In regards to the Magi-Occultist example, I've been on both the giving and the receiving end. Every old school Glom has stories of being kited uselessly around the commune by Narsrim for, quite literally, hours every day. The stress from being a leader in those times caused me serious OOC distress that would even follow me around and get my heart pounding when I was working alone and mulling over what I could do for the people who needed me to come up with a solution that would protect their hobby.

One of the many failed solutions I tried was pretty similar to what Cuber suggested--I went and camped Serenwilde for about an hour and a half, yelling about how none of them were innocent because they all said nothing when they knew what Narsrim was doing. So, of course, I went with a specific, only half-griefing intention. (I promised them all that I would leave if I could get someone with some sort of position to post a condemnation of Narsrim. The Seren who said he/she would do it ended up not posting. Whatever.)

While I was doing it, though, I had fun. Lots of it. Each individual fighter didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of removing me from the commune, so in retrospect I'm sure they all felt small and worthless, but it is loads of fun to single-handedly split up groups, isolate targets, soft-lock nublets so you can run away to handle the people who're actually dangerous with support, and quickly kill as many as you can to keep yourself alive. I bet your Occultist raider had a similar experience. Sure, you weren't really equipped to take him on solo, and the way you handle a group when you're a lone character with an affliction class would really emphasize how you would never stand a chance solo, but the group combat has its own appeal. I'm almost positive that your Occultist didn't leave out of boredom. Just the Magi.

It would be great if people were able to "bash" the higher levels with influencing so that you can better say, don't want to be victim of PK? Don't hurt innocent npcs

I suppose this thread just -had- to turn into an 'avenger is broken' thread in the end...

What can I say. People like thar pvp greefers.

I am very impressed at the amount of sensible responses I have seen in this thread and am pleased that my little jabberings were found so interesting by many. While I believe I have made my opinions clear in the prime post of this thread, I will respond to a few random comments which struck my interest.



My personal opinion is that violence is not neccesary to enforce sociological structure, usually peer pressure takes a much more effective role than any amount of violence ever could. Without getting into a huge debate about this, I personally feel that violence stems from the inability to solve things in more creative ways.

Also, your point suggests that if you are a decent, law-abiding citizen, you will not get killed randomly. I beg to differ, the whole point of my post is that it happens to people who have done nothing to deserve it, other than that they happen to be in the wrong organisation at the wrong time.



I agree, Moiraine, combat can be very exhilirating and all power to you if you find skilled opponents with whom you can have challenging battles, however, again, my point was that what I described happens to people -without- any skill, resources, or friends, or any interest in combat whatsoever. My point was that when there is no skill involved there is no accomplishment and as such, I feel that the example which you describe, while relevant, does not refute or explain my main argument.



I am unsure what you speak of; I try to 'torment' at least one person each day, over the last two years of my godhood, that is a -lot- of encounters. Suffice to say, if my actions caused you any distress I would like to apologise for that, as I said, I am no saint and I make mistakes as well.



Please note the disclaimer; please do not accuse me of such things, I find it rather insulting. Every single organisation in the game (except maybe glomdoring) has at one time or another been the top power and gave the others a hard time, as such, whenever I posted this thread, someone could have stood up and said 'OMG! Wez ez w3r3 GRi3feZ7 las7 m0n7h!! Tehz GodZ iz plahyungz fahfuritz!!!oneone'.



I agree that this would probably help, however, in games such as wow, where death has no penalty , I personally find getting PKed by some bastard who is 30 lvls higher than me because I happened to have clicked on the wrong mob as a newbie who had no idea what he was doing when I was giving this game a try not particularly entertaining. While different people experience this differently, I am speaking from the point of view of someone who has no idea what he is doing and his only job is to go up to provide some token resistance and get slaughtered again.



This is true, it is highly likely that everyone in lusternia will at one point or another, experience pvp, whether they like it or not. However, just because you can force pvp on those who do not enjoy it, does not mean that you should. This is one very important point I am trying to make.



All of this said, I understand that this thread might give rise to a discussion about Avenger, however, if you wish to discuss this then please respect that this was not the purpose of this thread and make another one elsewhere. Provide a link here if you want, though Estarra and Charune are very diligent in their work and I am sure they will come across your thread anyway. Thank you.

And as a last note; Amaranta, please do your forum trolling elsewhere.

You poofed my character to the Ravenwood (or, at least, her fleshbody) and she died to guards. And then you rezzed her in that same spot in enemy territory and she died again. Offered both times, so two 4x exp losses. Had to pray.

And then in the following conversation you zapkilled her and she had to pray again.

I figured you were in a particularly bad mood or something. >_>

Ah yes, you were dreamweaving in my temple, in a location where I was talking about private things with a prospective order member.

That is the reason I zapped you, before that, I do recall that you mentioned you were searching for Arel, so I obliged and sent you there. I noticed you die, which was not quite my intention (I was just trying to remove you, I don't like uninvited people in my conversations) so I rezzed you.

Note, I didn't actually realise you were dreamweaving at the time, all I noticed what that suddenly you turned up and I had no idea how long you had been there listening to me.

Regardless, my apology stands and in the interest of not derailing this thread any further, if you wish to continue this debate, please do so through messages.

Lies.

Well, to go back to my earlier post, maybe I should have a skill that gets Avechna to force people to watch plays. That would even things up. Muhahahah.

I believe one of Elostian's main point is that players should not have to rely on administrative enforced measures or game mechanic to be able to play this game without being "griefed". Be a "Gentlemen" as the title of this thread seem to imply.

Except, when it's condensed into that little sentence, a major flaw is highlighted: There is almost always at least one person in each organization who has absolutely no desire or interest in being a "gentleman," and as poor sportsmanship is often rewarded with favours / moral support from friends / etc, they have no real incentive to stop. This is why the Administration ends up having to change things-- when one person is abusing the guard-routine so as to easily slay huge numbers of them solo, they end up needing to be rewritten/buffed/etc. Not due to the playerbase as a whole (or even an organization as a whole), but the unrestrained, aggressive actions of a single individual against an entire organization. Knowing full-well that they aren't going to be stopped, and their friends don't want them to anyways.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Please take another look at my overall point. Know that I understand that was a lot of posts to catch up on, though.

Edit: And clicky my eggs.

Shameless, Moiraine, just shameless. Heh.

At least I don't use words like 'Clickity'!



Edit: Yet

You will succumb to it... Just wait and see.

But indeed, let's try to keep this thread the way it was intended.

I've watched it evolve, from muds in the early 90's, through UO and Meridian 59, to the EQ item looting servers, etc blah blah, boring mmorpg history involving PvP. The funny thing is, it turns to PvP in games that have PvP, but it's still there in the shadows on PvE games as well. Stealing taps, dominating quest mobs, raid denial, training, and quest denial. It comes down to anonymity and accountability.

There is simply no way a community can exist without rules and administration, in my experience. Grey-ganking, pvp ranges, etc were all invented to keep people from damaging the young/weak/whatever because even though 90% of the playerbase frowns on it, you can't stop the person doing it.

People despised training in Everquest, but if you were camping Ghoul Assassin and some wizard who could theoretically push 51% of damage through before you could wasn't respecting "Camp Etiquette", pre "Play-Nice-Policy" official rules, you only had one option. You train his ass and hope that he dies before the mob spawns. Rare mobs in EQ were on a placeholder spawn system, you could get 1 ghoul assassin for every 3 hours or 2 in an hour if you were lucky. Very prevalent PvE "Griefing" here. Before the official policy, NEITHER of you would face repercussions aside from some messageboard post about how you're a dick. Assuming you had a strong guild already, zero consequences.

In UO there was full looting. Have your house key and recall rune stolen? Oops, peace out. Community outrage at thieves and system abusers (going grey, multilpe same names, etc), but without official rules and consequences, someone will always do it.

On WoTmud there were some unspoken rules for darkies. If you're "South" of the Blight, you don't kill *NEWBIE* flagged people. You don't loot corpses when it's a full on 10v1 gank of someone that happened into you on a road and is unknown for the most part. One person tips the balance because of anonymity and lack of official consequences and it instantly degenerates. *NEWBIE* flags become immune from pvp and start following raids around narrating locations. Giant full looting gank squads roam the countrysides.

I could go on with piles of examples, but it always boils down to a lack of official consequences encourages a lack of self-control. Being the "better man" nets you absolutely nothing but a nod from someone you don't care about. For the longest time I wouldn't randomly kill Mag/Gloms under X% of my might, just warn them verbally. I didn't go around enemy territory with the intent of forcing people to pray. You know what that stopped? Nothing. 0 mights still dying on water, at aetherplex, on astral, in I-Prison. So forget that. The only course of action left is to turn up the heat on people who can do nothing but cry to their city leaders in hopes that someone with a brain will reign those people in. It is facilitated in IRE, especially here with planes, by three things:

1) Travel artifacts. These help people escape the repercussions that Charune refers to in people "rising up" to gang on the person. Sorry I am not paying 2000 cr to cubix after someone who is always going to get in, get a newbie on Water, and get out.

2) Ease of escape. I have played no other multiplayer PvP game in my history with easier escape methods than IRE games. There is no "movement points" system, no flee system, no good "choke" points since you don't have to really walk anywhere in Lusternia, and no real way to stop certain escape methods. Cubix, tumble, prism, pyramid to some extent, etc etc etc.

3) PK enforcement. On Achaea I hear it takes a law degree to PK. On Imperian I can kill you for looking at me sideways. Then do it again if you say something afterwards. On Aetolia it's a mixture of the two. Here? The Avenger is a pretty bad joke. There's a reason I have always encouraged flagging systems and pure PvP areas in games that I consult on. If you attack someone, whether in defense of a friend or offensively, you are saying "Yes, I wish to engage in PvP." That's the end of the story, right there. Likewise, if you're out in the RVR area of DAOC, you're either looking to PvP so everyone is attackable, or you're cashing in on Primo exp bonuses by exp'ing in contested territories. Either way, you aren't in the homeland where you can't PvP, so you are saying you want to PvP. WoW PvE servers have the ability to PvP in the open by "flagging". You hit a flagged player or you /pvp and you become attackable. Defending is just... ridiculous. The Avenger should protect those who can't or won't protect themselves. Someone kills you without you hitting back, they get status. You attack back or your friends jump in, your friends should be exposed to PvP, no question.

I can elaborate more but my lunch is almost over. Tootlebugs.

Ohoho, double reply, but I figured this one would take me a while to type while taking calls, so someone else might post in reply to my "game specific" reply while I type it. Joy of joys.

An interesting theory that I subscribe to is anonymity based on "spheres of influence" on a sort of Venn Diagram influencing interaction with others. Variance of behavior is based on the anonymity provided by how interlinked your sphere of influence is with another persons. The more area you share, the more influence that person has or can have on your life.

I treat Jenny at the local restaurant better than I treat a random waitress out of town when I'm on business. It's not always conscious, but I know that keeping my locals happy is more important to me on some levels than caring about what some waiter I'll never see again thinks. This is where programmed behavior or "manners" come into play. Personally, I am always respectful of service industry folks. I say my pleases, my thank yous, don't treat them like servants, and generally tip generously. Where the theory comes into play is if I get bad service from a local, versus bad service from someone outside my sphere of influence; or even good service. I'm more inclined to tip higher on good service to Jenny and keep it even on bad service, than I am to reward good service from a complete stranger and punish for bad service with low or no tip. I don't consider these factors, it's just a reaction tempered by how much influence they have in my life.

Authority is an interesting piece of this theory as it universally shares your whole sphere of influence. As long as the authority is above your own level of authority, that is you can be held accountable by that authority regardless of your own, it will have a 100% influence on your actions. While I don't care about the laws of Amsterdam due to geographical location, it in no way diminishes the sphere of influence interaction were I to be IN Amsterdam where their authority is applicable.

This leads to the Internet. Why does it promote such insanely different behavior? Because, as long as you do not ALLOW spherical interaction (typically through community interaction, such as here), not a single person outside of authority on the internet can influence your circle. The way gaming or any online community is, you end up subjecting your sphere of influence to various levels of outside interaction. You can't join GrandmaKnitters free forum and be an ass, because the community will close on you and you really want those knitting tips. Similarly, if the board is moderated, you also can't spew profanity or the board authority will exert its 100% spherical interaction with you by closing your account and banning your presence. But what if you IP Spoof and rejoin the community and behave yourself, thereby overcoming that authority? You actually didn't, you entered what they all consider to be a new sphere of influence into the picture and you have let all of their spheres influence your own behavior in the maximum, as you aren't a profanity spewing ass anymore.

What does this mean in Lusternia? That as long as you behave within the limits set by Absolute Authority and you do not care about your spherical community interaction and have the means to eliminate or avoid Community Enforced Authority, you can do whatever the hell you want, tempered only by your common decency towards people who have zero possible real life impact for you.

Edit: I did forget to mention that the usual counter to this involves crime and Mutually Assured Destruction. Criminals typically attempt to evade or conceal their actions. Those that don't often have mental illnesses or disorders. MAD is easily defined as anyone typically in the position of global nuclear war can be defined as having a global sphere of influence. Typically as power on a global scale increases, so does sphere of influence.

i skimmed atleast three of the pages and read the starting post, but if i'm missing the point forgive me

But i sometimes find that some players take another characters RPing much to personally. And i find this very limiting, in situations as a Magnagoran in Fain's Order, i actually find it conflicting and LESS enjoyable that when i do something IC that my OOC self has to worry about offending someone else OOC. An example of this would be a new player who joined Mag as an elfen, i believe his or her name was Dolce, well if you know Mag/Fain RP, Elfen are look down upon so i gave him/her a hard time for being a 'lesser' race as i felt this was an IC thing, but i started to feel guilty OOC and immediatly sent a Tell saying it was just in good RP fun that i was giving him/her a hard time, to which i got no response and felt pretty bad OOC. But shouldnt a Mag in Fain's order not feel guilty? Even those two characterizations individually, when Ralanbek does something 'evil' or betray someone or create conflict or spread dissent, that should be natural for his character and ideally -OOC me- shouldn't feel bad for playing my role appropriately. So i guess what i'm saying is me being a 'gentlemen' out of character i feel inhibits my gameplay IC...idk, sometimes i feel this makes Ralanbek too nice and maybe other Mag's as well.

For instance, there was Sthai running for City Leader not to long ago against Morvior. I felt that this was something natural her character would do being a part of Fain's order her character naturally strives to make it to the top and betray and cause conflict even to her characters own citymates, but in the citypost-wars that ensued it seemed that people took what i viewed as her characters natural RP personally, making public attacks that sometimes i didnt think were in good fun, and may offend OOC. It seemed like people saw this disruption as anti-Mag what a citizen should not do, some people even said that what she was doing going against the power was bad for the Engine...that the Engine needed its weaker players like the Engine needs its smaller cogs, but from what i've read and from the cities choice of divine i find that contradictory... the RP for the Engine i feel should be to not accept weakness and naturally give deadweight a hard time atleast .

blah, i'm coming down off a caffeine high from coffee so if you cant follow i'm sorry...not thinking to straight.

I guess what i'm trying to say is that i feel some players being to soft and complaining about getting killed or getting betrayed and making it a big deal makes the game less enjoyable for me, since i in turn feel guilty about doing things i feel are natural to my character and his allegiances because someone may be overly sensitive and get hurt OOC.

ok i dont feel like i'm making any sense, so i'm just gonna stop... blah

I don't understand why you stopped killing in the tunnels, very very few will attack you while under avenger protection, and if someone does they can only realistically do it once. One death is not going to set you back any time at all. I just pretend the other player was a group of 10 argo cave-fishers and move on.

It is easier to gain exp in enemy areas, but you really can do PvE all day long without having any PvP issues at all on prime.




A thousand times yes to this. This is the biggest issue I have with the avenger by far.




I agree with this to some extent, that said I also think some players do get a reputation over time. This is not the thread to name names but there are a core group of total jerks who play this game and I go out of my way to avoid any interaction with them IC or OOC. The problem I see is that people tend to only react based on their own personal interactions (which makes sense) and some of these very jerks are actually very nice to their side. So the players on their side see the jerks as cool while the other sides jerks they call jerks, and visa versa. As a result the jerks maintain a social support network both IC and OOC even though they are objectively not gentleman.

So I guess I am trying to say that the negative reputation you can get has a floor and thus it does not limit behavior very well. While positive reputation builds far slower and gains you very little outside of your in game orgs. It is very very rare to see anyone from an opposite org defend someone OOC. This is why I try to maintain some anonymity OOC to attempt to interact with the player base in a more neutral fashion, but it is of course not perfect.

My personal comment is that people's behavior changes based on what they know is possible, not because the facts differ. What I mean by this is that no one complains when an agro teaming NPC kills them as soon as they enter a room. Why complain? There is no point, the game was just coded to do that. It is only when you know that the agro teaming thing that killed you had a choice that you become upset. The exp/time loss is the same in both cases but one makes you see red while another just makes you sigh. Both can be avoided (don't go into that room/area) but one restriction makes you feel like someone is controlling you and ruining your day while another you just learn to play around.

So... what you're saying is that when you go around, give someone a hard time and kill them, they can't complain, because then you feel guilty and that isn't fun?









...Wot?