Keep Conflict Alive
-
Guys you know this will never be solved. This is directly analogous to the age old economics standoff: Big Business VS Big Government
…and they still haven't figured out a solution.
We won't come to a consensus through this democratic hug-fest so maybe DMs should just lay down the law and say how it will be. Once we have the law we can play accordingly without any grey areas.
Should DMs be consulted when PvP is escalating?
Should they be present when PvP actually happens? (already figured out)
Should they be directly involved in the outcomes of PvP?
Should they alter the outcomes after PvP?I don't think its possibly to come to an agreement through this discussion since it's evident that both sides of it are very stubborn.
-
I don't know where this turned into PvP vs PvM.
This is about how much influence people think DMs should be exerting to stop tasteless PvP or to stop characters who are providing a fun and interesting time to other players being ended too soon by better established characters.
Say, for instance, a level 3 demon cultist who's sparking all sorts of interesting activity on the server gets captured. Either:
-
He gets executed, people pat him on the back OOCly for how long he lasted, the end.
-
DMs intervene in an IC manner. The cultist's demon master busts him and sets him off on a double-or-nothing agenda and cuffs him around the ear, telling him he's doing good enough to be saved once, if he wants any more favours he needs to get the blood of four paladins who are still alive to the demon.
If he gets captured again, oh well, the end. If he got captured in the first place due to some epic event rather than a tasteless gank, then again, pass on stretching out the story. What's the harm in this?
Player characters should be pursuing what is IC, DMs should be providing a means by which doing what is IC does not also mean an end to stories but their growth on CoA.
-
-
The DMs have every right to intervene. They are also telling a story and also benefit and enjoy well played intrigue and adventure. They hate it as much as the players when the fun is prematurely ended due to hardcore PCs (or even lame monster AI)
I mean come on…let the DMs have their fun too, they certainly make fun for the rest of us more than enough times.
-
…this strange opinion that mechanics aren't necessary to roleplay.Well, they are. They are when you are playing NWN or D&D.
Yes, mechanics are necessary to roleplay.
Notice that I did not say,
"A powerful character means good roleplay."Sometimes, you make mechanically suboptimal choices because that makes the mechanics fit the roleplay better. If my Lathanderite Paladin hates undead, he will take Improved Turn Undead and Extra Turn Undead and enjoy them.
Look, if you log into NWN after playing here for over a year you basically are telling me…
How do you know if someone who logs in has played here for over a year? Or is that your approach to anyone who logs in?
And is there a way to play this game without inadvertently telling you, "Open season! Come and get me, if you want, and if I die it's my own fault!"
…I'll just take note of what I did wrong and do better next character.
Except I did not do anything wrong. 'Better' does not mean mechanically stronger, 'better' means 'more interesting to interact with'. I do not, and will not, consider not choosing to play the most overpowered PvP-centric build a mistake.
Mechanics are necessary to roleplay, and I would like to not be punished when I use them to roleplay, instead of using them to do 'better' than my last character and ensure I'll win PvP with that one.
-
Edit: Ah, forget it. I barely play here anymore anyway.
-
PvP is as much a part of roleplaying as is chopping down orcs, pushing your political agenda, or plundering ruins.
-
No one said they're "awesome". It's a different point of view, and frankly calling someone elitist because it doesn't agree with yours smacks of elitism. Quite a few players here want a overhaul of CoAs philosophy regarding PVP, and we can state as much, doesn't mean those who choose to stay and play CoA wont play by the rules the DMs have set. I think we should be answering the questions GnomishInventor set out and get this on-topic.
Should DMs be consulted when PvP is escalating? Yes.
Should they be present when PvP actually happens? Preferably.
Should they be directly involved in the outcomes of PvP? No.
Should they alter the outcomes after PvP? No. -
PvP is as much a part of roleplaying as is chopping down orcs, pushing your political agenda, or plundering ruins.
Only for some character concepts.
If you're playing a highwaymanit will probably be more than that, yes, and being exceptionally skilled at facing adventurers (IE having a PvP powerbuild) is reasonable. You spend your life mugging them, and Skill Focus: Ride will not help with that.
If you're playing a Kelemvorite Cleric who wants to clear the world of undead, then it happens only as often as other PCs appear who are overt necromancers and undead. And then it makes a good deal more sense to have spells and feats that are aimed towards the cleansing of undead than being a PvP powerbuild.Is the choice we have between playing a highwayman and just accepting your character will be short-lived due to gank?
Or should we, instead, have the courtesy the Cult has been a very nice example of, show some understanding that not everyone is a PvP powerhouse, and think before we kill? -
Fireblood, just because you don't have a "powerbuild" - and a lot of stylish, evil, successful characters don't - doesn't mean you don't know how spells, skills, stats, potions and so on work. You can always defend yourself from anything, you just need to learn the mechanics behind it. Also, the word "powerbuild" is getting old and has no real meaning. People build their characters in a way that reflects their concept. If they incidentally make it as strong as possible- well, then we should congratulate them for having the good sense to do so.
What you don't get, Fireblood, is that very few evil characters are going to kill your near helpless, gimped priestess of Kelemvor. They'll probably have a good chuckle at how terrible of a fight she put up and send her on her way, humiliated. FD usually just happens when you go out of your way to get it: You piss off the wrong person too much. You continue fighting/plotting against someone who warned you several times. You call Tyr a retard in front of his high priest. You commit ten murders and are caught. You play a cool evil character and run into a gank-squad. The situations you are making up just don't happen. I've never met an evil PC that had no style at all because usually DMs on any server are pretty quick to give them a 1-on-1 about why they shouldn't just FD everyone they come across, and trust me, I have heard that talk a few times before.
@Broken:
Should DMs be consulted when PvP is escalating? Yes.
Should they be present when PvP actually happens? Preferably.
Should they be directly involved in the outcomes of PvP? No.
Should they alter the outcomes after PvP? No.Exactly. Wow. How'd you sum up all my incoherent rambling so nicely? I approve.
-
Should DMs be consulted when PvP is escalating? Yes.
Should they be present when PvP actually happens? Preferably.
Should they be directly involved in the outcomes of PvP? Yes.
Should they alter the outcomes after PvP? Yes. -
Them unlimited bloodstones and bleakstones are actually quite powerful. >>
On the topic of PvP though, it's ultimatly up to the people involved and -EVERYONE- should agree to the terms of such. -
I don't think anything breaks my immersion more than having an OOC tell-fest with everyone involved just to make sure they are okay with what is or is not going to happen.
Unless you mean "write it down into the rules, bold it, sticky it, make everyone read it, and when they break a rule they get the old 'Hey, do you mind if we talk for a moment?' tell from a Dungeon Master.", which is already how it works.
-
Well I mean, it doesn't hurt to say "Hey guys, at the end of this, are we going to just beatdown eachother or go for the full kill thing?"
of course, it doesn't make sense to say "Let's meet up at such and such place in such a such manner."
-
@Swifty:
Them unlimited bloodstones and bleakstones are actually quite powerful. >>
Let alone that this does not matter with the topic, does not add anything to the discussion and is simply, like we say in Italy, someone that "throws the stone and hides the hand", we do NOT have unlimited bloostones, we buy them, and we do NOT have unlimited bleakstones (we cannot even buy those)
On the topic of PvP though, it's ultimatly up to the people involved and -EVERYONE- should agree to the terms of such.
I don't agree with this. It comes a point when, no matter if you agree or not, I'm gonna end your character.
You don't want it? Don't get in the position to. -
Here's a bottom line:
Some of this is stuff we want the community's feedback on.
Some of this isn't negotiable really.
DMs do not want to deal with shitty PvP AFTER the event. It is a horrible headache for us to spend days, literally days between several DMs, investigating what went wrong when things go wrong and fix it. Because
Should they alter the outcomes after PvP? Yes.
That's been a standard for 10 years, every time there is a major problem and we have to fix it somehow. But alter the outcomes after PvP in an OOC manner has always been a very poor solution.
So, we began to insist on:
Should DMs be consulted when PvP is escalating? Yes.
Should they be present when PvP actually happens? Preferably.We've been doing this for two years. The problems abated somewhat, but by no means disappeared. Even worse, there is a tendency for players not familiar with the fact that CoA is a Storytelling server and not an Action server, as so they really have the mindset that PKing and PvP "wins" plots because it ends the character the opponent is playing.
That is not our server. We tell cooperative stories, where everyone plays a part, the story unfolds, tensions build up, there will be a resolution eventually that may end a character's career–but telling the story to get there is the "winning" and not over seeing the death and full-looting of your "opponent" because on CoA, you don't have opponents, you have partners in storytelling.
Should they be directly involved in the outcomes of PvP? Yes. (dirty secret, we have been for years, but never fully put thought into how we approach it and when to involve ourselves OOC and when IC)
That's not huggy feely care-bear. Its avoiding a pretty horrible style of play where levels and mechanical power will always trump a player's ability to involve people in exciting stories. Even Pyatt Pree got numerous "get out of jail free" cards from the DMs so he could tell his story.
So–DMs will continue to control PvP--I'm just looking for ways we can influence it better. I'm actually more than a little surprised that some people who we have helped survive PvP in the past so they could play out their stories longer are now claiming that you should entirely trust the players--even though they've come complaining to us when it turns out players aren't always the 'best' judges since they're involved in what so often feels like competition.
What I wouldn't want is a hypocritical approach where some people get helped, and others don't and we create a sense that some people are "untouchable" because they're more interesting to the DMs.
Everyone keeps seeing the SLIME CULT in these examples, they're missing that numerous other players were helped to survive so that a very interesting story could be told.
Part of that makes me suspect there is some envy playing out here. "Why is the CULT getting all this help but my past PCs didn't?" We're very sorry if you feel that way, and you can talk to us about it. But try to view the bigger picture I've tried to raise with this thread.
And that is
How can DMs continue to ensure conflicts play out in exciting stories for EVERY player on the server by preventing efforts by some to 'win' through a quick PKing before that conflict has reached an interesting level for the player base.
I put forward a few ideas, but people keep wanting to return to an argument over a single group of players who have gotten far less from the DMs than many of you seem to think.
-
TBH, the bottom line is this:-
Has these new restrictive PvP rules caused many players to leave?Yes
-
Sometimes PvP and FD isn't fun at first. DMs allowing the tension to rise by saving characters seems cool from a certain perspective, but from another perspective if I were to come up with a bold and awesome concept, I could get away with anything for a time, just because the DMs like my character.
That said, it's really easy to find an excuse to FD, and if you're playing an evil character, or a character based on conflict for that matter, I would direct you to a placable that I believe is or used to be in the starting area. It said that you have a responsibility to make things fun for other players. If conflict-based characters take this to heart, (I'm talking evil characters and paladins along with paladin-like concepts,) then you can have a lot of scary dangerous PvP and also a lot of fun. B-Rock is a perfect example of one of these kinds of players. He's had a shitton of really successful evil-doers, and everyone had a blast.
It's never fun to lose a character. I've been party to losing characters that deserved it and definitely did not deserve it. Good endings and bad. Good endings are even a little sad, and the bad ones often leave you angry. But in a few days, you just roll up a new character, and make a new story.
tl'dr: Not sure if I like the idea of DM intervention for PvP, unless the PvP was really lame to begin with, like a senseless mass murder or a gank. Conflict-based characters have a responsibility. B-Rock is awesome. PvP and FD isn't fun sometimes, but it's a part of the setting. It's also what makes your character all the more precious. It's okay to feel upset for a few days, even a week, but after you can just roll a new character feeling just fine.
-
Also as for Moloch's question, which I believe is basically asking, "How can we help prolong conflict in an interesting manner while still having PvP?"
Here's one thing that I think players could do, and DMs could do as well, that I always thought was really cool. Of course it couldn't be overdone, but it's definitely something we could add to the list.
Left for Dead.
There are few things cooler than the character that you thought was dead being still alive. And I'm not talking the guy that got true rezzed or anything like that. I'm talking more like the Gandalf, dude.
Okay, for example. You are Paladin McGoody. You caught some guy in the sewers selling bloodstones. It makes sense to maybe kill him on the spot when he tries to get away or fights against your citizen's arrest. But OOCly you decide you don't want to cut off this story so early on. This character is interesting. So you beat him down until he's a bloody pulp on the floors of the sewers. Your character can make the assumption that he's dead, and leave. He can twitch back into conciousness and crawl out of the sewers in shame, vowing revenge. Plot saved. Plot enrichened.
If the DMs are present, at some point during the fight when it's clear our bloodstone dealing hero is going to lose, they can say he loses his footing and falls into the rushing current of the sewage. Presumably dead. Kind of like what happened with caek's sand man, except this time he comes back.
As I said, it shouldn't be overdone, but it wouldn't hurt.
-
This whole thread is making me nervous to do anything.
-
Fear will keep them in line.