OMG can you at least make the war invaders spawn outside of cities and towns! just lost most of my stuff due to grave robbers: Cibyn, Jondong, and Boriz. Stupid town guards aren't even accepting accussals. Can a GM look into this please; or I'm cancelling accts for good.

>Grave robbing is preventable in game and is not against policy, and if you aren't aware of it, please read NEWS 2 14 and NEWS 2 48 in game. Also, making sure you utilize DEPART ITEMS or DEPART FULL (DEPART HELP for a full explanation) will ensure that if you have enough favors you won't leave a grave, and take your items with you. NEws 2 48 in particular is relatively new and covers items that go into the AWESOME Lost and Found bin.

The problem with this answer is, accidents and typos happen so 'Depart Item' might be typoed to 'depart', therefore a grave.

This is probably one of the worst features of the game and this is the only game I know of that works like this.

The original policy was written, therefore can always be changed, and should be changed to not allow graverobbing.

> Plus 'I made a typo' seems like the most offensive lie possible.

It happens. Not long ago I lost an item or three. I had picked up the premie gift that is a bundle, stowed it just to free up my hands. A few days later when I logged in again I had forgotten about it, so when I went to hunt my scripts were doing some really strange things trying to skin. With combat scroll and what not I ended up removing my thigh bag and dropped it on the ground trying to remove a tight bundle. Things were still not working right. Once I remembered the bundle in my pack I left hunting to vault the premie gift. The thigh bag had a cambrinth manacle in it and was left behind. I made more than one mistake during that time but ultimately I lost a few good items.

This has nothing to do with graverobbing or policies, only saying something because typo's do happen and while you might take that to sound like a lie keep in mind that typo's DO happen.

>None of that was a typo though.

You can call it what you will.

t bund - t bag...there is not that much difference and in the heat of the moment unintentional things happen. This was not something that I felt needed a GM to look into. I made several mistakes and now I have a really expensive premium gift.

I intended to remove a bundle and removed a bag instead. I believe that what you consider a typo would be more like remove my tighj bundle. However a typo is not always that short sighted. See atomic typos if you don't believe me.

The point is though that typos happen. It is not always a "lie" that someone intended one thing and a different or unintended thing happened due to a typo.

I don't think any of the people most notably affected by graverobbing recently have been newbs. Newbs don't carry around altered kertig weapons.

That's not to say it isn't a problem and has probably outstayed its welcome as a mechanics in DR, but the majority of people losing stuff are not hapless newbies in the least.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

Graverobbing is just a bad old system that should be removed.

The only people that actually enjoy it are griefers.

The majority of players don't like it, or tolerate it and have learned to deal with it.

It isn't a good system. It is an outdated hold over from when the game included 'losing your character forever'... another old system that has been removed because it was stupid.

From a design standpoint, it is a horrible system that only turns away potential customers. The one or two players that would actually quit over it going away, would easily be compensated for with the people that don't leave because they lost an item and said screw this.

The only 'appeal' of it is a sense of 'hardmode' or 'danger' supposedly added to death.. an idea that is yet another holdover from a time period that calls for everything being as punitive as possible.

Death is already punishing enough, especially if you are new.

Graverobbing should go the way of 'walking' and your items should just depart with you, regardless of favors. To compensate, all armor could need a full repair, unless you have extra favors. You still get punished, and yet not so much that you hate life.

Weapons could still drop, and if anyone tries to pick them up, the janitor could grab them. Bonding potions wouldn't be completely worthless since it would make things easier and would prevent the item from poofing.. but graverobbing wouldn't be a thing.

This thread reminded me of something that happened tonight. When Navesi died during the invasion and dropped a nightstick Saragos and I tried to pick it up and got ~15 seconds of RT and the messaging 'You are not disciplined enough to pick that up' (or something along those lines). Never seen that before. Anyone know what caused it? It wasn't any GR mechanic I'd ever seen and she even tried Consenting us without any change to the messaging.

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newbs :P

>>Saragos: Personally I'm not sure I'd agree that graverobbing needs to go away entirely, but it would be nice to have further protections during the very frequent invasions nowadays. Or better ways to retrieve items other than getting lucky enough to kill a person while it's in their hand.

I wouldn't be opposed to doing away with grave robbing entirely, but failing that, DEPART ITEMS should become the default method of departing. (That is, if you just type DEPART, you DEPART ITEMS if you have enough favors to do so.)

DEPART NORMAL could then be added as an option for people who have been warded or who want to leave a grave for whatever reason.

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>>Isharon & Thayet

I really like all of these ideas. I'd still prefer graverobbing be completely gone, but failing that I think these would go a long way toward helping.


- Navesi

>Arguments about "personal responsibility" and "how can you make a typo" are some of the weirder counter-arguments I've heard on the forums this year, but we're only two weeks in.

To be fair, my counterargument was a bit more nuanced than that, and was less 'how dare you typo' and more 'is it valuable? Perhaps you should act accordingly'.

<<I view 'graverobbing', 'walking', and 'losing items from graves' as a HARDCORE gaming feature and is more appropriate for THE FALLEN, not Prime.>>

I disagree. Walking almost never happened unless someone was putting on a show for drama. I'm sorry, very infrequently... heck, i cant even think of a time that someone legitimately walked under that system. If anything I think changing "walking" was to make people save the drama for their mamma.

As far as graves go - there used to be no darn graves at all. youd just leave your items on the floor. I dont think you'd have liked that system very much :)

That being said, i think a confirmation request from "Depart" would go a long way in helping with people who dont know about "depart items". eg: if you type depart "Are you sure you want to depart? Maybe you want to DEPART ITEMS instead? Please type depart again to confirm" or something along those lines...

>>I would guess that the way items were expected to function was vastly different two decades ago.

That's nonsense. There have always been rare and valuable items that people have cherished.

>>That's nonsense. There have always been rare and valuable items that people have cherished.

Not to bash their efforts, but I strongly doubt that the GMs of 20 years ago expected a game where players had items that could have a decade+ of sentimentality, items that players gain after paying $10-$50 to go on a quest, or items that required a great deal of effort to replace as a whole.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>Not to bash their efforts, but I strongly doubt that the GMs of 20 years ago expected a game where players had items that could have a decade+ of sentimentality, items that players gain after paying $10-$50 to go on a quest, or items that required a great deal of effort to replace as a whole.

Matter of perspective, I guess.

Alterations were so much rarer back then. I remember getting like one in 4 years. And I assure you people were just as attached to these things as they are now.

Invasion items were actually highly valued/irreplaceable.

Jade-hilted nimshas and old weighted scimitars were the equivalent of rare metal forged weapons, but couldn't be replaced as easily.

A shimmer cloak or a hooded cloak was months of saving up. Losing your WM's dark talisman was a big deal.

If anything it's easier than ever to get plats and replace items.

>>My personal view is nobody comes to a text based game and expects the simplicity and user friendliness of something like wow.

Also this ^^^

That doesn't change the fact that the game has moved away from item loss/destruction. Acid traps don't melt your armor like it used to, Vykathi don't break your weapons anymore and gradual damage incurred in combat doesn't irrevocably destroy gear.

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Making something challenging is not the same as making it punitively, ballbustingly convoluted and difficult purely for the sake of saying something is difficult. There is a reason tabletop has moved away from that kind of paradigm and game design.

Games can have serious item loss and permadeath and all that fun stuff. A lot of MUDs pull it off successfully. The difference is those MUDs are designed that way from the ground up. DR is not really, not in the same way.

That said, you can still preserve the risk for item loss in certain circumstances without making it quite as punitive as it is now. If graves only appeared if you autodeparted or departed without favors, that would probably be far enough.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>>Most people just tolerate it because they enjoy the rest of the game. It isn't like complaints against it are new.

Pretty much this. The fact that every year or so the game defangs item loss a bit more supports this obvious trend.

Perma-destruction of gear via combat/traps/etc? Gone.
Requirement of Ward Glyphs to protect items after death? hello depart items
Heck, you can keep coins and spell scrolls these days, too.
There are some situations where you don't even lose your full exp pools, right?

It would be hard for DR, as a company, to sell the idea of people paying RL$ to go on a quest for a neat sword if it could just poof on them. It's the main reason I barely went on them in the past, at least. Investing extra money that could poof on me seemed outright silly until I had a better assurance that the gear remained functional/viable.

>>Jade-hilted nimshas and old weighted scimitars were the equivalent of rare metal forged weapons, but couldn't be replaced as easily.

IMO, most "irreplaceable" items during the late 90s were more an intentional desire to have items phase out due to attrition because they were imbalanced.

>>Alterations were so much rarer back then.

Definitely a matter of perspective because they didn't come that hard when I was in Prime during the late 90s.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Everyone seems to agree >DEPART defaulting to items makes sense.

There are people who disagree with the idea of removing item loss from the game entirely and feel the consequences for death in this game are minimal enough. People spam the death window with 100s deaths a day. Favors are so easy to get and there are so many additional possible safeguards to ensure you don't leave a grave when you die.

But these are the DR forums, so I'm sure we'll end up beating this subject to death and never agreeing.

>>feel the consequences for death in this game are minimal enough.

This is such a ridiculous concept.

How are death consequences in DR minimal? Compared to any other MMO, the consequences, even if you remove item loss, are far worse.

Death:
-Loss of time related to exp (which is worse than most games because time in DR is an actual currency, paid to gain skills. If you die, you not only lose all the time it took to fill up your exp pool, but there is potential permanent exp loss as well)
-Loss of time related to just coming back to life. (this is the ONLY thing that most other games have... and it is still worse in DR unless you just depart immediately. If you wait to get dragged, and healed and ressed or at least have memories saved, it is FAR longer than any other game)

Just those two things alone are worse than most other games.. I can't think of an MMO that comes close. Usually it is just the amount of time to run back. At least any progress made, or exp gained, is still there waiting for you when you get back alive.. so you don't feel like you have completely wasted your time playing...

And I am not suggesting it needs to be that easy.. but there should be some thought into why exactly it needs to be so much harder. What does that gain? Or is it just another old mechanic that is the way it is because it has always been that way? Would it be designed that way now? I would argue that it wouldn't have a chance today of being the way it is.. because there is no additional enjoyment value gained from the additional harshness of the arbitrary punishment of death.

Games are supposed to be fun. And yes, there should be consequences to messing up.. but they shouldn't be so over the top that they unbalance the main goal.. which is fun. Item loss completely upsets that balance.. and the ONLY people that enjoy it.. are the ones that are seeking to further ruin someone's day. That is bad design, and should be changed.

Arguing for harsher consequences because it used to be worse... is like demanding people have to play on dial up... or pay $1000 monthly bills because I had a few of those back in early days of GEnie or AOL.. It is stupid. Just because it was one way once, doesn't mean we shouldn't improve it now if we can.