code, but I feel like that's how code works.
That's sort of the fundamental problem, if you ask me. The changes around denizens really feel like we're trying to solve a roleplay problem with a PK hammer, which both isn't going to solve the issue and leads to the obvious frustrations.
Keorin has avoided hunting most sentient beings since the start. The problem is that not hunting sentients kind of sucks from a gameplay perspective. You end up cut off from a huge swathe of bashing areas, you become unable to easily take part in hunting contests, you lose a common social activity, and for no benefit. Roleplay doesn't need benefit, of course, but a roleplay choice with all mechanical downside and no mechanical upside isn't one that most people are going to want to take. This is why the choice to hunt sentients is almost always a gameplay decision, rather than a roleplay one. After all, the only time people care if you hunt sentients are when people try to use it to make moral equivalency arguments.
Changing that means adding roleplay resources that are sorely lacking. It means being clear what happens to a denizen you kill, so people actually have a shared understanding of what hunting entails (it's absurd to me that we still don't have that basic fact established). It means that hunting needs to actually have roleplay benefits and consequences, and not solely be in the realm of gameplay. And it means making -not- hunting denizens into a real choice, not a roleplay decision with solely mechanical downside.
This contract business -could- be an interesting part of a broader set of changes, it isn't going to address any of these problems on its own. It's another mechanical solution to a problem rooted in roleplay, and while it gives a disincentive to hunting certain denizens, it sure doesn't give any alternatives to hunting sentients. Some hunters will just eat the contracts, others will learn to avoid the particular denizens they have to avoid, but I don't think that anyone will treat denizens less like experience balloons simply because of this change.
I don't feel like we're lacking in the PK avenues personally. If the denizen hiring thing was to encourage more PK that seems like a poor choice in a poor direction.
RP needs more buffs. Needs to have purpose and a reason. It feels like it's being put on the back burner more and more in favour of the PK scene and that is a real shame.
I think a lot of people are viewing this as some sort of trap for people that don't want to PvP, as opposed to what it actually is, a lever for people to pull if they want to engage in pvp without necessarily going full open PK. The RP discussion is, in my view, a red herring for people to try to get a system removed that they don't like, rather than just accepting that it's an interesting option that was added which is mostly focused on people that want to PK.
This was the reason given in the announce post for the changes: "We also wish to better convey the fact that Achaea's denizen population are real inhabitants of the world and not simply 'bashing fodder'."
The reasoning that was given was clearly a roleplay one. If instead, the goal here is to give people to experience a bit more danger without going dauntless/mark, that's a very different conversation to be had. But accusing people of focusing on the roleplay side as focusing on a red herring is pretty unfair when they're responding to the actual documented reason for the changes. You also have plenty of people (like me) who are as far from "I want this system removed because I don't like it" as you can get who nonetheless think that this was a poor implementation of the stated goal.
I think it's disingenuous for one of the bigger pk players to insist that a system that introduced more pk is amazing and wonderful and anyone who disagrees is setting traps to argue against pvp. There has been a wide variety of responses to this change, all the way from it's horrible and needs to be reversed, to it's ok but has problems, to it won't actually change anything once we figure out what denizens will hire. We get it, you like pk and think a system that potentially introduces more pk is a positive thing - to you. But please be more accepting of the idea that not everyone thinks this idea is interesting. Throwing out terms like red herring just makes it look like you've been deaf to the real arguments that have been given against this change.
There is absolutely no way anyone who was looking to engage in PVP would want to do so by initiation via marks. That makes no sense at all. You don't decide to get into architecture by constructing the Taj Mahal as your first project.
The thing is,virtually everyone criticising the system aren't trying to come up with additional or more immersive ways of encouraging PK. They are almost exclusively discussing how they would prefer it be a PvE change.
This is clearly a change designed to benefit people that partake in PvP in Achaea. People that have no intention to partake in that system not on the merits of the system, but rather because they don't partake in PvP, aren't offering effective criticism or alternatives by discussing removing the PK incentives. It is clear that the people that the change was aimed at, the people partaking with PvP, are on the whole happy with it. Virtually all discussion thus far from those that don't PvP and aren't criticising a strawman of the system, has been essentially "I wish this was directed at people that don't want to PK instead, here's how I would do that for non-PKers!"
Those ideas might have merit as a separate system from this one. But they don't have merit as a replacement for this one. Since they neglect to address one of (but perhaps not the only) fundamental reasons for the introduction of the system, the incentives for additional avenues of PK.
That's the core of the problem though. The guy who loves pk is OK with a system that creates more avenues for pk while the people who avoid pk and don't like it dislike a system that creates more of it. You're essentially arguing that the people who don't want more pk are wrong because they don't want more pk.
Yes, because if they don't want to pk than they have no right to argue that the system should be removed from the players that do pk, given that the system is entirely opt-in. It's essentially the same as people that don't play board games arguing that people that play board games shouldn't be able to open a board game shop because they don't want to see more board games. It shouldn't matter to them, because they don't even play board games. Why does it matter if it's there if you don't have to participate?
After reading the thread I have concluded this already came to pointless arguments. You already get told which denizen will hire, so you can completely avoid this system by just actually paying attention to what you're doing beyond pressing F5. And honestly I still am baffled about the huge comfort bubble a lot of the playerbase seems to have created (excluding of course cases like Synthus).
80% of the skills of every class are designed to harm other players, despite the RP focus, this game is designed to encourage pvp interactions and even beyond all that there is a large amount of pve things to do, like honour quests, forays, and all of the administrative work that cities require. I mean after all it's just a death over a contract, it's not like it will be happening again in any foreseeable future if you avoid killing that denizen. Also, the amount of griefing this game has seen in the past has been very nasty and this seems very mild in comparison.
If anything, admins should maybe tune denizens that hire on areas < 85+ in order for people of lower levels to be able to hunt safely, and if it's someone who does not wish to get involved into combat can just switch to the next orc or ogre. Vasher suggestion of an influence like interaction with denizens would open even more the avenues of interaction among the npcs of the game while also addressing most of the concerns of people who does not wish to die over hunting areas.
Every time PvE gets incorporated into PvP the PKers whine until it gets removed, so I guess it is the PvEers turn to complain. But as is the system is more an annoyance than anything else as far as I can see.
Should we make PKers have to roleplay it out for 5 minutes before taking these marks? What about a voyage you have to do to take these npc marks.. Will the incursion of a different aspect of a game into their lives make them mad?
I'm Cucker Tarlson and I'll be back with more bad ideas after this break.
@Amranu just give up dude they're not reading a word you are writing.
It's less that either party is not reading the other and more that there's an essential difference in what each camp considers meaningful.
People who advocate it point to the fact that it's essentially skippable and there only for people who want to get hired on, fine with being hired on, or hapless. They also point to the fact it theoretically adds some characterisation to denizens as something other than xp packets, and additional reasons for pk for the people who want it.
People against it point to the fact that even if it is skippable, it is still infringing on the pve peoples hunting habits for no gain whatsoever to them. Some also point to the fact that its odd that so many proud villages and settlements across the breath of the planet all use foreigners/marks for their dirty job. Sure it might make sense for the heartland of sapience, but for example vertani using marks instead of vertani strains believability.
They also point to the fact that if something is so easily skippable, then it essentially fails at the purpose for which it was purportedly created, which is to add characterisation to denizen settlements thorough the game.
Truth is only one denizen in a village being able to hire is silly. I think the ideal and most obvious solution is to have maybe a very few handful villages (Delos, Thera, Arcadia, Tasurke etc) hire Marks after a certain threshold is crossed, and for the vast majority use denizen champions from their own numbers. This would obviously carry a bigger workload, but if the goal is to add character to the world then this is the only option that doesn't break one thing while trying to shore up another.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
What's worse is that the implementation could have been as simple as creating a new level of village feelings a step above Hated, at which point a very strong denizen chases you anytime you enter the area. For high end hunters this ends up rewarding consistently hunting the same area by introducing a new, stronger opponent and for younger hunters encourages hunting in more areas as opposed to keeping to the same loop.
But, this idea doesn't introduce new avenues for pk, so I suppose it's just a red herring of sorts.
I wouldn't mind seeing that added on its own, yes. But it's a separate system that would take a fair bit more work to setup. I mean, it makes sense that certain denizens would hire marks and that certain villages would send their own to knock you out, they're not mutually exclusive by any means.
Add the two together: Initial contract is always an NPC mark who ambushes you and doesn't stop chasing until one of you dies. Scale it slightly to level: A level 50 person shouldn't get the same NPC as Penwize and vice versa.
Killing the NPC means the next contract is an actual mark.
Getting help in killing the NPC should warn your friends that they're going to pay if they interfere. If they persist, actual contracts on the helpers.
Your average PKer is more of an RP'er and better at PvE than the vast majority of the game, but ya'll aren't ready for that conversation. Thinking that they are separate is entirely on the non-PK camp, because nearly every PKer participates in all of it at a higher rate than you guys give credit for.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
I do just want to say, for all my qualms, I'm glad to see the admin willing to try out more fundamental changes to the structure of things. I'd much rather see the chance for bigger chances than things stuck the way that they are because they've always been that way.