Bad Guy Incentives

[Geras]

If things don't change Jei, you'll only have one half of that spectrum. And that makes Knights pointless IMHO.

[Geras]

I'll be perfectly honest here. What attracts me to playing a role is the challenge - I like playing underdogs. I started as a Knight because at the time, they were the underdogs. I've played Knights, thieves, mages, Inquisitors and Reeves all because at the time I felt that at the time that was the underdog. I don't mind long odds. That only goes so far though. There's no sport in hunting a kitten. The sport is in hunting the tiger. It's in being hunted by the tiger.

[Kinaed]

I've added a poll. I've also changed my polling format to try to gauge the strength of player's feelings on various matters.

My proposal is for players to reward villain points to other players. On death, these points will convert to QP and, if enough were gained, waive Death XP for exemplary service to the game. Any player would be eligible to receive villain points, regardless of creed - it is not about rewarding mages, but rewarding people for adding conflict to the game and going out on a limb and taking a risk. It is not being immediately rewarded as QP instantly to prevent this being about buffing the villain (which I think some people would be reluctant to do) and actually to reward their death, which is a major sticking point/fear.

What do you think?

[Geras]

I think an all-or-nothing systems sets people up for disappointment. I think the XP penalty at death is an important part of keeping the game balanced too. I'm afraid I have to vote no.

[Xaldi]

For the record, I don't resent, OOCly, people who play bad guys. I do resent the notion that we need to go above and beyond to reward them for choosing a certain player concept. There aren't just 'good' and 'bad' people on this game, there are a lot of in betweens and honestly, I wouldn't want a villain point or a hero point or whatever. If people are genuinely impressed by how someone is playing.. that's a perfectly great way to spend your QP isn't it? If the person is unknown, because they are a villain, how about just allowing people to request 'the person who did whatever should get x amount of my qp because of x reason'?

I just don't understand why we need to offer such great rewards when bad guys already could have an edge if they put time, effort and planning into it.. and yeah, maybe have a little luck too. Unfortunately, sometimes they get outed before their plans come to fruition, it happens. =/

It's simple, Jei. The bad guys are afraid of acting because the entire pbase who's not a villain would be against them. On the flip side, most villains are out to save their own necks. Having played several villains, I can attest to this. If one aspect of the game is gagged because they're afraid to act -specifically- because they're going to get killed, and lose all of their hard work to a gang of knights/orderites/reeves, then yes. There likely should be some incentive to come out of hiding. Not just for mages.

[Geras]

Xaldi - Do QP or XP really represent that hard work though? There's far more to building up a char than either of those IMHO - things like the char's RP and so on and so forth.

I don't think death should be a trivial thing either. Villains should want to avoid being caught. That's realistic. That's believable. That's engaging and fun. There should just fun things that counterbalance that too IMHO.

[Kinaed]

So villains shouldn't face death at all because it means losing something? But a buff QP reward and waive of XP loss, which would negate that loss in a meaningful way, isn't a worthy reward?

I'm getting the sense that this is 'give mages a big gun to whack the knights with or they won't be happy' which in turns leads me to think that the real problem isn't the problem that we're being presented with (presumably that that bad guys are afraid to tango with the good guys because of the character losses they are likely to incur). Is it rather to do with a feeling of helpless-ness rather than fear? Something else?

In my view, knights work hard to be strong combatants. Anyone who is not a knight can also work just as hard for the same exact results. I'm not convinced that mages should have to work less hard to achieve just because they're more likely to die. For some reason that I can't put a finger on, it just sort of offends me, even though I acknowledge that their hard efforts are "more likely" to be wasted. I think it has something to do with cheapening advancement and the value of skills and the hard work that goes into them. This said, typically mages learn skills more easily because their owners select a higher int in the grand scheme of things.

I'm personally willing to reward antagonists in the game for stirring things up because we need that to have a good story, but I'm not about to hand over a 'lazy man's nuke' to anyone. The loss to playing a bad guy isn't about mages, but more about anyone who causes strife and conflict, which again is what I'm trying to get at with my upon-death-reward suggestion.

I get that playing a mage isn't like playing a knight, and there's an OOC downside to the work vs reward scenario, but I'm not sure the gap is all that extreme given the caps that now exist on skills and the general speed it takes to advance skills to grandmaster. Mages also have access to some extremely fun things that non-mages simply don't.

Geras, I mean no offense, so please don't take it - I'm wondering if you've made a combatant character to know the ins and outs of the system that you're complaining makes Knights untouchable by mages? Certain statements you've made, which aren't precisely wrong, paint a picture about combat that I don't agree with.

[Geras]

I'll write more later when I get the chance

So villains shouldn't face death at all because it means losing something? But a buff QP reward and waive of XP loss, which would negate that loss in a meaningful way, isn't a worthy reward?

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying quite the opposite.

There should be a cost to losing your character (villain or not), but you should have so much fun in the process that you can't wait to roll a new villain and start over again.

[Geras]

The familiarity issue is a fair point - I do have some experience on fiddling with combat on Geras and in the quests, but not a huge amount. There's also the fighting auditorium to watch as well.

But I think that may raise another important (and much more solvable/contentious issue), which is the transparency of the combat system/code in general. It'd be nice if it was a little bit clearer what exactly is strong or weak to what. Or how important strength in numbers is. Etc. etc...

My justification for that transparency is that the strength of your character should be based more on IC considerations rather than OOC familiarity with the code.

IMHO though this is way off topic though (partly my fault I know), and probably belongs in the balance thread. Getting back to the topic at hand...

Goodie or baddie, anyone who gets PKed or who PKs has stirred things up and brought something to the game. Can you think of any PKs that this shouldn't apply to? I can't.

Really what's being talked about is reducing the death penalty in some shape or form. We've been town this route on TI:A and IIRC it didn't end well. Death is too important of an XP-sink to water down.

[Geras]

For Julea/Remi I think it's a total different kettle of fish personally. In both of those cases there were code/policy issues surrounding the PK that warranted at least some sort of consideration and compensation. Didn't have much to do with power level or rewarding people for playing villains.