PK, Bounties, Shrines, and Protected Territories

Jeremy Saunders

We have had a number of issues revolving around this as of late, so I would like to get some feedback from players so we can lay out some better guidelines.

Bounties and PK are the same thing.

If you can PK them, you can bounty them. Which means you should only be placing bounties on people you should be able to go out and PK. Maybe you are too lazy or too weak to do it at the moment. Sneaking around PK rules by placing bounties on people is lame.

This brings two situations we have had a number of issues about lately.

1. Bounties for trespassing in adjacent territories

This covers stuff like the Khandava forest for Khandava, the desert for Antioch, etc. I see cities/councils posting bounties on players that have entered those areas. I would say that bounties would only be placed on people you could alternately go out and kill as well. Maybe they are poking around, you do not have the time or manpower to kill them, so you bounty them. I feel like this is great.

The problem is that bounties are happening on anyone walking through that area. Maybe they are just walking to a different area, etc. We want people to be able to quest and bash without too much fear of constantly getting attacked (unless they deserve it).

I would like to keep it a general rule (Only bounty/PK people who are threatening your city). However, some people are attacking and/or killing people in those areas with no intentions like that. 

2. Bounties and PK on players in 'protected' areas

Examples of this is the Bloodstone Quarry or the Necropolis. On one had I like the idea of defending and killing people in areas the city has declared under their protection. However, I think we can all see how this will get out of hand, unless the admin has some type of switch that shows who can protect what areas. Stuff like the Necropolis or Demons Pass are hostile to all players and make no sense to fall under a protected territory.

Killing over Altars

This one is not quite as open to debate, but I will put it in here so that we can discuss it. We have no problem killing people who are desecrating at altars. I also have no problem with attacking people who are doing the sacrifice ritual, as long as you are in the room and witness it, and you are actively working to desecrate it. You can also attack them if they do a ritual that attacks you, but not for ones that they do only to benefit themselves, like Fortune.

However, killing people for bashing based on the assumption they will use it at the altar, or because they 'may' give the corpses to someone who will, is not allowed. There are too many variables it's very difficult for us to enforce consistently. People in sects just want to bash and level sometimes (hard for some PKers to imagine).

Let me know your thoughts so that we can have some better guidelines for players and base our issue decisions on those. Keep in mind I would rather have brief guidelines vs hard rules because there in our game there is always more to the story.

Jeremy Saunders

Keep in mind, I hate adding more and more 'rules' for PK. I want to encourage PK as much as possible.

Sarrius

I will say, at the risk of giving myself less to do, but:

Jeremy said:

We have had a number of issues revolving around this as of late, so I would like to get some feedback from players so we can lay out some better guidelines..

Killing over Altars

This one is not quite as open to debate, but I will put it in here so that we can discuss it. We have no problem killing people who are desecrating at altars. I also have no problem with attacking people who are doing the sacrifice ritual, as long as you are in the room and witness it, and you are actively working to desecrate it. You can also attack them if they do a ritual that attacks you, but not for ones that they do only to benefit themselves, like Fortune.

However, killing people for bashing based on the assumption they will use it at the altar, or because they 'may' give the corpses to someone who will, is not allowed. There are too many variables it's very difficult for us to enforce consistently. People in sects just want to bash and level sometimes (hard for some PKers to imagine).

Let me know your thoughts so that we can have some better guidelines for players and base our issue decisions on those. Keep in mind I would rather have brief guidelines vs hard rules because there in our game there is always more to the story.

Are you  saying that if somebody desecrating an altar personally witnesses a sect member offering corpses to raise the belief, the desecrator is within rights to kill them within, say, a few minutes? As much as I'd like to live in the utopia where nobody abuses that rule, we all know that people like me likely will do just that. I have no problem with the rule because there are lots of ways to get around being personally present at an altar to offer something (give it to somebody strong who can take on the desecrater, give it to somebody who has a portable altar, etc), but in the best interest of everybody else, maybe this needs to be rethought. Especially because we won't be eliminating any issues with this, which is your goal expressly - instead, the 'line' drawn is just moved a little further away from the starting line. We go from 'I killed him while he was bashing' to 'I killed him after he was done with a round of bashing', and that means the grey area is somewhere in the area of 'can I kill a dude who has a portable altar if he uses it in front of me' and 'can i kill the dude with a portable altar for providing himself as a means of escape from my general vicinity', 'can i kill the people using somebody else's portable altar as if they were offering in front of me because i know they are doing that to avoid me while still combating my defiling' etc.

If it were me? I would give it a trial run, but I have to reign in my optimism for this one.. and I'd lay down the limits of I just tried to poke us toward right now, so people are very clear about where the line is drawn for what can get you an issue.

Mathiaus

I think in this situation he's looking for more of a, 'within reason, I see this person is attempting to reverse my desecrating. I have seen this person do this before my very presence, not through third party means. I feel slighted, and shall consider killing them for ruining my progress.'. We all have a pretty good sense if the person is going to fight back or not by now, since Imperian is the small town where everyone knows everyone. Just don't be over zealous with stuff like that, and don't be the dick finding every reason up and down to grief someone.

Ahkan

@Mathiaus @Sarrius

Relying on the players to demonstrate:

-Good decision making

-Common sense 

-Maturity

-Restraint

Is a recipe for failure. The grey area is a spawning ground for terrible pk exploits. You should be able to kill someone who drops a hostile ritual or someone who sanctifies in front of you. That's it. You can't kill Person A for giving corpses to Person B who kicked the piss out of you and sanctified anyways. You can't prove that person B didn't kill 1 orc. That being said, the cry face titty baby whiners need to man up and learn that putting out the fire while the arsonist is sitting there with a flame thrower probably is not the best course of action. Unrotunately, it's a put up or shut up scenario. If you want to sanctify with impunity and deny pk to all comers,  TOKEN PURCHASE 19 CONFIRM

@Jeremy

Sort of curious why Khandava merited mention here. No one has been bountied for trespass in the forest who didn't attack or refuse to leave. The guy who did that got eaten by a tree offering him delicious demonic candy. Usually when we bounty for trespass is some idiot trying to walk into the council to bypass guards.

Svorai

@Ahkan, I think it was more of, "This has happened in the past too" since others are doing it now, and we want to make sure they know, "Yes we are aware that they did it, and we are looking into cleaning it up." 

Khizan

I like the idea of a city having some kind of control over their adjacent areas; controlling that extra bit of territory makes them feel more like an actual city state.

The big problem with this, of course, is that the world is laid out in such a fashion that there are major bashing areas that require you to path through these areas, and I don't like that. It is, to my mind, totally cool and acceptable for Antioch to want to attack magickers trespassing in their desert. This makes sense. It feels kind of shitty to tell Antioch that they've got to be cool with Stavennites or magickers running around in their desert; it goes against all RP and it makes the game seem incredibly carebearish. You've got this big thing going with competing city-states and a world in conflict, and yet Antioch's got to just suck it up and deal with the intolerable insult of magickers walking through their desert to go hunting because a big bashing areas links up there. It's stupid.  

The problem is that the desert contains the entrance points for several major bashing areas, and allowing them to do that effectively places those bashing areas under an interdict. The best solution to that is to just retcon the location of those bashing areas. The map is huge and there's no reason why so many of these bashing areas have to be located in such close proximity to major cities. It doesn't even make sense that the desert Antioch decided to found their city in is riddled with crypts and tombs and demonic mines. Move them out to the Iaemoc/Cuhpfehr/Ik'cetera.

Ideally, there would be a mini-event with purging the Zh'suran and Necropolis and such(if for no other reason than that people would hate it if you moved it without one, and running one is relatively trivial) and the areas would be modified slightly(hooking the rooms up in a different floorplan would be enough) and reconnected elsewhere as new areas. This preserves the bashing areas without putting Antioch in a position where Stavennites can wander around in their desert and they've just got to lump it.

I'd also like to see the Ravana Hills and the Vardarian Highlands changed around more; I've always envied Antioch their desert and the Councils their forests, because they have these giant buffer zones that they can effectively claim and protect. Kinsarmar and Stavenn basically have a few rooms of road leading right to them and then a bunch of meaningless crap off to the side. Bleh.

Jeremy Saunders

@ahkan I just mentioned Khandava because I remember seeing a couple in there. Several cities do it though.

@khizan I was originally really thinking about allowing cities/councils to PK/bounty anyone in that first adjacent wilderness area, but decided against it for the exact reasons you mentioned.

I am not against allowing it, but (as you said) we would have to move the major (and some minor) bashing areas out of those areas. We could also consider moving the main entrance to the cities to be a bit more centered in the area. We would have to have some kinda small event to do this, but nothing too major. Earthquake, landslide, type of things.

I am not 100% sure about that yet. I need to mull it over a couple days, but how do other people feel about it?

Bathan

It might be neat if only as a method to explain seismic activity in Imperian. That's one area that's been largely untouched aside from ambient shardfall messages. I'm down!

Cassius

Jeremy said:

@ahkan I just mentioned Khandava because I remember seeing a couple in there. Several cities do it though.

Lionas used to declare Aori, Karakas, Eor'gahl, Menanon, Redwood Cottons, Mercenary Encampment, etc. as sovereign territory and try and chase me out of them.  I don't think it ever led to a death and certainly not an issue, but yes, Khandava has done this in the past.

Iluv

Honestly, if you see someone loitering in the area outside your Org, it is a good oppurtunity to go to that person and question them as to why they are there. You can open up a dialogue your normally would'nt have and it can end in RP or PK. If people are whizzing through to bash it's quite obvious and easy to let slide.

Ahkan

@Cassius

Covered that already in "The guy who did that got eaten by a tree offering him delicious demonic candy. "   All other complaints were conversations like. "Please stop trespassing." You can't tell me what to do. I respect no law of your council! Why am I bountied? Since stickler Lionas endured the fruits of his poor decision making, dubious trespassing claims haven't been a problem. Which begs the question, how are you still complaining about it having been removed from the problem for 1-2 years?

The best part about this is that for once in six years, you can't use the terrible motivation of "I defend this thing that kills me because of some ambiguous roleplay to farm pk on people who are bashing." Better late than never.

Aleutia

Cassius said:

Jeremy said:

@ahkan I just mentioned Khandava because I remember seeing a couple in there. Several cities do it though.

Lionas used to declare Aori, Karakas, Eor'gahl, Menanon, Redwood Cottons, Mercenary Encampment, etc. as sovereign territory and try and chase me out of them.  I don't think it ever led to a death and certainly not an issue, but yes, Khandava has done this in the past.

"journal13140"            a flourishing, living journal

"The Khandava Precepts", Page 2, by Blackthorn Dryad, Aleutia Sol'Anlumaire

                   --=|         Preface         |=-
                 -------------------------------------

The Precepts of Khandava is the unifying set of rules upon which order in the Deadwood is formed. Gone are the weaknesses of old, it is with new sight that the order of the Deadwood rises from the soil, fertilized by the remnants of its corruption. From the blighted woods of the Khandavan forest, boxed by the Areish and the sea, to all Her townships and lands, Khandava's sovereignty is absolute.

With some edits, this is essentially the same wording that has been in place for the last 7 years in game. There's massive precedent for claiming areas under org protection. Honestly I didn't even know until recently admin was glaring at people for protecting areas. I've chased/had people chased out of Karakas more than a few times. 

That being said, I would be all for having areas that are only able to be entered via the forest be moved/rearranged so they can be accessed by other means. It's our lawn, get off it.

Khizan

Goddamnit, people. Jeremy started this thread to discuss a specifc issue. Can we please talk about the issue at hand instead of shitting up this thread because Ahkan feels the need to be a contrary dickbag to Jeremy?

Thanks.

Ahkan

@Khizan
I'm sorry I'm stealing your contrary whinebot soap box. I'll return it as soon as I'm done so you can continue to only endorse things that benefit you. It's hard to be the forum police when you're one of it's top 3 offenders.

@Jeremy
Khizan used profanity. Plz fix. Flag for profanity.

I'm all for enforcing ownership of territories. Thus far, everyone seems to be. It actually gives city-states 'teeth' with which to interact with the organizations around them. It provides a an outlet for pk that is not related to shardfalls and has always blossomed into some stand-offs that were fun as hell. The drawback to this is that no one knows when it's time to call it quits and it gets annoying fast. No one is arguing that claiming sovereignty is a bad thing. We're arguing that it is very easy to become exploited, as you know from 8 varieties of first hand experience. The problem comes when you're looking at broadening the application of 'territory' to actually intercede and prevent other players from engaging in PVE in an bashing area. Then it quickly becomes a griefing expedition to down some non-comm white whale whose ranked at in the top 20 in Imperian. Historically speaking, and despite your cry-faced claims to the contrary, Khandava is a distant fourth in the application of such derp. Lionas was a huge, mouthy pain in the ass. At the end of the day, he was nothing but a grammatically correct puffer fish (rumor has it, he was an adorable puffer fish.). AKA: Lionas was a windbag. When it came to using 'soveriegnty' to farm crappy pk reasons and siege excuses, Antioch, Antioch, Antioch sieze the top 3 spots, followed by Stavenn (Trez) and then co-mingling of Celidon and Kinsarmar. Of course, in these we're using pk as an endpoint and not emotional butthurt. 

In closing, type in 'contrary' to google and hit enter.

**I was upset because the administration specifically mentioned two organizations, which can be seen as absolving other organizations who deliberately used this exploit (most notably while you were in power). It was tacky and poorly thought out.

Cassius

Ahkan said:

...

 Which begs the question, how are you still complaining about it having been removed from the problem for 1-2 years?

...

I didn't complain then or now.

Jeremy Saunders

Okay. So back on topic. From this point on, only discuss the following items.

It seems like the general consensus is that people like the ideas of:

• Slight rearranging of cities/councils to place them in the middle of a wilderness area.
• Moving of bashing areas from those areas to immediately outside of them.
• Landmarking everything we move so they are easy to find.
• Allowing cities to police that first wilderness area how they like. Instead of PKing on sight, I like the idea of pursuing and questioning people you do not know or who are passing through. Obviously killing the people that drive you crazy is cool beans.

Feedback.

Aleutia

I think it's really just Kinsarmar/Stavenn that are in awkward places, everywhere else is fairly isolated save for the bashing areas off them.

Sounds fine to me, though!

Khizan

I'd like it if we could see signs of ownership in those areas. Stavennite chain gangs doing roadwork. Ithaquan boundary wardens patrolling. Khandavan... corgi herders... herding corgis? Things like that provide flavour and atmosphere while also serving to warn players that this is  protected territory; you are not in some random grassland, you're in Stavenn's backyard.

I'd really like to redesign the areas outside the cities, too. I'd like to see farms outside of Stavenn, using zombie laborers for fieldwork. Kinsarmarian farmhands tending orchards. Less "Bam, here's wilderness and then a city!" and more "This is area directly influenced by this city". This could be problematic as far as people feeling compelled to defend farmhands that people kill to draw out fights, but I'm pretty sure that could be alleviated with a bit of thought. Work townes into it, have guard patrols maybe? Need to think about it.

Also, I'd just like to mention... I do not know a single solitary player in this game who is really enthused about this big new area and this new skillset that you have been developing. Not a single goddamned one. Nobody.

This is the kind of change and upkeep we want to see being done in this game.

Ahkan

@Jeremy

Are you planning on moving the city's actual location via earth shattering discovery? (Because I think that would be awesome and rich with rp opportunities). Pick your story line, it'd be great. I hope we die.

Also, when you say immediately outside are we saying 10-20 rooms or more? I like the idea, but the issues system has always given cities around a 10 room radius to be hostile as all get out to any city enemy who is in that radius. It's really easy to block northwest and then lower the trespassing hammer on Shou or Karyn because they're autowalking to autobash.

@Khizan
Workers get weird because org loyal NPCs really function as pk bait and little else. With the current bounty system people are going to ignore you and let some pk-juggernaut whack you while you're afk. You may get 1/10 good fights out of those. I wish you could incorporate this into the towne system, where you can actually attack the 100 assigned workers, it would force townes to be active, well defended, and well policed. I'm not sure the townes are all developed for that and the players certainly are not. That being said, it'd be cool as hell.

Jeremy Saunders

@ahkan Immediately outside means the main adjacent area outside the city. That is the Khandava forest for Khandava, the desert for Antioch, Western Celidon for Celidon, Ithaqua Forest for Ithaqua, etc.

Jeremy Saunders

I am sure some of these areas would have to be slightly reworked to make sure this works. Nothing major I think, but I have not looked too close.

Ahkan

The cities you listed are already within enforcement range of their 'holdings'. What would you be changing about them?

I know that every city got 5 associated bashing areas and they're all accessible to them. The weird part is how am I going to justify killing bard5 when he's in Menanon. The moment I'm done responding to his issue, I'm going to go bash the tanari out. I know the hypocrisy is 'role play' but it's tacky and really boils down to being a neck beard troll. I guess what I'm getting at is are we trying to consolidate these bashing areas so that you can give them territory to fight over?  If we're aiming to increase foot traffic, we're going to be forcing non-comms into situations where they're going to interact with a pker with a hair trigger whose looking for some fat juicy xp that can't defend itself. <-- Bashing areas too much work, not enough bang for buck

Instead of focusing on the bashing areas, maybe you could focus on bringing the townes a little closer in? Khandava has 2 outliers. If I remember correctly, Ithaqua's and Kinsarmar''s towne holdings are absolutely miserable. You could bring them in closer to their parent orgs. Then what you can do is drop in some sort of quest (maybe even daily) that requires non-members to interact with these townes. Maybe you can be lazy and drop in Khizan's towne npcs, I dunno. I think townes are a much better option to foster the whole "GET OFF MY LAWN" conflict you're looking for. Bashing is really a tough spot because most of your bashers don't want to pk. <-- Townes = more bang for buck, better story, better rp, better mechanics

Actually, are we moving things CLOSER to cities are FARTHER away? The wording is really weird. It could actually be both and each has it's own perks and drawbacks.

Wysrias

I don't want to hijack the topic, but I'll second that seeing something done in this regard with townes would be amazing. Expanding the city side of things would also be a major component, but I'm pretty sure a good chunk of new players barely know these places exist. They sort of feel like a mechanic that prematurely hit a dead end, and they're mostly around as relics of a system that never quite reached its potential. If you were looking to expand on the mechanical side of the game and try to stir up storylines in the process, this would be where I'd look.

Iniar

Miao Miao Miao

http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/295/affiliated-mobiles#latest

Cassius

Maybe I misread but my understanding of Jeremy's post was that they'd completely remove bashing areas from 'protected lands' of any city/council.

All Townes located off the immediate area adjacent to the city would be nice and open up some other opportunities.

Iniar

@Jeremy‌
(1) proposed solutions address bashers' desire to be left alone, is great for bashers
(2) the underlying issue of PKers going hunting and provoking for PK reasons remain unchanged - everything in here squeezes PK viable reasons into a tighter box, and while you are pro-PK, there are no suggested compensatory mechanisms to allow for -more- PK.

Ahkan

(2) the underlying issue of PKers going hunting and provoking for PK reasons remain unchanged - everything in here squeezes PK viable reasons into a tighter box, and while you are pro-PK, there are no suggested compensatory mechanisms to allow for -more- PK.

-Towne suggestion!

Sarrius

A 'daily quest' conflict system, after moving every towne a bit closer in to the wilderness area bordering every city/council would be a great way to foster PK, as @Ahkan said. It would stimulate combat at a steady rate to fill the radio silence between shardfalls.

At the very least, it would be sort of interesting.

EDIT: All points you brought up are totally fine, @Jeremy. I like what this does.

EDIT2: I like the idea of high reward bashing areas being 'locked' behind townes, too, forcing you to move through enemy territory to maximize your intake of the biggest game for bashing. A good example is Tayar being between the world and Iaat Valley.. aside from the crazy tunnel community side area. With every towne bordering the wilderness, it would be even better.

Ashani

Slight necroing of this thread, sorry.

While exploring today and looking for new areas to hunt in, I walked directly into a death from guards. Xiur somethings. All I saw on my map was a shop 'S', so I headed towards it and died about two rooms away.

I realise this isn't the intent of the thread, but buffer zones and some sort of configurable warning for people who don't know the geography quite yet would be awesome. I don't expect big red flashing lights and a sign reading, "Turn around, there's doom ahead of you", but something warning me that I may want to squint before I proceed would be awesome.

Iniar

Back before Townes, you certainly knew you were heading towards a big city - most of the room names were fairly descriptive: Road to Stavenn, Outside Antioch etc etc and if you had two braincells you'd wander in the other direction. No sure if the Townes are similar.