Author Topic: Rejected: Remove adventurers from the game  (Read 18751 times)

Chenier

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Rejected: Remove adventurers from the game
« Topic Start: September 07, 2018, 03:09:22 PM »
    Title: Remove adventurers from the game
    Summary: Delete all adventurers and prevent new ones from being created.
    Details: Having 4 adventurers come out of the blue to kill a realm without a trace or explanation is pretty self-explanatory of how lame adventurers are to the game. They were meant as a side-game, and now with scrolls and portal stones, they are having more impact than the realms themselves.
    Benefits: A return to more normal team play of realm vs realm, army vs army.
    Possible Downsides or Exploits: None whatsoever, adventurers are lame and they've done enough harm already.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2018, 07:36:03 PM by Vita »
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Anaris

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #1: September 07, 2018, 03:22:57 PM »
Melodramatic much? You don't think there might be a less over-the-top solution for this specific problem?

Adventurers being able to use scrolls was a bug. It has now been fixed.
Timothy Collett

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Chenier

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #2: September 07, 2018, 08:17:19 PM »
Melodramatic much? You don't think there might be a less over-the-top solution for this specific problem?

Adventurers being able to use scrolls was a bug. It has now been fixed.

Honestly, I've advocated exactly this for quite some time now.

People aren't roleplaying advies are they are meant to. They form these ridiculous vast guilds where they organize large mobs (largely with their own free adventurer slots) in order to amass items at ridiculous rates, cast all kinds of magic, and perform espionage.

All the while, the legitimate adventurer game is boring. If you hunt, you tend to get killed as soon as your skills become not so bad. If you gather items, well... that's pretty boring in itself.

I don't think adventurers add anything positive to the game.
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Anaris

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #3: September 07, 2018, 08:18:15 PM »
Honestly, I've advocated exactly this for quite some time now.

People aren't roleplaying advies are they are meant to. They form these ridiculous vast guilds where they organize large mobs (largely with their own free adventurer slots) in order to amass items at ridiculous rates, cast all kinds of magic, and perform espionage.

All the while, the legitimate adventurer game is boring. If you hunt, you tend to get killed as soon as your skills become not so bad. If you gather items, well... that's pretty boring in itself.

I don't think adventurers add anything positive to the game.

Then don't play it until I've had a chance to improve it, which is on my TODO list (and I have some specific plans).
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Logar

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #4: September 07, 2018, 10:41:57 PM »
I rather enjoy playing (and roleplaying) adventurer characters. They certainly add a positive element to MY game.

On a side note: Are adventurers now restricted from using portal stones? When you consider the result is always at the discretion of the mods, I do not see any reason why they should be restricted.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2018, 10:43:38 PM by Logar »
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Anaris

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #5: September 07, 2018, 10:50:05 PM »
I rather enjoy playing (and roleplaying) adventurer characters. They certainly add a positive element to MY game.

On a side note: Are adventurers now restricted from using portal stones? When you consider the result is always at the discretion of the mods, I do not see any reason why they should be restricted.

Portal stones are not scrolls. We blocked them from scrolls.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Chenier

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #6: September 08, 2018, 04:41:10 AM »
Then don't play it until I've had a chance to improve it, which is on my TODO list (and I have some specific plans).

Playing adventurers doesn't procure me much fun.

Other people playing adventurers regularly detracts from my fun. Because it is consistently done against all the guidelines for them and the intent behind them. I loathe the adventurer guilds, I loathe how respected they almost universally are, and I loathe how they always find a way to be used in warfare with cheap gimmicks.
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Medron Pryde

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #7: September 08, 2018, 06:11:03 AM »
Darn it.

That's one interesting game mechanic now denied to those of us who use adventurers.

Why was it determined to be a bug all of a sudden?  And what's with the sudden call for their removal?

Chenier

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #8: September 08, 2018, 03:14:17 PM »
I've been arguing this for a while on Discord. I just decided to file a formal feature request now.

The latest incident is a handful of advies coming into a capital, wounding *everyone*, turning lvl 4 walls into lvl 1 walls, destroying the militia, and conjuring 14k of rogues.

Advies aren't meant to be ICBMs.

I've hated every time they've been used for wars, this is just the most recent (and ridiculous) example.
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Anaris

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #9: September 08, 2018, 03:53:45 PM »
Darn it.

That's one interesting game mechanic now denied to those of us who use adventurers.

Why was it determined to be a bug all of a sudden?  And what's with the sudden call for their removal?

Though I don't have any specific quotes to cite on this, I quite distinctly recall Tom's intention for adventurers being that they could not use scrolls.

He stated very clearly on many occasions that he intended the adventurer game and the noble game to be mostly separate. There were many instances where he could easily have added interactions allowing adventurers to participate actively in wars, but did not—or even explicitly prevented them from doing so, like making their ability to investigate the troops in a region not provide a scout report, but rather coding something completely new for them.

At some point, I'm not sure just when, the block on adventurers using scrolls was removed. To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has made any organized effort to use adventurers in war as anything beyond extremely ineffective scouts (or gold mules, but that was an obvious abuse that has been both forbidden, and nerfed in the code).

If people had not gotten together to use scrolls to, essentially, completely obliterate a realm with no possible chance of blocking it, incidental use of magic by adventurers would have continued to be overlooked.

Basically, look to the people who organised this, because they're why you can't have nice things.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

MTYL

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #10: September 08, 2018, 05:30:16 PM »
Anaris, I play battlemaster for almost two years now and never have I ever said a bad word about devs. You guys always had (and continue to have) my utmost respect for all you do to keep it afloat.

But

That was a bad call. And saying things like:

Basically, look to the people who organised this, because they're why you can't have nice things.

is another bad call.

How many times have I heard that single-region realms should not exist and that people should work together and interact more.

But when they do work together and interact more and the effect is destruction of a single-region realm you punish the entire advy playerbase for it.

If you're going to disable advies from doing anything any time they do anything you may just as well do as Chenier says and remove advies altogether.

Taking stuff away from players, stuff players enjoy, due to isolated events is never a good idea. Especially since it doesn't fix the part that could be perceived as wrong in this entire event. If several people would decide to wipe out Bara'Khur or Angband or... whatever 1/2 region realms there is on BT - they could still do it, just not by using advies.

There are several ways to fix advy game from being abused in such a way, but disabling advies from using magic is not one of those ways.
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Anaris

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #11: September 08, 2018, 06:06:22 PM »
How many times have I heard that single-region realms should not exist and that people should work together and interact more.

I dunno. You haven't heard it from me.

I don't think it's great to have a realm that can't hold more than a single region for a long period of time, but I'm certainly never going to come down on a realm that has been forced back to their capital and say "they should just up and die without having a chance to come back."

Quote
But when they do work together and interact more and the effect is destruction of a single-region realm you punish the entire advy playerbase for it.

Not all "working together" is equal.

In this case, people "worked together" to come up with a novel way to bend things just enough to achieve a spectacularly unpleasant effect that was never intended by the devs.

Quote
Taking stuff away from players, stuff players enjoy, due to isolated events is never a good idea.

An event like this won't stay isolated for long. Once people see that it's possible, they're going to want to do it, too, because it's highly effective and extremely difficult to stop.

The other possible reaction to this is for everyone to just start arresting and executing every adventurer they see.

I don't think either of those is something we want to have happen.

Quote
Especially since it doesn't fix the part that could be perceived as wrong in this entire event. If several people would decide to wipe out Bara'Khur or Angband or... whatever 1/2 region realms there is on BT - they could still do it, just not by using advies.

The problem isn't that they crippled the realm in itself—it's that it was done in a way that provided no warning, gave no possibility of stopping it, and left all the players involved wounded so they couldn't do anything afterward. Furthermore, it only required, what, about 4 adventurers? and the scrolls they were able to obtain.

If a couple of realms decided to get together and destroy Bara'Khur, I'm sure they could do it. It would require coordinating multiple armies, marching across rogue lands, being very obvious and visible to everyone while they came (though the number of times players insisted that Daimons had "teleported" in recent invasions, just because they forgot to scout regions for a day or two, suggests that might not be quite as obvious as it should be), and when they assaulted the city, the Bara'Khur players would get to participate in battle, probably multiple times, with the benefit of their fortifications, then trash-talk the enemy while they spent the next week or three trying to take it over or loot it rogue.

I hope this makes clear why I see this as being very different from the way nobles can destroy a realm.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Logar

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #12: September 08, 2018, 06:11:06 PM »
Quote
Basically, look to the people who organised this, because they're why you can't have nice things.


I had to hold my tongue to this comment, but I can understand considering the circumstances where there are many disgruntled players over the decision. I better stance could perhaps be...
'a bunch of players have created an event which has highlighted a potential problem with the game mechanics which might be considered a way of future abuse of a known bug. Let's see what we can do to fix it.'

I know it can sometimes be tough to keep everyone happy, but that comment seemed to be pointed hatred to those involved (although probably not intended that way). The event was meant to be fun for those involved, but I dont really think anyone truly knew the extent of its impact.

Perhaps the real problem is the rate of scroll production or the carrying capacity of a character to hold scrolls? Maybe a nerf/adjustment of the scroll system is a better fix? Just throwing some thoughts out there.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2018, 06:17:22 PM by Logar »
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Witch-king

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #13: September 08, 2018, 07:09:19 PM »
I would like to state that prior to the event Daishi declared the new state religion of Bara’Khur as evil.

Also there were quite some first messages going around that the Mordok cult would bring war upon Bara’Khur.

Now the essence of a covered operation or a sneak attack is that you have the surprise moment on your side.

How many times have wars been declared shortly before then changes or other similar situations to catch someone off guard...many times that has been the case in this game.

I do not see this operation as an exception from that point of view.

Someone angered someone else and should have been more prepared.
You don’t go all out and say we sacrifice you all to Mordok and think that he will stay unharmed.

Funnily, Angmar had already used large scale scroll stacks against Gotland back then in the war in surprise attacks and nobody complained back then.
Also with commoners.
Why wasn’t something done back then already?
Because nobody complained? Because we played maybe along and solved it ICly?
I remember both sides enjoying greatly this war.

Again, as I said in the other topic, I am fine if it was indeed a bug but then protect also those who thought it was legitimate game mech. Everything should be reversed priori to the bug.
Or nothing should have been done since when other bugs get solved we still have to play around the bugs.
That is at least often the recommendation...”sorry for the inconvenience, play around it...”

MTYL

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Re: Remove adventurers from the game
« Reply #14: September 08, 2018, 07:52:43 PM »
Ok, I asked several times and always got the same answer, but I want to have it on a record here and coming from a dev:

If the same thing was done using noble characters instead of adventurer characters - would it be ok?
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