PVP As RP

[Orgonwukh]

In my opinion, PvP should be used whenever a fight occurs, everything else which is not supported by game mechanics should be roleplayed.
Unfortunately this combination is difficult because of too powerful magic and missing mechanics. Almost noone combines it, because such a combination requires some OOC agreement between fighters. Otherwise someone ends up being killed after having typed no more than 10 characters.
See also my proposals for improvements here:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34228.0
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=32392.msg372850

[Illysia]

However in the tavern or around the city, if you /challenge someone you get yelled at in all this [brackety garbage] that fighting in the city is OOC, and sometimes you even get reported for it (which I still don't understand).  But for some reason, about every other time I walk into the tavern there are people running around saying /me stabs you and /me casts a magic kill-everyone spell.  Nobody yells at these people at all.  To me it's the same thing, and it's the negative view of PvP fighting that will be more of a problem than the PvP fighting itself.

It is wrong, it RP or PvP you aren't supposed to be fighting in the system. And the people that do that generally feel justified in RPing that way because as they see it they are RPing at least. I've tried to tell people about not fighting in the tavern and I get yelled at for that. Often, those that do it just insist on causing a ruckus in the tavern.

But Verden is right, Open PvP now can be a risky venture...

[Under the moon]

A PvP system needs to be balanced by a System of Law before it can be used fully for RP purposes. People who then commit illegal PvP actions and get caught are SoL. 

As per the questions, PvP can be RP in the current system (no changes to the code) if...

... it is a fight between gladiators for a money (or other) prize.

... it is a criminal attacking a victim OUT of the public eye. Since you can not loot another player forceably, this could only be to demand money (if agreed on before hand) or because the criminal is a psychotic  killer (if the victim is killed) or a thug if just beating someone up for whatever reason. However, this option is only viable if the criminal is willing to Roleplay out the consequences if caught, which are generally not much fun as per the current game mechanics.

... it is used to RP out training between students and teachers. RP only, as it really does nothing in the current system of only being able to train off NPCs.

... both sides are willing to RP the consequences.


Question two. There are many many other scenarios, but all of them require the players to carry through with the results. Stabbing someone in front of a guard leaves no 'mark' on your character. Those who are killed and rush back out of the DR have no ill effects after the curse wears off. PvP can be pretty much ignored by RP, which is why it is not used much. Sometimes PvP is used to resolve conflict, but that sometimes only lasts until the player gets back out of the DR. PvP as the system is now, in essence, has no power over roleplaying out of full PvP zones, and roleplaying has little power inside full PvP zones (if those inside the zone are non-RPers). In effect, the only way for PvP to have an effect on RP is if those controlling the PvP are, in fact, roleplayers.

Question three. First, the positives. Roleplayers often use PvP as a basis for creating storylines and resolving them, as do GMs. Without PvP, many of these stories and events would never happen, and without RP, the PvP would not happen in such a positive manner. In other games, the PvP is used to 'pwn' the other team and the rub it in. PS does have a better effect on PvP in that it is used to bring the community together to solve issues.

The negative. RPers who do not use mechanics in their 'PvP' often frown on, or make outright demeaning remarks on those who do. These 'textplayers' are often louder than others in proclaiming what is 'right and wrong' and have made a lot of people who enjoy both RP and PvP feel as if they have to hide the second part to avoid ridicule. In doing this, they have made PvP taboo, and as such, made bringing PvP into more prominent roleplays harder to do. This also makes it harder for people who do not know much about RP, but like to fight to get into the RP side of the game.

For the last, how should it be used? As anything, it should be used as a tool to promote, initiate, continue, or conclude a RP. It should play a part anywhere where conflict is called for (rather than textfighting). However, given the mechanics of today and a lack of a system of Law, it is hard to use it as such. Given no recourse for most PvP actions, a lot of people A: refuse to accept challenges into their roleplay. B: Refuse to roleplay the consequences of the PvP. Until both of those issues can be addressed, PvP will not be used to its full potential, and there will remain a gap between the 'two sides'.

By the way, I am a PvPer as well as a Roleplayer, just not in PS, as I don't like the mechanics of it (in other words, PvP is boring to me in PS, and gives no benefit to training). I also never 'RP' fight for the same reasons.

[verden]

People who then commit illegal PvP actions and get caught are SoL

Hah! Good one, UtM. Seriously though, I like how you mentioned giving weaker characters a chance by using RP dueling. It seems to me that one of the problems with mechanical PvP are that there are not "hidden" factors coming into play. The numbers are what they are right now. It would be nice if there were "fuzzy" variables that affected the combat variables in the course of a PvP situation, meaning that it would not necessarily be whomever had the greater numbers. The waxing and waning of the crystal affecting the strength of magic, would be one simple example. But that would be a known quantity. Or a system that compared the relative values of the skills of the two players involved, averaging these values before passing them on to the combat manager. Do I really know what I am saying? No. But there must be opportunities to balance these numbers within the system. I appear to have gone off topic, but the ability for a weaker character to best a stronger character must somehow be taken into account.

[zanzibar]

The way I see it (and this is only my opinion, don't hate me) one of the only reasons to choose a "RP fight" over a /challenge is to give the weaker character an equal chance of winning.  To me, I guess that makes the majority of fights that don't use mechanics OOC.  However in the tavern or around the city, if you /challenge someone you get yelled at in all this [brackety garbage] that fighting in the city is OOC, and sometimes you even get reported for it (which I still don't understand).  But for some reason, about every other time I walk into the tavern there are people running around saying /me stabs you and /me casts a magic kill-everyone spell.  Nobody yells at these people at all.  To me it's the same thing, and it's the negative view of PvP fighting that will be more of a problem than the PvP fighting itself.

Open PvP in the wilderness would be okay for me, but maybe we'd have to have safe areas around the loading zones, where all the traffic between cities has to funnel through.  As for open PvP in cities, it would be most realistic, but since we don't have realistic city guards I can't see any way it would work.  Also, I think before there is any more open PvP there are some PvP bugs that should be fixed, and maybe some potion issues as well.

Fighting in the tavern is bad.  Very, very bad.

It's true that a lot of OOC things happen in the tavern now.  When before, OOC in the tavern was seen as a deadly sin.

[Vannaka]

Fighting in the tavern is bad.  Very, very bad.

It's true that a lot of OOC things happen in the tavern now.  When before, OOC in the tavern was seen as a deadly sin.

Oh I know, just saying people act like it's only bad if it's a fight using mechanics, when it's no different.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

If you are on Laanx use the report or petition features when you encounter this.

[Akkaido Kivikar]

if pvp is just roleplayed it must be based, imho, on real skills in the character no fireball trowing characters with 0 in red way thanks
I'm perfectly ok with pvp based on game mechanics (although it should be improved in order to base less on ping, lag and timing).

Hit the nail on the head for me.

Only problem I've been encountering is people who act aggressively to me, saying and doing things to purposefully annoy me, then declining any challenges (and I quickly get hit with "You cannot challenge again for <X seconds>").

Case Study:

Recently I was in the Crater, killing Ulbernauts and skinning them, and taking anything else of use. 2 Players married to each other (and not exactly good Rpers) came up to me. I had dueled and killed the male recently for spitting at a guildmate (thinking he was stronger than me despite all description/player warnings, he accepted the duel knowing I intended to kill him, especially after his "wuteva I'll kill you n00b" /tell). Now I do not have the fastest reaction times when an Ulbernaut respawns, one of the other Ulbernauts was in use by a nice player. The female proceeded to take the third and last Ulbernaut, then the male started killing the Ulbernaut near me, laughing and stating the fact he knew he was disrupting my fun. After a few heated words I clicked the Challenge button so I could get him out of my sight and get back to my fun. Failed. He just declined and continued to be a nuisance.

In the end I sat there for a good half an hour with my fingers poised over a shortcut key and only killing the Ulber on the rare occasion that I managed to hit it before whichever one of them was in front of me.

No, I don't support Open PvP (Asonoh-type characters are my reason for that), but what can be done to make situations like what I encountered less frequent? I resorted to /report, but that didn't get him out of my face, he actually laughed at me for using it.

I'm not criticising GM handling of the situation, I just think it is a point to factor in that the Challenge system can be abused the opposite way, by those who want to peeve you off declining challenges. Had I used /ignore, it wouldn't have stopped them from killing the Ulbie I was trying to harvest and annoying me that way.

My immediate thinking directs me towards imagining a system where when certain words are said towards you by another character the server notes it, after a certain amount, maybe the Challenge system between you becomes automatic... probably not a good idea, just something I'm tossing in there. I have never /ignored a player, and I never want to. To me such an action is completely OOC anyway, and they can still find ways to abuse/annoy you.

Finally, killing in the city is not at all OOC, it's just against the law. So if you're character is evil, or (like Peacer) considers him/herself above the law and some sort of PS hero, killing in the city is not at all OOC. Vannaka, from what I know about your IC behaviour, I am of the thinking it would be rather more OOC for you to not duel someone in the city just because its against the law.

When I see killing in Hydlaa, I take a look at the characters involved and decide whether it is IC or OOC before wasting time telling them off. For instance, when Ikon killed three or four people in the tavern, it was semi-IC, so I didn't go out of my way to get him kicked or banned, just said "Yo, GMs, this evil guy is killing in the tavern man, and people are all screaming for the guards..." on the IRC (not my exact words)

[zanzibar]

I think we have to remember that these things aren't always clear cut.  There's often OOC and IC elements to it.  For instance, there used to be a guild that made a habit of ganging up on players who refused their duel challenges.  They would organize themselves using the guild chat, find the player, then shout things liked "coward" at the player until he or she accepted a duel challenge.  Of course this was all within city limits, and they never roleplayed any of the consequences that should come along with that.  So how can you encourage people to be reasonable, while also allowing them to roleplay violent characters and thugs?  How often will the GMs have to get involved with a heavy hand?

I once back-stabbed someone in the PvP zone in the arena.  He sent me abusive tells, then he and two of his guild mates tracked me down.  All three of them challenged me at the same time.  I accepted their challenges and promptly died.  More tells of an abusive nature followed.  A lot of situations are going to be messy like that, where people feel they've been wronged, and OOC actions get mixed with IC ones.

I've been challenged by people after doing nothing more than walking into a room because they want to monopolize the spawns there.  Is that IC or OOC?  Different people think different things.  Ironically, if I accept their challenge and kill them, they complain more often than not.

Once, I asked a character if she was the guild leader of a certain criminal guild.  She denied it, then she sent a tell to her RL boyfriend who also played.  He came online, went to the tavern where we all were, and challenged me to a duel.  His swords were drawn, my weapons were not.  I didn't accept the challenge right away.  Instead, I asked him why he wanted to fight me, and I reminded him weapons were not allowed in the tavern.  He demanded that I fight him.  So I walk outside.  Now I have my back to the tavern wall and he's a distance away from me.  I draw my daggers, then I accept the challenge.  He runs at me, then runs away.  He runs at me again and he dies.  I didn't move during the duel.  He then sends me abusive tells from the death realm.  The interesting thing is that he accused me of cheating, because I didn't accept the challenge while I was unarmed and in the tavern.

PvP can be a lot of fun too though.  I once helped a guild defend itself from the shadows in a guild war.  Their leader was in negotiations, but they were being singled out and picked off.  So I asked to join their ranks, and I rallied them to the front of the Laanx Temple.  We formed a circle and defeated the attackers.  It was a battle with tactics and everyone did a good job of talking to one another without breaking character.  The shadows fled from us after too many of their number fell and none of ours did.  Their guild leader then got very angry at me because she wanted to resolve the solution politically, and not by use of arms.  So even though the event was basically all combat, it served to develop our characters.

[Nykolai Raskaniov]

@Akkaido @Zanzibar

Whenever you have problems with abusive players, always use the /report and /petition functions and come to #planeshift-gmtalk.

We can and are dealing with this.

[zanzibar]

lol

ok, I'll start making petitions 


My point is that situations will happen, and it won't always be clear who's in the right and who's in the wrong when it comes to RP protocol.  It seems everyone is in the wrong some of the time.

[Akkaido Kivikar]

@Akkaido @Zanzibar

Whenever you have problems with abusive players, always use the /report and /petition functions and come to #planeshift-gmtalk.

We can and are dealing with this.

As I said, I used /report. However, such things are never dealt with instantly, and the character abusing me didn't stop just because he had been reported. In his opinion it would be ignored, and he kept up what he was doing, although he began typing in the following manner:

PlayerX says: your the only one I pick on cos u killed me loser haha loll{}

He had apparently been told by a GM that typing OOC like that was perfectly ok. What he didn't realise was that whilst IC insults are excusable if part of RP, OOC insulting is far less appropriate.

[zanzibar]

@Akkaido @Zanzibar

Whenever you have problems with abusive players, always use the /report and /petition functions and come to #planeshift-gmtalk.

We can and are dealing with this.

As I said, I used /report. However, such things are never dealt with instantly, and the character abusing me didn't stop just because he had been reported. In his opinion it would be ignored, and he kept up what he was doing, although he began typing in the following manner:

PlayerX says: your the only one I pick on cos u killed me loser haha loll{}

He had apparently been told by a GM that typing OOC like that was perfectly ok. What he didn't realise was that whilst IC insults are excusable if part of RP, OOC insulting is far less appropriate.

Also, prevention is better than dealing with problems after they've already happened... that's kind of my whole point actually.    Thinking about ways to prevent problems before they happen.

[Mordraugion]

The way I see it (and this is only my opinion, don't hate me) one of the only reasons to choose a "RP fight" over a /challenge is to give the weaker character an equal chance of winning.  To me, I guess that makes the majority of fights that don't use mechanics OOC. 

Drifting offtopic I know But I felt I had to reply, my only reason for refusing to Duel, prefering to "RP fight" is I got fed up with a maxed character being beaten everytime because the winning Player had spent a serious time practicing timings, button mashing etc. Once the Players influence is removed from deciding who wins PvP and it is purely down to Character stats and an element of luck then and only then will I be fine with using it.

One other thing if you do choose to RP fight then it is a simple matter to swap stats prior (assuming both players are honest), it will be a lot more fun for both you and those watching.

Lastly if you use /report always, always follow it with a petition explaining why you reported someone, or if immediate action is required join #planeshift-gmtalk on irc and poke the GM's, all  /report does is log chat, it doesn't alert a GM, they can't see /report logs in game and often it is several hours before the webconsole is checked making it too late to do anything.

[Edit: Highlighted the word often which doesn't mean always making it too late]

[zanzibar]

Lastly if you use /report always, always follow it with a petition explaining why you reported someone, or if immediate action is required join #planeshift-gmtalk on irc and poke the GM's, all  /report does is log chat, it doesn't alert a GM, they can't see /report logs in game and often it is several hours before the webconsole is checked making it too late to do anything.

More accurately, it's too late to serve as a direct witness to the events, and it's too late to intervene in the events.  But depending on the nature of the offenses (shouting OOC insults, various stalking behaviours), there can still be fallout based on logs alone.  I once reported some individuals who were /shouting what they believed to be RL information about me.  I reported it, and banns were handed out based on the log alone, even though the GM wasn't online at the time it was taking place.