Why are we not allowed to talk about the server on the forums?

[Jack Oat]

Ever since Wharftown's removal, the Arelith surface has turned very "safe", compared to the days of old.

This is my biggest gripe. There are very few places on the Surface that are able to serve as a "bastion" for evil PCs like Wharftown was able to be throughout its history. Sencliff, Sibayad, and the Temple of Bane are the only ones I can think of, but none allows for PCs to have a leader like a settlement election system does.

Because of this, the general mindset seems to be, "Wanna play evil? Go to the UD." But if you don't want to participate in UD politics, you're kinda screwed.

I'm not going to parade about screaming about how Wharftown needs to be rebuilt, but a similarly easy place to get to with the same amenities and abilities as it for "neutral ground" would be nice. The addition of quarters and more shops to Sibayad has nicely set it up to be the spiritual successor, but I know the Devs have previously stated they have no intention of turning Sibayad into a settlement. It'd be nice to see a change in that policy, or something that allows PCs to have a more direct input in the area instead of the hidden, back-room "Merchant-Padishahs" treatment.

But I think I'm derailing a bit. To answer the initial question, it's because no one wants to see dirty laundry or FOIG information aired on the forums, and with most things/decisions on Arelith, there are more than one view on decisions.

[wulfburk]

Try to be mindful of occurrence. Common raids have less of a narrative effect than a weekly excursion. They lose that sense of special-ness if they're too frequent.

As one involved with the defending against many raids, this feeling is what has been happening for months.

Truth in its essence or not, many feel that what we got is basically just gank squads fishing for pvp.

If false, then there is a dangerous communication failure between the parties involved, perhaps not only in the pre pvp roleplay but just as important, in its aftermath.


The best pvp i ever participated was in minmir bridge when brog replied to cyricists and etc desecrating the elven crypts. They had a clear objective and we mustered to face them, with even some cat and mouse manouvers as the two armies moved near each other. In the end brog and allies lost horribly but due to all the rp before, during and after plus the detail that the pvp actually looked like a battle and lasted long, made it quite a memorable experience for me. I hope that such pvp becomes no longer the exception, as it has been for me in both my chars.

[Wordless Truth]

Two thoughts:

-Your conduct is a part of the server culture.

Engaging in toxic conversations through whatever platform, getting too invested in IC happenings, too obsessed with how others mess up your game (or don't do enough to stop others from doing it), or really just having hostile thoughts about parts of the playerbase or management is actively cultivating a server culture that you don't want to find yourself in for long.

Just do your thing. You don't need that negativity. And we don't need you to add to ours.

Which leads to the second thought:

-They say Arelith doesn't cater everybody's taste, when to a certain extent, it actually does.

We have everything going on on our server. From people circlegrinding with no RP, only stopping to stock up, over people playing Sims 7: Arelith, to people building r4d characters and finding reasons to PVP (att.: hyperbole) the same people every 24hours - And everything in between.

I don't mean to say you should ignore what's going on around you, but you can easily interact with the server and still find your own niche and just focus on you and the people around you, add to the server and its storylines without necessarily ending up in constant PvP / circlegrinding / tea and crumpet boulevard RP.

One of my current characters is a part of a heavily militarised faction. Participated in PvP: 0 times. Deaths up to level 30: 0. Enjoyable sessions: 99/100 times.
Other characters I played were pretty easily triggered to PvP. Some because of their leading positions, some because they were jerks. Lots of PvP, a few MoDs lost.

it's a game. You choose!

[Bryce Silver-Wind]

In regards to the above discussion between Marsi and Bryce, no the 'Bendir thing' referenced happened over a decade ago, when the Banite-led Stonehold faction subjugated most of Arelith. Bendir resisted, and were systematically executed or enslaved as a result, with halfling thralls building much of what now is the Talassian fort, with the mountainside it's situated on bearing the name of Stonehold's leader; Ryan Valtheran. Stonehold eventually fell to infighting, a celestial intervention and a largescale player revolt.

I wouldn't say that a chain of events transpiring over the span of a few days is a trend. If anything, Arelith's had the lowest quota of PvP throughout its entire lifespan as a server over the last year or so, to the point where incidents stand out a lot more starkly than they would have otherwise. As one of several faction leaders involved in what happened over the last week, much can be attributed to a chain of coincidences, with separate involved parties not communicating between themselves, causing things to happen in rapid succession and escalate at an unforeseen scale. Most of said people have since agreed to withdraw from conflict for a while for that very reason, to let everyone recuperate, reform, and open the field for constructive roleplay.

In brief, I don't think that this represents a shift in mentality. Just an incident that stands out more by contrast now more than it would have prior.

Ever since Wharftown's removal, the Arelith surface has turned very "safe", compared to the days of old. Arelith used to be a place where it was common for settlements to be in open, active war with one another. Not something that always worked out for the better, as it's kind of hard to reach a constructive conclusion when there's nothing set in stone to determine an outcome, bar DM intervention or player insight. Currently the only driven, non-argumentative conflict typically occurs whenever the Underdark is strong enough to lash out above. Meanwhile, if you think back just a few months, the Underdark raids were absolutely trounced before causing any damage. Mechanical faction power, and player initiative have always been, and will always be fluctuating things. Soon enough, these initiatives will be taken by someone else.

As for the unfortunate occasion with the mindflayer PC, I'm unaware as to what happened. Even as a UD main, I've never had the pleasure of encountering the character. But if I'm to make a sideline observation, I'm not surprised that the character faced heavy resistance. Mindflayers are absolutely a PC compatible race, and are involved in commerce throughout the Underdark, but do bear in mind that Arelith's Underdark specifically has faught cataclysmic wars against them. It could be argued that Udos and Grond would still stand were it not for the flayer wars, and Pit Town -- which was also destroyed, would've never had to be built to house the resistance against them. Playing one feels like setting yourself up for heavy adversity.

Just to clarify on this Alanta wasnt even on this server when this took place,

I dunno if my input is perception bias or not, but...

For 6-5? days in a row, we had people starting PVP in the tower foyer, and not even.. 2? Days after, we had a sudden drow raid.
Next day they raid Brog, Guldorand, Myon, and a day later, they tried to raid the tower, AGAIN... (Many having been from the raiding group a day before), learned Guldorand had also been raided by banites, and a smaller group attacked the hub all that same day.

(By the way, thank you for the help with those two Raids, DM Wish, and DM Titaina, it was majorly appreciated)

So I do sort of agree PVP has been getting a bit insane of late...

Do think there could be some benefit of rules for settlement / guild house raiding. (Like an older example: There was a time where Bendir couldn't go a day without being raided) or some PVP rule tweaks.

(Please forgive all the edits, it's nearly 4 AM while posting this, and i keep noticing errors and want to make it more coherent.)

This is directly in reference to about 3 months ago.

[Hexgoblin]

Fair. I must've gotten lost in the forth and back. Apologies. The rest of my post still stands, though.

[Bryce Silver-Wind]

The Wharftown bit...I agree with you, I don't like it was removed and its honestly set a very very bad presidence with Chancellors IG, but thats an IG thing and if it continues I will poke the DM's on that, but the reality is, it is gone. Evil is forced to be with the underdark which...kinda goes against the "we don't want people having tea with monsters" cause realistically, your kinda forced to. Banite Keep - good luck getting to it under lvl 17, and even then unless your power built, Sencliff - Gotten from a lot of players, its just not worth it honestly, still needs a lot of work to make Sencliff work for newbies, Sibayad - Entirely neutral and the Mercs will kill you, so no real reasonable place to be evil.

[sad_zav]

I feel like Arelith's adopted this culture of spite, as I've dubbed it.

I've been here for a few years now, coming and going with extended breaks in between. I last played before EE last year I want to say, then came back around.. April-ish?

Never has one of my "stints" on this server been as drama-filled as this one. Rumor-mongering, Discords made to bash people, settlement hate, and pretty much literal OOC factions. Time and time again, I saw people only having fun at other people's expense, and I even saw myself starting to behave this way.

Behind the scenes, there's so much "us versus them". Some people say we should be having collaborative storytelling experiences. Others say you need to roll with the punches. I don't know what's right. I don't know what direction the server is going, where it's intended to go, or where it -should- go.

What I do know is that there's a ton of toxicity and that, personally, I'm going to be distancing myself front Arelith for a while--especially because I saw myself buying into it.

I don't think the return of a soapbox forum is going to fix things. If you require an audience in order to hash things out, then I question your intentions and authenticity. I recently talked to someone that had problems with me one-on-one and we both came out the better for it. What that required was maturity on both our ends. Publicly airing dirty laundry isn't going to make people mature.

[The GrumpyCat]

Hello. As this topic partly came about due to my locking of a previous topic, I'm going to leave some thoughts. In this post I am mostly touching on why I locked the prior thread, and also my thoughts reguarding the initial concept of this thread - to whit DM transparancy, forum discussion, ect. Other matters (such as the nature of PvP ect) I am not touching at present.

The centeral issue of the thread in question was not that it was eager to discuss the issue of PvP. But rather that it did so from a personal and highly emotional standpoint, which opens the way up to responses that will likely hurt the feelings of the origional poster, and put others on the defensive.

None of this is useful.

If the post had been something akin to:

I've been considering PvP, and the roll it takes on Arelith, the importance and the weight. I myself am a little concerned of its prevelence of late, and peoples reliance on it. I'd like to invite a discussion about this. How can we make PvP more enjoyable? What place does PvP have in the narrative? Are there any mechanical or rules changes that can/should be made to better the PvP environment of the server?

Then I would not have locked it. I'd have watched it like a hawk - because the topic of PvP is both increadibly complex and increadibly emotive on this server, and others, but phrased as such it is none emotive, none judgemental, and opens up the gates to reasonable and considered discussion.

So the reason why it was locked was not to do so much with the topic itself, but rather that it came from a place of heavy emotion and bias, which just begged further emotion and bias.

Now onto the second part:

With Sargoth's post being locked for what I can only discern to be an attempt to disallow any sort of negative feedback on the server, I've been informed that he's had to turn to fielding many responses from other concerned parties in private messages. Why is this the case? Why are we not allowed to have a constructive discourse on the forums regarding overall trends in player conduct, in an attempt to better the server as a whole?
.

I've already adressed the reasons why I locked the post, and why I welcome discourse on player conduct and such - so long as it remains, civil, impersonal, and thoughtful.

Everyone in the community understands that being a DM is very taxing and time consuming, but I'm curious as to why the burden of communication relies on the playerbase to send multiple messages to have a chance at eliciting a response from the DM team. I know of countless reports of illegal PvP, token applications, or other situations that have gone unanswered for months.

Because dragging peoples dirty laundry out into the air rarely ends well. Because people don't like public critisism - that's why if you do something wrong at work, a good manager will take you aside and discuss the issue privatly, rather than airing it out to all and sundry. Because being a DM is at times stressful, upsetting, and complicated, and I personaly would hate to have my every single decision picked appart by people who are likely to be extremely bais, (there's a reason DMs are supposed to keep away from cases they, or close friends of theirs, are involved in player side) don't know the full of the information (unless everyone wants us to make the logs public too? Because that has more than a small chance of going horribly wrong.) arn't under any supervision, (ooh there's a report about Joe Pickcpocketing too much, let's pvp him until he quits!) and may not have a very balenced view point.

I wouldn't want to DM under such scrutiny. I'm not sure that a lot of people would want to DM under that scrutiny. To DM as such would probably require a mental headstate of 'I don't care what you say, I'm right!' and I'm not really sure that's neccesarly a good headspace for a DM to be under.

For the record, I won't say that reports don't slip under the radar- yes a few do. But I can't imagine the amount is 'countless.' Over the last few years I think we've actually been fairly good about at least giving a 'Your message has been recieved' reply to people. And if you don't at least get that, then as Titania said - please keep bugging us.

Naturally, players become frustrated with this and it only serves to promote vigilante actions against other players or to turn to the open forums to scare the DM team into giving them a response. I feel that if appropriate action cannot be taken in a timely fashion, then there is no reason to disallow players to openly discuss things on the forums. If the playerbase is not mature enough to handle that, then I feel this server really has lost it's touch.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. You won't always get a detailed response of action taken ect - but as I said, you should always get a 'message recieved' reply at least. From there you just have to trust that we're doing our job.
Appropriate action is often taken, but what we consider appropriate and what you consider appropriate may be two different things. And you may never see the 'action' yourself, you just have to trust that it occurs.

And how is discussing things on the forums going to help anyway, in the comparison to reporting to the DMs?

Let's look at it side by side.

1) Player reports that Bob PvPed them without rp
2) DMs send a reply thanking them for report, and then look at the logs and records.
3) DMs make a decision, based on things like: What the logs say, what the situation around it was, what the history of Bob is (maybe he's a new player, maybe he's a veteren with anotherwise clean slate, maybe he's been warned about this before ect)
4) DMs enact the decision.
5) Maybe Bob complains and then this goes higher to the Head DM, who looks at the DMs who've made the decision and either upholds it or not.

That's one rough outline, and an outline of a particulary difficult case, (point 5 rarely occurs, but it can) There's often discussions, watching, history, circumstance, ect taken into account.

Let's look at the other option.

Forum Decisions
1) Players report on the forums that Bob PvPed them without RP
2) Forum members both state their opinions, but these opinions are unlikely to be backed up by the facts utterly valid to the case. And when they are, they'll often be dismissed as 'whining'. Because if Bob gives his side, people will say 'yeah he's lying'.
3) Maybe some of Bob's friends side with Bob!
4) Shouting match ensues.
5) Reguardless of his guilt or inocence, Bob continues playing. Maybe he faces some unpleasentness In Game because people are keen to take him out, or not. The community grows steadily more bitter as they complain at one another.

Unless there's a Dev or DM involved somewhere, nothing much can be accomplished via forum discussion.

And if the discussion is entirely rooted in emotions and fury, then that will not help make a balenced and reasonable decision, DM side, or Dev side.

Or to put it another way: Would you rather Devs and DMs make decisions based on careful rational consideration, based on evidence, analysis and discourse, or decisions based on "WAHHHHH IT'S NOT FAIR I WILL LEAVE IF HE'S NOT BANNED WAHHHH AHHHHHH AHHHH THIS SERVER SUCKS YOU'LL LOOSE EVERYONE WAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

With the expectation that this thread will be locked and dismissed, I'd like to suggest that perhaps there could be a place to discuss items such as this one on the forums, where non-specific matters pertaining to server quality could be talked about in a grown up way. Thank you.

You'll note that this thread has not been locked or dismissed. You'll also note, I hope, my point that we don't object to situatiosn where none-specific matters pertaining to server quality can be discussed, but when it is obvious that there is a very strong emotional connection to the situation, it's best to close it down. So that the discussion (which is a worthy discussion!) can be adressed and examined from a cooler perspective.

[-XXX-]

I think that most of the issues outlined in this thread stem from the "must win" mentality.
Important announcement: no matter what you do as a player YOU CAN'T WIN (at least not in the conventional sense - like checking all your character's goal boxes for instance).

From what I've seen so far, most IG conflict (this may include, but is not exclusive for PvP incidents) related problems are tied to the following reactions that players tend to have regarding this:

• They don't realize it and keep trying to win = result being cheesy selfish behavior based off ignorance for the most part

• They suspect it and take alternative avenues to attain desired victory = this most often takes the form of character A working day and night to have character B exiled from all settlements, making character B virtually unplayable for their player as a result. This can be quite counterproductive as instead of forging a fulfilling adversarial narrative between characters it actively hinders it, furthering gripe and bad OOC feelings

• They realize it, become jaded and frustrated = as a result their own RP suffers as they are struggling to process it

• They realize it and instead of trying to attain victory they actively strive towards forging a narrative aimed to include a wide spectrum of characters = these players get as close to actual "winning" as it gets as their focus is aimed at having and sharing fun

[Mastersir3]

I think my original post has garnered the exact discussion I wrote it for, and I'm pleased to have read so many viewpoints on a variety of topics. In reply, to Grumpy, I'd like to say that people don't feel good about repeatedly bugging authority figures to get a response, the same way that people don't like to be publicly called out for poor performance. Also I feel at no point did my post become, or encourage, any sort of all-caps rambling and crying and I'm ashamed that you'd downplay what I'm trying to say to such a meager level.

[PinataPlethora]

In reply, to Titania, I'd like to say that people don't feel good about repeatedly bugging authority figures to get a response, the same way that people don't like to be publicly called out for poor performance.

And now they know that they have, and have always had, the freedom to do so. The DMs are there to help. It's a big job and a taxing one, but that's part of why they're rotated out. This is what they signed up for, because they want to help fix the problems that you're seeing, so that the community can improve.

Also I feel at no point did my post become, or encourage, any sort of all-caps rambling and crying and I'm ashamed that you'd downplay what I'm trying to say to such a meager level.

Why did you feel it was at all necessary to throw out a veiled insult like this? The post that you're responding to was directed at Vincent's thread, not yours. You're only hurting your argument. If you want to see a more civil community, capable of these having these discussions, you need to start by setting an example for others.

[Vincent]

I feel there's a little hyperbole going on here. I don't recall anyone claiming they were going to quit the server were someone not banned. The purpose of my thread and Mastersir's has always been to simply talk about the abundance of PvP on the server currently, which, judging by the private messages I've received and the replies here, is something others are also concerned about and have experienced. Perhaps it is no more prevalent than it has always been, though I must say the amount of PvP I've encountered with such minimal RP preceding it has really began to wear on me; make note that I'm not someone who struggles to win, either. This is solely about the tedium of something many of us believe is detracting from roleplay.

I first brought it to the forums because I didn't know how DMs could just bandaid something affecting the entire server. I've been PvPed by people who technically haven't broken the rules, but it's still been underwhelming. I believe what has interested both me and Mastersir is finding how many assenting opinions there are that PvP without substantial RP is currently a widespread nuisance, and whether anything productive could be garnered from discussing it in a public forum. Judging by the quantity of detailed and well thought out responses received, even from those opposing our viewpoint, I'd say this thread has been very successful in at least spurring people to discuss whether it is an issue or not.

[Vincent]

Why did you feel it was at all necessary to throw out a veiled insult like this? The post that you're responding to was directed at Vincent's thread, not yours. You're only hurting your argument. If you want to see a more civil community, capable of these having these discussions, you need to start by setting an example for others.

I really prefer not to go down this route as it is the sort of thing that takes away from the purpose of this thread, but if that is a veiled insult then what is Grumpycat saying ""WAHHHHH IT'S NOT FAIR I WILL LEAVE IF HE'S NOT BANNED WAHHHH AHHHHHH AHHHH THIS SERVER SUCKS YOU'LL LOOSE EVERYONE WAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'"?

[PinataPlethora]

I really prefer not to go down this route as it is the sort of thing that takes away from the purpose of this thread, but if that is a veiled insult then what is Grumpycat saying ""WAHHHHH IT'S NOT FAIR I WILL LEAVE IF HE'S NOT BANNED WAHHHH AHHHHHH AHHHH THIS SERVER SUCKS YOU'LL LOOSE EVERYONE WAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'"?

Equally childish, and neither excuses the other.

[Vincent]

Equally childish, and neither excuses the other.

Fair enough lol.

[Atlantahammy]

I dunno if my input is perception bias or not, but...

For 5-6? days in a row, we had people starting PVP in the tower foyer, and not even.. 2? Days after, we had a sudden drow raid.
Next day they raid Brog, Guldorand, Myon, and a day later, they tried to raid the tower, AGAIN... (Many having been from the raiding group a day before), learned Guldorand had also been raided by banites, and a smaller group attacked the hub all that same day.

(By the way, thank you for the help with those two Raids, DM Wish, and DM Titaina, it was majorly appreciated)

So I do sort of agree PVP has been getting a bit insane of late...

Do think there could be some benefit of rules for settlement / guild house raiding. (Like an older example: There was a time where Bendir couldn't go a day without being raided) or some PVP rule tweaks.

(Please forgive all the edits, it's nearly 4 AM while posting this, and i keep noticing errors and want to make it more coherent.)

There ARE rules for attacking settlements. Settlements need permission for an attack, so its very easy for us to control how often they can be attacked Peace sometimes has to be fought for, and in a warring conflict, it'd not be at all unusual for a short-period of time to have several bouts. I'll also add the last one, which consisted of a few of your examples, was really a counter-attack, and I'm not sure if I'd add that to the number. But I'll agree their frequency as of late have spiked. This isn't necessarily good or bad on its lonesome.

Raids are still a good courtesy to receive a ping for so we can monitor, even if they don't take place in a settlement.

I will throw out some suggestions for the players. None of the below are rulings, just suggestions.

For Raiders:
1: Biggest suggestion: Have a goal beyond killing just to kill. Capturing a leader or hostage for ransom, maybe even an enemy's loved one. Maybe you're wanting to burn/salt farms that provide their income. Or desecrate their graveyard. Or collecting new slave labor for Andunor. Or capturing Myrtle the Cow for study in Boreal Keep. These leave a better lasting impression. We're more likely to not support a settlement raid if the aim is just "to kill." There's not much story potential there.
2: Try to be mindful of occurrence. Common raids have less of a narrative effect than a weekly excursion. They lose that sense of special-ness if they're too frequent.
3: Big groups are prone to lag, chaos, and little interaction before conflict. Consider breaking up large groups to set upon different tasks, so activity is spread about multiple areas. This is also good tactics in keeping your group hard to pin down.
4: Make sure to give some interaction. One or two interactions usually is lame. Try to see if you can get a minute of back and forth. Casting spells while your enemy can plainly see you is just inviting quick attacking.
5: Always double check to have the clear before engaging non-hostile NPCs or your settlement attack. This is in case we have crashed, or monitoring elsewhere on the server and don't have eyes where they need to be.

For Defenders:
1: Be very mindful about the 24 hour rule. Returning to what you were doing, especially while a conflict is still at large, can get you into conflict areas, and given the large numbers of opposition attackers can get, it's very easy for them to forget you were in a previous conflict. Do your part and consider a short delay in respawning, or going into a safe area of seclusion. Given raids usually stop by dawn, it's easy to stay away for sufficient time.
2: Give death some meaning. I've seen some people after getting their body destroyed re-spawn and return straight home with very little to no effects on them. Having some temporary lingering injury or the like to delay them just getting back into things also helps you justify not going after them in less than 24 hours.
3: Counter-attack. There's certainly an imbalance on who is the offensive side when we speak of it on a Surface/Underdark sort of mindset. Andunor and NPCs are off-limits without supervision but the paths and lands around it are fair game. Call out the leader for a duel and capture them, ambush people for questioning or hostage taking in turn. Treat it like war, and give the narrative fresh ground. There's plenty you can try without doing a settlement attack. And when/if you do a settlement attack, see the raider's point of one.
4: Also divide your forces. Especially if you know the attacking force is smaller than yours, it may be beneficial for division for ease of commanding, less lag and loading times, and easier to fulfill more sufficient interaction before PvP.
5: Instead of destroying your opposition's body, consider on occasion lengthening the interaction by taking a prisoner. Always aim to provide the most fun for yourself and your fellow players on opposition.

I do actually like a lot of these, I feel also the "you need a DM watching to attack settlement, period." needs to be more place up as a rule somewhere for everyone to access, cause in thinking about it, I don't think it is posted anywhere, I remember learning about it from Spyre.

I would also maybe suggest a cool-down period for settlement raids. (Which, this may get a bit of back lash) of 2 - 3 days, that way people could clean up, deal with the aftermath of such, and calm down, cause dealing with raid, after raid, after raid kinda does take a tole on you mentally.

And some have seen some pull back of "Why fix something if it's just going to be smashed again." due to such.

[Queen Titania]

It's under 4: Be Nice. It is not laid out in such specific terms, but goes under the umbrella of attacking NPCs.

It's not really been an issue, I've never seen an army go into a settlement (Within its gates) without permission in sometime, and not in recent time at all.

[Nevrus]

First of all, this back-and-forth with one another instead of engaging with the topic is exactly why threads get locked, so try to keep it focused on the problem and not the other people arguing.

My perception of PvP on this server from my months in engaging in it is... It's a pretty mixed bag?

I've had nothing but good, rule-abiding encounters where everyone was in since I got here. However, I've heard horror stories of other players getting arbitrarily crushed, especially by high levels when they're low level. Part of the problem comes from the prevalence of corpse-bashing, which I've participated in before and am less eager to do so now.

Here's a scenario:
You log in after work to do some grinding and adventure.
Within ten minutes a level 30 UD looks at you funny, kills you, and corpse-bashes you.
You now have an entire night in which you can't effectively play. Even doing non-combat RP becomes a massive slog because your strength hit means you're probably moving around at 25% speed, which makes it a gigantic pain to do anything.

I get the tactics with it during a large raid, for instance, where you want to put the defenders out of action. But taking someone that never had a chance to begin with and tried to disengage and just wrecking their night, while it might make sense IC and be okay by the rules, is kind of a real jerk move.

I feel for the people having their playtime ruined by the roaming murder squads. We might want to add some rules revolving around corpse-bashing, and reduce the respawn penalty when your corpse IS bashed, at least duration-wise. Choosing to respawn when your corpse could get raised is one thing; getting forced to do it is another.

Another element is that even when everything is done correctly, a lot of the times the encounters feel... Meaningless?

I'll give a specific example but this is not intended to call out any players. Everything here was handled perfectly by everyone, it was full buy-in, no one's feelings SHOULD have gotten hurt by it.

There was a planned raid to the UD on Saturday, which got responded to with a counter-raid. We had a big, lag-tastic battle with the counter-raid, the surfacers got trounced, most of them got corpse-bashed, and... What comes after this?

The most likely scenario is that everyone takes their respawn penalty, the UDers go back home triumphant, the surfacers shake their fists and say "Next time!" and nothing changes. This was a huge, forty-person brawl that historically would be utterly meaningless in the long-term. It was some PvP but not much really got advanced by it, narratively.

To echo a previous point, in order for PvP to be a good experience, it requires three things:
1. The winners to Win With Grace, and maybe put the corpse somewhere revivable as a taunt, or take it and resurrect them for some further RP, or do something, anything to make it a two-way street instead of just one player getting given a 1-3 hour timeout by another player.
2. The losers to Lose With Grace, and respond to what happened like someone that just got murdered. Make that event a significant point of character development, give the victor something to be proud of, get as much as you can out of it to make your own story interesting. Losing can be more fun than winning, and on other servers I've had a history of asking DMs to make consequences for losing in events worse entirely so I could RP out having some significant weakness and trying to overcome it.
3. Both parties to have some kind of buy-in. If someone acknowledges that you'd destroy them, and tries to run/surrender, chase them around but don't actually murder them. Try to corner them and make an event of it. If someone thinks their character would fight this fight, and gets ready for a brawl, it's fair game. Just try to acknowledge that having lots of character power gives you many options but you shouldn't use that to reduce the options of other players to 'lol respawn scrub'

In the example I put up earlier, I wanted to make that event more significant, because it was awesome. So I rolled my character. Lots and lots of people were wrapped up in that one little halfling's personal story to do the right thing, and because of those filthy underdwellers she's gone. I figured that would give a lot of other players something to work off of to make the event HAVE significance because it had a heavy cost, one most people kind of gloss over- the loss of life. How will that affect other characters? How will their friends and enemies take it? Will it be the step too far?

Maybe I'll find out on the next character, maybe I won't, but I made sure that battle mattered, and wasn't just people throwing d20s at each other. That's the losing culture we need if we want the PvP to not just be a distraction from grinding or playing Sims. The winning culture, I can't speak of as much, because I don't ever win fights!

Take as much as you can for the story out of as much as possible, and don't try to use PvP to just swing your rapier around at others' expense. That's the intent behind the Be Nice rule and we could all use a reminder of it.

[Atlantahammy]

It's under 4: Be Nice. It is not laid out in such specific terms, but goes under the umbrella of attacking NPCs.

It's not really been an issue, I've never seen an army go into a settlement (Within its gates) without permission in sometime, and not in recent time at all.

Thats good, still I do think it be a good preventative measure, to prevent things like what happened with Bendir from happening again... Honestly I also thought the 24 hour rule also prevent this kind of thing from happening, but with different groups...

Cybering is NOT PERMITTED on this server. There is a vast age range that plays on Arelith, for this reason, restrict any conduct you may be involved in to a "PG-13" level of interaction. Unwarranted rudeness, potentially offensive role play, inappropriate sexual references, foul language, harassment, killing non-hostile NPCs without DM supervision, and poor gamesmanship (including wanton destruction, griefing of any kind, exploiting known or unknown bugs, transferring items between your characters, logging to avoid consequences, etc) are prohibited. To conserve server resources for all, ownership of game property is limited to one shop, one quarter / guildhouse (a quarter that contains other quarters) and any number of temporary shops (marked as such) per PLAYER (not character, CD key, login name, etc. Player. Real, flesh and blood player).

Hrm, I do think simply changing it to or adding "killing non-hostile NPCs, or raiding of settlments without DM supervision," would be an idea.

[Marsi]

-They say Arelith doesn't cater everybody's taste, when to a certain extent, it actually does.

I agree with you to an extent, but I wonder if the opposite being true, in a way, is the source of all this trouble lately.

Arelith markets itself as a generic blank slate that can be home to any and all RP. When in fact I believe we have very specific standards and culture around RP that is unlike any other server. We've even had the server torn asunder in its past over this issue.

There is a broad spectrum of playstyles that Arelith houses, but it does not tolerate all spectrums. A free sandbox exists at odds with playstyles that prefer non-engagement with the shared reality and so Arelith fundamentally cannot cater to them.

[Wytchee]

-_-

[The GrumpyCat]

. Also I feel at no point did my post become, or encourage, any sort of all-caps rambling and crying and I'm ashamed that you'd downplay what I'm trying to say to such a meager level.

With all due respect, Mastersir3, your post... seemed to be arguing for transparency in DM decision making. I do not of course claim that you want all caps rambling, crying ect. What I'm saying is that such transparancy would likely result in that, or something similar to that on an emotional level.

Why did you feel it was at all necessary to throw out a veiled insult like this? The post that you're responding to was directed at Vincent's thread, not yours. You're only hurting your argument. If you want to see a more civil community, capable of these having these discussions, you need to start by setting an example for others.

I really prefer not to go down this route as it is the sort of thing that takes away from the purpose of this thread, but if that is a veiled insult then what is Grumpycat saying ""WAHHHHH IT'S NOT FAIR I WILL LEAVE IF HE'S NOT BANNED WAHHHH AHHHHHH AHHHH THIS SERVER SUCKS YOU'LL LOOSE EVERYONE WAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'"?

Truth be told I'm starving for RP on an RP server, and that's kind of sad. So I'm deleting my mistake of a major PC and taking a very extended break. Bye.

I grant you your comments were hardly allcaps screaming. But my point (and this is not about a discussion on PvP, this is about a discussion on DM transparency/why said topic was locked!)is that a reasoned and cool discussion rarely starts from a point of bitterness and high emotion such as you were, and possibly are, still feeling. The beginning of that thread, and the reason it was locked- was because in essence it was not the beginning of a cool and reasoned discussion, it was the beginning of a hostage situation.

[Vincent]

I do not feel my post was particularly bitter in nature nor driven by emotion, though I will not argue there is no logic behind locking it either. I felt I took a sensible enough tone as to avoid locking but I suppose not.

[Mastersir3]

I believe what has interested both me and Mastersir is finding how many assenting opinions there are that PvP without substantial RP is currently a widespread nuisance, and whether anything productive could be garnered from discussing it in a public forum. Judging by the quantity of detailed and well thought out responses received, even from those opposing our viewpoint, I'd say this thread has been very successful in at least spurring people to discuss whether it is an issue or not.

This sums up how we both feel and what we'd hoped to accomplish with this thread. If anything I said was read in a malicious way I apologize, as up to this point it was not my intention. Presentation aside, I'd like to conclude by saying that I find it laughable that I'm being to told to both rely on and defer to the judgement of someone who equates the legitimate concerns of a fair amount of the playerbase to caps-locks rantings. People are being made to feel that they don't matter by the people we're told to trust in.

[Nevrus]

Sometimes you should turn the other cheek, friend, if you want to get what you're after. That's general life advice.