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Topics - Geronus

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1
Questions & Answers / Punishments in cases of harassment
« on: July 29, 2013, 06:36:51 PM »
I am opening this thread in response to criticism of the verdict in the Use of Rumour and personal information on irc, in forums, ingame and other places like skype and fac case:

http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,4420.0.html

What I would be interested in is hearing what else those who believe this verdict was too lenient think should have been done. Please note that a permanent account lock is not something that we can apply without approval from Tom. Such a punishment has been referred to by Tom as the worst thing that we can do to a player, and to my knowledge it has only ever been used against multi-cheaters in the history of this game. Given the severity of such a punishment, I would say that it's not something we would consider applying except under the most extreme and unusual of circumstances. To do it for a first offense is therefore probably out of the question.

So, what else should be done in cases of harassment? Please note that our standard options at this time include only warnings (public or private), account locks of up to 3 days, and stripping of titles which can be applied to any or all characters on an account and also bars those characters from regaining the same positions for two weeks (the Devs extended the time in this case). If you feel other options should be added, please feel free to make suggestions, but keep them reasonable and to the point.

Please try to express your thoughts in a neutral or hypothetical context. I don't want to re-litigate the case that this topic stems from.

2
Dwilight / Strategic secession?
« on: July 10, 2013, 02:02:40 PM »
Luria Nova landed troops in Donghai and kicked butt, and have either begun a takeover, or put the region into flames or both.  If I was a betting person they intend to form a colony with the stabilizing effect of a certain priest/diplomat.

Except that that would be a strategic secession, I think.

3
Magistrates Case Archive / MOVED: Use of IRC logs as evidence
« on: July 10, 2013, 01:46:14 AM »

4
Beluaterra / Fronen: The unluckiest realm ever.
« on: August 08, 2012, 06:46:00 PM »
Quote
Takeover   (22 minutes ago)
message to Everyone on Beluaterra
Nothoi has taken control of Wudenkin. The region used to belong to (rogue).

http://bugs.battlemaster.org/view.php?id=7235

Let's see. We get ganged up on by four realms between Invasions and lose half our territory and nobles, then we lose our capital to the daimons, then Midnight of the East somehow escapes being killed about a hundred times so our capital gets sucked into the Netherworld when the portals close. Meanwhile, the shadow of the blight devastates the realm's production so we run out of food, leading Wudenkin to revolt because its Duke went inactive at a spectacularly bad time (oh, and he just unpaused and wants his city back). We miraculously manage to scrape together enough troops to retake our only city, and then this happens.

*Facepalm

/endrant

5
Feature Requests / Marked for Death: Voluntary Character Mortality
« on: July 12, 2012, 06:08:41 PM »
Title: Marked for Death: Voluntary Character Mortality

Summary:

Give players a new option on either the character or family page that allows them to voluntarily make a character vulnerable to death under a variety of circumstances.

Details:

The idea is to add a check-box option for all characters that marks them for death. The original idea sprang from a desire to have a more interesting way to end the career of an older character that is intertwined with IG events. Once selected, the box cannot be unchecked, but other players cannot see whether a particular character is marked or not.

The effects of checking the box would be to add a risk of character death. The following circumstances have all been suggested as things that could lead to the death of a marked character:

- being wounded in a battle (just like a hero)
- being successfully assaulted by an infiltrator
- losing an ordinary duel (increased chance of death)
- being tortured
- spending time in a dungeon
- being attacked by bandits
- any other circumstance that could normally lead to a character being wounded

For the sake of simplicity, any circumstance that would lead to a serious wound, up to and including having a lesser wound get worse (people did often die of infection resulting from a relatively minor wound, after all) should be able to cause the death of the marked character.

Benefits:

This option would create a way to see your characters end their lives as the result of an actual and potentially random game event rather than simply as the result of a calculated decision to finally delete the character. It has greater depth than the option already provided by the Hero subclass as it does not require a class change and adds additional circumstances outside of battle that can still lead to the death of a character. This adds richness to character deaths, as the variety of circumstances that can lead to a death makes for interesting storylines. See the following thread for more discussion:

http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,2751.0.html

Possible Exploits:

None that I can think of since the option does not provide any benefits to a character and the decision to check the box cannot be reversed.

6
Development / Software Requirements
« on: May 19, 2011, 10:33:31 PM »
I work for a software company doing software implementation, and I have some experience with writing design proposals. Reading through some of the feature requests, I can see that they are not always clear or (I imagine) useful from a development standpoint. Where I work, we are required to include software requirements with all of our proposals. The following definition is from the wiki we use:

"Software requirements are the outcome of analyzing an idea for an enhancement from the users' perspectives. Software requirements specify what the software has to do in order for the users to accomplish their objectives. Software requirements identify what, not how."

We also have a proposal template that we require staff to copy into their own proposals to ensure that the proposal is adequately documented. I would suggest that it might be helpful to both the dev team and people submitting feature requests if a sticky post was created on the feature requests board entitled something helpful like **READ ME FIRST ON PAIN OF DEATH** with an explanation of what the dev team wants and needs out of a good feature request. You might even come up with your own template that can be copied, with the stated injunction that feature requests that don't follow the template won't be considered.

This is just a suggestion, but I think it would be helpful to everyone involved. As it is, it seems that some people skip the discussion board and present their half-formed ideas directly in feature requests. I have a feeling this was not the intent of having a separate child board specifically for feature requests.

7
Feature Requests / Secret Religions
« on: March 22, 2011, 10:06:09 PM »
I think it would be an intriguing addition to the game to make it possible for someone to found the secret society equivalent of a religion. Basically, think secretive cult. I think a few small changes could make this possible while utilizing the existing system.

1. Allow smaller temples and shrines to be hidden from view.

Basically, someone building a new shrine or temple could spend extra gold to make it "hidden". This would prevent anyone except for followers of the religion from seeing it. If the temple were expanded beyond a certain relatively small size (say a primitive temple, or possibly smaller), it would automatically lose its secret status. Or, perhaps it has to be torn down and an official temple has to be built from scratch to make it public. As a trade off, they cost more and would have a reduced effect on conversion rates. Someone in the region who suspected the presence of such a temple could attempt to find it with a unit of men. If successful, it could be sacked.

2. Allow secret practitioners.

One thing that bothers me about the current system is how the game seems to assume that religious affiliation is public knowledge in one specific case. If you are the lord of a region with peasants who belong a majority religion that has decreed your faith to be evil, the game operates as if the peasants know of your affiliation. Every now and then in the Daily Region Report, you get a line that says "The peasants are unhappy that their lord belongs to an evil faith" (or something like that). This can have the effect of outing you to your entire realm. If you have joined an enemy realm's faith, this can create problems for you. If I'm a member of a faith that I know full well is considered evil by my countrymen, why on earth would I make it public knowledge? I'd practice in secret, of course. I'd suggest adding an option in the politics or command section allowing you to hide your religious affiliation. The religion doesn't get the small bonus to conversion that accrues from having you as lord of a region, but you don't get publicly outed.

3. Allow secret sermons.

A priest would be able to preach secretly. No announcement would be made to nobles nearby, but at the cost of a significantly reduced effect on conversion.

The net effect of this would be to allow unpopular religions to worm their insidious way into unsuspecting realms more easily. This can range from efforts by an established and very public religion to infiltrate a hostile realm to the creation of a religion that is designed to be more cult-like and sinister with entirely hidden temples and a hidden agenda. Naturally, if all your temples are secret they will also be small and you won't get converts easily (private sermon only), but that's how something like this *should* work. I also think the potential atmosphere of paranoia and secrecy could be very rewarding. You'll see that a heretical religion is gaining followers in some of your regions, but you can't prove anything... Yet. Do you send troops into the regions to search for secret meeting places of banned religions at the risk of alienating your lords and being embarrassed if nothing is turned up? How do you know which lords have been turned?

Thoughts?

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