Splintered Souls

Elokia

This is a rather large event and has several different stories going on at once.

If you have questions, concerns, or problems please post them here. Also: Please behave within this thread so that we can get through questions easily, and fix any issues without problems.

Elokia

Also! Once this event really gets to rolling, since we have a lot of mobiles in this, please speak directly to the mobile if you wish to have a response outside of the mobile dialogue prompted. It may take us a few moments to get to the mob in question, so be patient! We will be keeping an eye on mob communication for this event, and will be changing things throughout the event.

We want the players to run this as much as you can! So we are going to try to keep up on support!

Iluv

There a way to keep souls from spawning in houses and Guildhalls?

Currently all the souls in Kinsarmar are behind locked doors.

Eoghan

Iluv said:

There a way to keep souls from spawning in houses and Guildhalls?

Currently all the souls in Kinsarmar are behind locked doors.

Those rooms are already excluded. The only way souls should be ending up there is if they are wandering into them.

I'll look into some of the locations and make sure they aren't improperly flagged, though.

Eoghan

There is indeed an issue with the way some rooms in the area are flagged. I'll do my best to sort them all out. For now I'm moving the souls that are in incorrect places.

I've fixed the offending rooms that I could find. If you notice more souls spawning in wrong places, message me specifics or file a bug report.

Jules

I would like to suggest that you implement a reputation system for this event... or... that is the best thing I can think of right now.  This is totally a Prisoner's Dilemma thingy and my actual best option right now (unless I have a really good reason to trust my trading partner) is learn to cheese force skills (which tbh I should do anyway).  

EDIT:  also, I hate it when you all wait for @Ultrix to start events  What are we, chopped fish liver?

Eoghan

Jules said:

my actual best option right now is learn to cheese force skills (which tbh I should do anyway).  

Don't worry. We actually thought of that this time. It shouldn't be possible to force any soul-related commands. If it is, it's a bug that you should report.

Khizan

Oh. Well, uh, it's possible to force all the soul-related commands, which is how I was getting souls. I'll stop doing that now, but it is totally possible to do.

Jules

But hrm.  The problem is.  I don't have a good reason to trust most of the people I might trade with, and I also don't have a lot of recourse if they screw me over (or vice versa).  I mean... I suppose if the event goes on long enough, people might sort of develop a rep via word of mouth.  Maybe.  

Jules

Eoghan said:

Jules said:

my actual best option right now is learn to cheese force skills (which tbh I should do anyway).  

Don't worry. We actually thought of that this time. It shouldn't be possible to force any soul-related commands. If it is, it's a bug that you should report.

This actually makes me a bit sad, although I get that it does not mesh with what the intent seems to be here.  I just think that as things stand... again, why should I trust the guy and what is my recourse?  

Eoghan

Looks like the check in keep was working, but not release. Both should be working now.

The nature of this event was pretty clearly not intended to mesh with forced commands. You should have filed a bug report immediately, and only after having it resolved continued to use force skills. However, since we hadn't directly stated that it was not intended, we're not going to adjust any points.

Jules said:

But hrm.  The problem is.  I don't have a good reason to trust most of the people I might trade with, and I also don't have a lot of recourse if they screw me over (or vice versa).

Jules said:

This actually makes me a bit sad, although I get that it does not mesh with what the intent seems to be here.  I just think that as things stand... again, why should I trust the guy and what is my recourse?  

To the first part: That's the point!

To the second: While it is NOT ok to attempt to bully someone into acting a particular way by threat of PK, it IS ok to PK someone after the fact with a legitimate reason. We consider "going back on your word" a legitimate reason in the context of this event. Be reasonable about this, obviously, and exercise some caution, but don't feel hamstrung by it.

Jules

Eoghan said:

Looks like the check in keep was working, but not release. Both should be working now.

The nature of this event was pretty clearly not intended to mesh with forced commands. You should have filed a bug report immediately, and only after having it resolved continued to use force skills. However, since we hadn't directly stated that it was not intended, we're not going to adjust any points.

Honestly, it was surprising to me, but I actually figured you consciously decided to leave them in (either way I am not up to speed on using them properly).

I don't know how I feel about the rest of it.  I guess we will see.  

Iluv

I think divest should be changed to give the splintered partner a message that the owner has chosen to divest and be given 5 minutes to pick an option or both players lose 1 soul.

edit: on top of that, souls should be able to go into the negative as there is nothing stopping anyone from being at 0 souls before every trade interaction.

Jules

So the good news is that it looks like the tokens are beckonable artifacts.  That means I can hand mine over for someone to verify that I work for who I say I do with no fear of losing it, and they can do the same (because we will both be able to actually probe the item for the person's mark).  I do want to know if, when someone switches factions, are all of the souls they had collected set to zero?  Otherwise people could try to game that.  

Dealing with anyone who you don't trust, or who isn't clearly working for the same faction as you is still a non-starter, but you might be able to at least sort out people you can safely deal with via the tokens, depending on what happens when people switch.  I hope it is intended as a reliable authentication process? 

Senali

This event is making me talk to people I would have zero inclination to otherwise talk to. Not sure how I feel about this; on one hand interaction! On the other hand.. People!  :-??

Zerin

I think the divest timer is too long. So far 2 of 3 souls I have acquired have gone to AFK people and it is incredibly disheartening to have to just stand around and wait for 20 minutes each time.

Eoghan

Zerin said:

I think the divest timer is too long. So far 2 of 3 souls I have acquired have gone to AFK people and it is incredibly disheartening to have to just stand around and wait for 20 minutes each time.

While that is frustrating, we have to find a balance. This event works best if people can't influence who their paired target is. Allowing divest to be used at all undermines this some, and being able to do it easily would undermine it completely.

Iluv said:

I think divest should be changed to give the splintered partner a message that the owner has chosen to divest and be given 5 minutes to pick an option or both players lose 1 soul.

edit: on top of that, souls should be able to go into the negative as there is nothing stopping anyone from being at 0 souls before every trade interaction.

Hm. I'll think about the first point there. I've made some slight changes to divest that will hopefully see its use for non-afk people lowered.

The second point is a very good one. I'll think about it and see what we come up with.

Eoghan

It is now possible to have negative soul energy. If both players choose to KEEP their souls, losing one point, their score can go below 0. It will cap at -6 and never go lower than that.

We'll see how that plays out. We may have to make further adjustments.

Jules

Is there any reason for people to not switch factions before/after attempting a deal (assuming they already released any souls they had of course)?  I mean, will their contribution to the faction itself be zeroized?

EDIT:  the answer there has implications both for whether the tokens can be used as authentication, and for the adjustments made to KEEP, actually.  Not sure about DIVEST, because I am not sure what the changes to that actually are.  

Khizan

Here's my problem with the event right now.

Let's say I have a soul and Alvetta has my piece. We agree that we'll both release. I release the soul, but Alvetta keeps it. She gets 5 points. In return, I can kill her. So let's say I kill her. She loses absolutely nothing. I get another soul. Alvetta gets the piece again.

These are my choices: I can keep the soul and risk getting a -1. I can release the soul and all outcomes of this benefit her, despite the fact that she backstabbed me earlier. Or I can sit there and twiddle until I can divest.

Here's the problem: All of these outcomes suck. I either reward her for betraying me, ignore the event until I reach the divest timer, or I risk a penalty. And all the while she's free to ignore her soul splinter while pursuing the event with her 'main' shard. If there were some from of real org-v-org conflict we could play the political game and pressure people by saying that unless you play fair with us, we're gonna  render guards down for parts or cut off trade routes or raise import taxes or whatever. 

But none of that exists here, so you can't put any pressure on people. You can pressure friends by saying "If you screw us here we won't be friends anymore", but you can't pressure enemies because you've got no friendship to withdraw because you're already enemies. 

It is possible to betray people in this event, but it is not really possible to punish betrayal. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

Khizan

Also, it might be a good idea to have more of the event mobs talk about what exactly is happening and what their choices will mean, because nobody I have talked to has any idea at all what any of the sides are going for. People are like 'Well, the Imp Lord seems the most chaotic, so I guess I'm going with him?" or "I'm going with Ananda, because I want to learn more about the door".

I haven't met anybody yet who's really into any side. In the plagues, Antioch was really into releasing the plagues and really excited about working to the next one and seeing what was released. In this event, though, everybody I've talked to is pretty 'meh' on it. I've yet to meet one person really excited about helping any of the factions. 

Iluv

Khizan said:

If there were some from of real org-v-org conflict we could play the political game and pressure people by saying that unless you play fair with us, we're gonna  render guards down for parts or cut off trade routes or raise import taxes or whatever. 

This is my hope for the towne overhaul. And don't pick Ananda hug and kiss.

You have divested yourself of too many souls recently; find yourself too weak to divest yourself of another soul right now.

The changes haven't really made it so I can avoid AFK people. I've only used divest on AFK people and not to avoid negotiating and I'm getting this.

Iluv

Divest should be changed to give the splintered partner a warning that they will lose one soul if they do not pick an option within a reasonable time limit (5 minutes). Releasing and Keeping should be able to done long distance, to prevent owners from playing keep away while divesting. If the owner who divests doesn't pick an option then the owner will lose one soul (or alternatively, the owner cannot divest until he has chosen an option and divesting locks the choice until the splinter chooses in response). With this change in place, logging out does not change the splinter as people right now are logging out to avoid conflicts of interests and that is one of the biggest no-nos in Imperian in my opinion.

Zerin

It has been more than an hour since I first had: "You have divested yourself of too many souls recently; find yourself too weak to divest yourself of another soul right now.", and then another 20 mintues before that for another AFK person. This is really, really lame, because I want to participate... But hitting blocks of 2 hours where I can't do anything (through no fault of my own) just makes me not want to bother.

EDIT: It has been 2 hours now and I still can't divest.

Elokia

Khizan said:

Also, it might be a good idea to have more of the event mobs talk about what exactly is happening and what their choices will mean, because nobody I have talked to has any idea at all what any of the sides are going for. People are like 'Well, the Imp Lord seems the most chaotic, so I guess I'm going with him?" or "I'm going with Ananda, because I want to learn more about the door".

I haven't met anybody yet who's really into any side. In the plagues, Antioch was really into releasing the plagues and really excited about working to the next one and seeing what was released. In this event, though, everybody I've talked to is pretty 'meh' on it. I've yet to meet one person really excited about helping any of the factions. 

On this note - we attempted to talk via the mobs on release of the event, no one was listening. We are also willing to do more mob talks, however, no one is coming to try to speak with the mob. I cannot sit and watch all 8 mobs, but I can watch mob communication, and so far, no one has said anything directly to the mobile (As stated in my second post in this thread) to where they are seeking answers. We're more than happy to give out more information when porbbed. 

Eoghan

Zerin said:

It has been more than an hour since I first had: "You have divested yourself of too many souls recently; find yourself too weak to divest yourself of another soul right now.", and then another 20 mintues before that for another AFK person. This is really, really lame, because I want to participate... But hitting blocks of 2 hours where I can't do anything (through no fault of my own) just makes me not want to bother.

EDIT: It has been 2 hours now and I still can't divest.

We have to strike a balance here. It's frusatrating to not be able to participate for long periods of time through no fault of your own, that's true. But the event doesn't work if you can also arbitrarily choose with whom you want to make deals. The current cooldowns and initial timers strike a balance between never being able to switch, and being able to switch whenever you want.

Khizan

If you can get effectively locked out for 2+ hours through no fault of your own, the event doesn't work either.

Honestly, if you wanted to game this, you'd want to get a bunch of people on your faction to log on at like, 4-5am CST when the player count drops down to the single digits and then spam the crap out of souls while the odds of getting somebody on your side would be heavily in your favour. A few days ago I saw like a player count of 4 online in the early morning. Even getting 4-5 people to log on at that time could let you hugely inflate your numbers from rapid soul turnover.

Jules

^^I was considering trying to do exactly this if I still cared about the event (which I don't).  I feel like it's effectively what is probably already happening anyway, since nearly all of the options are "kill Legion" and both demonic and magick are going to be down with that, and barely anyone from AM has been around the whole weekend.  

Iluv

Eoghan said:

Zerin said:

It has been more than an hour since I first had: "You have divested yourself of too many souls recently; find yourself too weak to divest yourself of another soul right now.", and then another 20 mintues before that for another AFK person. This is really, really lame, because I want to participate... But hitting blocks of 2 hours where I can't do anything (through no fault of my own) just makes me not want to bother.

EDIT: It has been 2 hours now and I still can't divest.

We have to strike a balance here. It's frusatrating to not be able to participate for long periods of time through no fault of your own, that's true. But the event doesn't work if you can also arbitrarily choose with whom you want to make deals. The current cooldowns and initial timers strike a balance between never being able to switch, and being able to switch whenever you want.

The problem is even if you are not arbitrarily choosing with whom you want to make deals with and only using it for the intended purpose of getting out of being stuck with AFK people, you will get locked out for hours at a time. My divest solution solves that problem.

Khizan

Everybody I know has somebody AFK with their soul right now.

This event is fundamentally broken because of this. 

Jules

Logged in.  Instant regret.  Had a soul settle with me immediately.  I won't normally ignore people.  In fact, the only person I have ever ignored was Ahkan.  And it just feels wrong to cockblock people who are still playing in this thing, so I agreed to just let them keep it, and I know I just helped someone who is almost certainly actively working against my side, especially since my side doesn't even really exist in this event.  Logged right back out, going to just try to wait for the event to end  

This is also kind of the problem with the divest solution, because if you have a bad feeling about a deal, or just have no data on who the person's character is, it's just an icky situation and your best option might feel like "just don't log in" (clearly a popular choice this weekend already).  All of the trades I did make were with people who I had some kind of guess about what kind of person they are.  Are they the kind of person who possibly thinks that they are oh so clever and that it is fun to try to trick people?  I won't deal with them at all, because if we both keep, we both lose, and if I release, they might screw me over and there isn't anything to be done about it.