Well, you can feel free to quote me but it won't stop me from shrubbing you if you cross the line!

So you won't police people who do it, until you do. Right. Obviously, the line is different for different people. Why does someone deserve to be shrubbed if they are in good faith playing out their RP, because someone else decided to take it to issues because they feel it is griefing? This is why you can't handle it mechanically.

Dunno what the issue with gorgogs is. I love it when they are released. Nice xp >.>

Not a tangent. If you keep enemy territory as is, the only way to enforce this is through issues and shrubbing people on a case by case basis.

I never say we won't police it (again read what I write!).

And the line is different for different people, depending on the circumstances. It is completely arbitrary and subjective, based on my personal reading of an issue at the time, and I do not look at precedents so the line may move at my whim. If I do get involved, however, I generally give a warning. If my warning isn't heeded, the hammer is usually strong.

Anyway, that's why we usually let the mechanics handle things whenever possible, because people don't usually like my subjective judgments.

You're scared of a ghost. Killings on Prime rarely happen, so unless your characters make walking around in enemy territory a habit, you're confining yourself needlessly.

No, actually I got jumped in places like the Prison and Shallamurine and gorgogs quite often on Nejii, even with a gem and the ability to survive long enough to get out (unless it was a choke/p5/barrier/etc. gank). This was a while ago but given that it's apparently happening MORE now than then I am highly suspicious of any claims that it "rarely happens."

Those are ALL places you get enemied to... there's more to Prime than that and your home city, however.

It's pretty lopsided, particularly in the actual good bashing areas. (again, circa 2010, no idea about post-changes)

I'm moving some posts from the griefing thread to here regarding areas where you can be enemied to.

There are basically two types of enemying:

1. Areas with two defined areas where if you kill a denizen from one side, you will be enemied in that side's area.

2. Areas that are shared with two groups. In this case, while you can still be enemied to a group, you won't be considered in enemy territory (because it is impossible to have an area share two loyalties).

If you wish, feel free to list all areas where you feel players should be able to defend mobiles and those where they shouldn't. One thing that PISSES ME OFF is some people have said that mobs don't care if they get killed. Yes, they do! If players can't protect them, maybe we can think of other ways they can better defend themselves if an enemy arrives!

Estarra, I understand (and adore) that we have more than just featureless bashing areas. But at the same time, we need places to bash. If you make killing sentient mobs a serious decision with serious repercussions, you must needs introduce more areas with non-sentients to bash.

What is your expectation for how bashing areas should work? (And by that, I mean places with relatively plentiful, lucrative mobs to kill, whether or not it also has a rich lore background and quest potential.) Should we honestly need to fear for our lives any time we kill a sentient? Should we expect to be harassed and killed by other players for doing so? Should the mobs themselves be made more difficult in an attempt to give consequences?

You run into the issue where the Krokani see you coming and you're a hated enemy, and actually put up a decent fight in response. Is it something that won't bother me at all, and thus I slaughter them with impunity? Or is it something dangerous to a demigod, and thus suicide for a level 40?

I honestly think you're running into a contradiction here in mechanics. I can't think of a way to fix this where you have a varied and interesting bashing experience as you raise in the levels, but where killing them actually matters, AND where you won't be harassed by anyone who decides they don't like you and oh look, you're in enemy territory. Not without a massive change to the game. (Something like all bashing areas are also villages, say.)

The trouble IMO is that two kinds of enemying (to a player org, and to an NPC org) are treated identically, so whenever you balance things by adjusting for one (e.g., make exp loss higher for demigods in enemy territory, as a means of making raids more risky), it affects the other in ways that are not always beneficial (e.g., makes it so huge amounts of high-level bashing areas become too dangerous to hunt in). People keep calling for eliminating or changing enemying, but that is not necessary. All you really need to do, and it's probably quite easy to do in code, is decouple those two types of enemying for the purposes of experience loss. That is:

• Die in player organizational enemy territory (e.g., prime Magnagora): Megabad XP loss.
• Die in NPC organizational enemy territory (e.g., Castle Djarrakh): Much less XP loss.

But after making this change, you still have Avenger do as it does now. So there's no Avenger protection in NPC enemy areas, but you don't also get the second whammy of super-high XP loss.
So enemy territory for krokani still serves its intended purposes:

• People can defend NPCs that are important to them.
• NPCs react sensibly to someone who's been murdering them stopping by for tea.

No need to give up any of that. Just decouple it from the "disincentive to casual raids" XP megapenalty. That's all you have to do.

The only coding wrinkle in this is that there are a few enemy org areas that would have to be handled specially. When doing exp loss, you can check which kind of enemy territory by seeing if the org is an NPC area (e.g., Castle Djarrakh) or a city/commune/guild/order, but you might have to make a coded exception for a few orgs: Moonspirit, Nightspirit, Nil, Celestia, etc., so those are treated as "player org" experience losses.

I honestly think this would make all the arguments about "don't make bashing areas enemy" vanish in a puff of code, without losing any of the real reasons why you want bashing areas to enemy.

So #2 would seem to explain why Hilfarae is not enemy territory and why the merian/gorgogs got split up into separate local areas and then made into enemy territory.

I've been asking for Tainted Broadcasting Centre to have enemy territory for years now. In fact, I still have emails from support saying "We'll consider it." I'm hoping it was just forgotten about under the whole plate of things the admin worked on through that time. So I'd like to bring it up as a candidate now that we're back here.

I feel like it falls into enemy type #1. If need be, it could be essentially split into two halves and have two separate enemy territories.

I think we'd all like things to be a bit less pick and choose which territories receive enemy territory for seemingly arbitrary reasons. I am sure they only seem that way because we don't know why most of the time and sometimes there's just higher priority stuff on the admin's plate to do.

What Lendren just said is what I was basically trying to say here.

Please do give it a bit of consideration.

Yeah, if you're happy how it works now, in general, splitting PC and NPC enemy exp loss would go a long way. I may have overthought things.

I agree with the proposal to differentiate between org enemy territory and denizen enemy territory from the standpoint of experience loss only. It is definitely true that people go for targets in enemy territory not only to kill them, but especially because it will be a painful death, experience/essence-wise. This is one mechanic that seems to encourage griefing.

What would be the triggering mobs besides Norchatine and Globglob? The experiments are about as non-sentient as you can get, and the fishers are not much better. It would make more sense for the children and elders, but wouldn't the Center need to be split for it to happen?

Oh i don't care for it to be one whole thing.

I just believed I remembered someone saying it should have two in the past. One for Norchatine's side and another for the scientists side.

One more vote in favor of letting NPCS still enemy but just removing the extra xp loss from deaths in NPC-enemy areas. NPC-enemy areas being any place that players have no amnesty control over to clarify. (eg npc areas are gorgogs, illithoids, inner sea, etc but not water, celestia, moon, owned villages, prime cities, etc)

Yes please.