Exile and its Implementation

[Geras]

Or hid in a room for 25 years til things died down.

Cough

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

There is no automatic death, just an option granted to a player to get 100% of their RPxp back for having created enough RP to earn it regardless of req_level. There were two other options available.

Every single piece of "RP cut off" above would have been just as cut off if someone else had PKed the character or the character just chose to walk away. Or hid in a room for 25 years til things died down.

The only person even potentially jipped here was the exiled player.

We don't allow warranted mages and criminals to liquidate under normal circumstances. They have to see it through to the end via RP in order to get their death XP. The current exile command has it all backward: we're forcing someone to leave RP and then compensating them with 100% RPXP if they just give up. I'm not sure how I feel about the RPXP award, but I've made my suggestions for an alternative exile implementation in a previous post.

I'm not sure I have anything further to say without sounding like a broken record, but I sympathize with others' concerns, and I hope the exile implementation will be updated and improved based on player feedback.

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

Hey guys.

I think that staff knows our opinion on the current implementation of exile now. I trust them to take that into account.

It was my choice to liquidate in the room when I was given the options. I was annoyed at the time. Personally, my only problem is the equivalence of QP and IP -- one is an IC currency, and one is an OOC one. Just let people return at the hit of their assets or some such.

Sometimes RP gets cut off. It sucks, but eventually a new storyline always fills the void. Any conspiracies or OOC anger is silly, it's a text-character that died. God knows I have pkilled people for worse reasons.

Still doesn't change my stance on things -- but I'm glad you've cooled down and that you'll stick around for a new iteration. :)

[Kinaed]

I think calling what's happening here "godmodding" and all of the other extreme rhetoric just... well, I don't see the world that way, and I'm not really sure there's a lot that will convince me that transfer as the result of an IC powerplay is the height of game design villainy. The player is being transferred to protect them and facilitate their assessment of their options as the result of thematic IC action. Even having options to assess is counter to godmodding. It baffles me. Everyone seems to equate this trans directly to a pkill, and that's just not the implementation full stop. The only relation to PK here are the standards the Seneschal needs to uphold, which fundamentally ensures that there's enough RP and storyline meat to ICly substantiate the command. Offering a player the opportunity to take a full XP return package regardless of their rec_level, which they have the full power to choose or reject, is a kindness appropriate to what happened IC, but remains their choice.

Also, more than "a push of the button" goes into getting the IP together to initiate an exile. It's a process with a lot of effort and RP behind it, just as there should be. Speaking about that effort in this manner trivializes the non-trivial.

Yes, there's a new mechanic in game that can put a crunch on a character. It's not combat, and a lot of people are used to combat, so it does take some mental adjustment. That doesn't mean this mechanic is necessarily inappropriate. I find it personally interesting and a great new world to see social actions expand in power. I am also excited to see the Seneschal role maturing into the powerful role we envisiaged for it.

It's okay not to agree with that. I also acknowledge there's probably a few things we can do to make it better.

On paying an IC versus an OOC currency, I don't really mind it. It means a player can earn QP with an alt over time, which makes being in exile a "biding your time" kind of deal, which is nicely aligned to how actual historical exiles often worked. 25 QP is not extreme and I *think* is far easier to get than IP (as I understand it, 25 IP is highly difficult to get without pooling, but the average QP amongst active players is well over 25).

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

Godmodding may sound extreme, but when you transfer a player off-grid immediately and tell them that their character fled -- even if that wouldn't have been their IC action, then yes, I believe it falls into that category, even if they have choices on the other end. I get that the transfer is there partly for their benefit, and agree that it should be an option, but I don't think it should be forced.

Changing that aspect of the implementation would make it better and would, I think, address many concerns. If nothing else, Marisa had some reasonable suggestions earlier in the thread.

[Taunya]

Is it heresy to kill a mage by any other means than the pyre?
Not according to any help file, that's a player interpretation.

Help cleansing could have been interpreted as that before, though it was updated during this. It had said that execution by means other than pyre was heresy, not outright killing, but I could understand if it was ambiguous to some with the way it was worded and the emphasis on the importance of burning to clean a mage's soul.

Previously:

...
However, the most serious of sins require the fire.  Any execution on charges
of heresy is nearly assured to be at the pyre, with some rare exceptions for
charges besides magery.  Exemptions, when they occur, are usually a
consequence of a heretic's death during Questioning or while being arrested.
Typically, greater care is taken with mages; any method other than burning
for the execution mages is seen as heretical.  Burning (while still alive) is
vital for removing the taint from the mage's soul; only by incinerating the
evil in purifying fire can the mage be freed to rejoin the Lord.

See also: BURN

(Subject area: religion               Last modified: Mon Mar 19 12:29:25 2018)

Now:

...
However, the most serious of sins require the fire.  Any execution on charges
of heresy is nearly assured to be at the pyre, with some rare exceptions for
charges besides magery.  Exemptions, when they occur, are usually a
consequence of a heretic's death during Questioning or while being arrested.
Typically, greater care is taken with mages.

However, if the choice is between a mage's escape and a mage's death by
sword as opposed to fire, few would be counselled to aim for the former, and
extremely dangerous mages are sometimes slain if there is a serious fear
they will harm others and no other possible way to combat it.

See also: BURN

(Subject area: religion               Last modified: Fri Oct  5 15:47:39 2018)

[Buzz K[ir]ill]

The update reflects the IC reality better and probably adds some much needed leeway. We've had characters slay mages by the sword in the past out of necessity and they were even lauded by some as heroes. Though, I would still expect them to go to confession afterward. :)

While not necessarily heresy, any Davite who kills a mage outright should know that they have failed to save the mage's soul.

[Niamh]

Yeaaah. We had two helpfiles on cleansing, one GENERAL CLEANSING and the other ORDER CLEANSING, which were almost identical save for the last paragraph. The last paragraphs were wildly different. It became apparent this morning while we were trying to figure out why our viewpoints on the subject were so different from each other. Thus, help GENERAL CLEANSING was brought into line with the Order guild helpfile. We're not 100% sure how GENERAL CLEANSING got that way, but it had been there long enough that I based my Order Quick Guide on it and needed to revise it also. If it helps, HELP ORDER CLEANSING was last updated Sun Sep 10 17:35:16 2017.

[Taunya]

If I had to guess, it was to written to prevent an Inquisitor condemning a mage they hated to die without cleansing, which I've heard happened more than a few times, and should be against the general theme. It should be possible to do, but following more the line of a personal vendetta than anything condoned by the Order, and would likely lead to severe IC repercussions for the inquisitor who did so.

[galaxgal]

I think these are the key concerns I feel from exile, from a relatively third-party perspective to what happened:

• It's not very interactive: There's not much left for any party to do once the exile takes place. Nobody gets to do an actual scene where the exiled is confronted in person. Nobody puts forth their last word. Not only can this feel anticlimactic from a story perspective, I can't imagine it as anything but super jarring and unfun to log in and discover that your character has been disappeared.

• The OOC incentive structure is weird: Basically, the three choices for an exiled character seem to be:
  
  • +Liquidate with full death EXP: Strictly and cynically viewing account resources as well....resources, this is the best option and a hugely positive one for the exiled.
  • =Use a Courier?: This costs nothing and gains nothing, except time to write letters and...what else? Do you have to convince the guys who ousted you that you were reformed? Can a guy on the inside filch you into the city for a last huzzah and final showdown? What exactly is possible here? What's going to start costing QP to make RPA happen?
  • -Spend ~25? QP to re-enter the city: Again, cynically, no one will ever want to use this option. You lose a huge pile of free death XP and spend 25 QP which, while probably not a massive loss to a long time experienced account, is definitely going to be missed.

• It runs counter to the philosophy of playing a good villain: Okay, this is more of a personal opinion bit, but: If I'm playing a character who, OOC, I know of and think of as a 'bad guy' or antagonist, I want them to lose. Not only do I want them to lose, I want them to lose in a cool and creative way that challenges peoples' ability to organize and solve problems in-game. Exile as-is feels like it runs counter to that because it creates a first-order optimal strategy that only lets a couple of people in fairly specific positions feel like they did anything 'cool'. As far as I can tell there's a couple of guys you can run to to have it done and that's...it? Which feels weird.
  
  Pessimistically, it can be a way to take out an antisocial powergamer or another abusive player without having to resort to policy. But...philosophically, isn't that what policy is for? And obviously, anyone can storyteller a plot featuring a bad guy without putting their characters at-risk but...ehh, it's not quite as organic, I feel?

• The QP option feels weird and metagamey: Obviously, metagame knowledge happens and accumulates over time, as does QP, RPXP, etc. However, playing *with the purpose* to accumulate QP so you can do your Big Villain Play feels weird and almost sort of...icky? To me. I'm playing to have a good time, give a good time, and hopefully culminate in a cool death scene, not rack up the biggest Player Characters Violently Impaled score. I dunno, I understand the benefits behind an OOC system limiting how often that can happen, but if there were any IC resource the player character could use to get back into the grid, I feel that'd have a more satisfying...game feel.

Anyway, that's my dump. I feel that exile can be a good RP tool (and it already seems like it can be one that has interesting consequences for use), it just...feels kind of awkward, right now. There may also be some things I'm misinformed or disinformed about, and I do apologize if I repeated those! I did go through the whole thread to understand just what goes on with an exile to the best of my ability.