Philosophy, emotional investment and Questions that arise

[Laremere]

I think there may be a fundamental game flaw that is developing here. With other games that I know involve perma-death, it is frankly the player's fault for dying. They may have wandered into an area with monsters that were too powerful for them, or were too careless for a jump over a spiked pit. A common saying for perma-death games is "Yet another stupid death", or yasd for short. Most of the time the progress lost is nothing too major, as death is a common rule of the game that you live by. Another instance I've seen implemented is that it's simply hard to die as a more developed character. This is what I initially thought of H&H's death system. As you can guard your hhp carefully, it's easy not to die from stupid mistakes, and you won't lose all your progress. If you do however lose your progress, you could lose anywhere from a hour, to months or more of playing the character. The problem becomes apparent when you combine the fact that it's easy for a character to lose lots of play time with the fact that it's getting easier and easier for a player to die through no fault of their own. In this instance he was simply around his own place minding his own business, when someone killed him, for what appears to be mostly for kicks. This simply doesn't go well with perma-death, for obvious reasons. You may just say then have your tradition/change slider be at tradition. Frankly this is hard to do, by moving other sliders you can quickly end up with full change without wanting it, and to keep it at anything but full change you have to spend twice the time to change other beliefs. There also comes into play that at full tradition, you level up one tenth of full change, which makes any time spent playing much less worthy, though it's necessary if you don't want to risk being randomly killed for little reason.

tl;dr version: Perma-death isn't good for games that take massive amount of time to be invested in it, and have little control if someone else overpowers you, or simply catches you off guard minding your own business.

[Delamore]

I do not want to say exactly here, but they were in multiple hundreds of fighting nearing the same in strength.
It was not a fair fight at all and should never have happened.

[Delamore]

In this instance he was simply around his own place minding his own business, when someone killed him, for what appears to be mostly for kicks.

It was not for kicks, it was a robbery gone wrong.
All the goons responsible feel terrible, this thread just makes them feel even worse hearing about his depression.

[theTrav]

In this instance he was simply around his own place minding his own business, when someone killed him, for what appears to be mostly for kicks.

Two problems with that statement
1 - He was chasing enemies, armed with ranged weapons, outnumbered by at least 5 to 1.
In his defense, he was goaded, but if I personally saw something like that I'd run like buggery (granted my stats aren't like Cor's stats, but even so)

2 - It appears that they attacked him for fun and profit, Rugs no-doubt paid them well in stolen goods.

[Colbear]

tl;dr version: Perma-death isn't good for games that take massive amount of time to be invested in it, and have little control if someone else overpowers you, or simply catches you off guard minding your own business.

Question: how do you feel about killing thief mains, then? Because as far as I can tell, thief mains (also weeks/months of work, etc, etc) are under the "kill as often as possible" rule, with "if one is found, everyone band together to hunt him down", while it appears that the reverse -- a farmer being killed by a thief (or a bandit or whatever) is now some huge deal and totally not fair at all. I mean, to some extent "a thief being caught stealing asked to die", yeah -- but then you get into the question of offline deaths, and whether or not that's fair.

Seems like a bit of a double-standard.

(Of course, thieves "fix" this situation by using thief alts, which is a broken mechanic and one that Jorb didn't intend and is taking steps to prevent -- but if he were able to prevent it, what would happen to thieves? Thieves are universally hated and hunted down, so playing a thief main sounds like an exercise in futility and a timed lifespan -- why should that be different from playing a farmer, if both are supposed to be equally valid playstyles?)

Disclaimer: I actually have no idea what happened at PineValley (I didn't get on HnH until a little whlie ago), so I'm not talking about whatever happened so much as the philosophical questions evoked by "I am killed while innocently wandering around. Is this fair?"

[Krantarin]

You know, talking it over in person with Cor and letting some of this emotion spew onto the forums has helped me to step back and realize that Cor really loved the game the way he played it, a peaceful, nonviolent way. He doesn't quite understand why this happened, but we're all dealing with it in the way we should be.

I do hope that the permadeath issue is addressed. I can't say more. But thanks, I guess.

[Laremere]

I actually am not 100% sure what happened either, though I was the one who tracked down the sent to Goontown. As for thiefs, I don't have a double standard. Sure people get together to stop it, but I find that quite natural. A slit to the throat for a slight set-back I find quite fair, but I don't think even thief characters should (especially with the raised black-art costs) have the flaws in the current system either. Thieving should have it's rewards at an elevated cost as natural, but a different playing style doesn't mean that they should lose all their hard work (most of which getting ready for thieving can be perfectly honest work) just because it sets players back a bit.

I find having players be thiefs and bandits an intelligent design decision. I love it when games allow for player-vs-player interaction instead of players only fighting ai. It allows for a deeper and more fun experience, but currently the risks of paying even a simple peaceful person are so high I'm questioning if it's even worth playing the game.

[theTrav]

Question: how do you feel about killing thief mains, then?

When it's a thief who takes everything he can carry and dumps the rest on the ground, then trumpets his cleverness in the forums I reckon killing him is a pretty justified action.
Perhaps less so if it's someone who spent a lot of time buffing their stealth stat, working out where the good stuff was, attempting to get away without being noticed, and generally putting as much or more effort into it as the producer, then maybe less so.

Seems like a bit of a double-standard.

I think of a double standard being more to do with the person than the actions. Saying someone who performs one set of actions deserves death and someone who doesn't perform those actions doesn't deserve death isn't exactly what I'd call a double standard.

If both are supposed to be equally valid playstyles?

What do you call valid? There are more people who will argue against thievery at all as a valid play style than farming as a valid play style...
I don't really use popularity as any indicator of validity though...

The main problem I see with what you're trying to say is that we've either had relatively few thieves who've played in a sensible "don't get the entire game world chasing after me" way, or they've been entirely successful and gone completely unnoticed.

Thieves who (as jorb says) steal the entire hen-house, are psycopaths, and I'd say that's not really a valid play-style in that I don't want it encouraged and can't see it enriching the game world.

[theTrav]

currently the risks of paying even a simple peaceful person are so high I'm questioning if it's even worth playing the game.

Well, lets see what he's really lost then... Has Rugs busted into his village, killed everyone and stolen all the material goods there?

Is Cor unable to create a new character, return to his village, and continue to play with lower stats?

Losing a developed character is a pretty heavy loss, but once you've cooled down and stopped swearing, what part of having a high stat character was important to you having fun?

[Eustace]

Please do not mechanically enforce morality.
Perma-death is awesome.
Literally unstoppable characters are not.

You can't, with intellectual honesty, claim that it is unjust that someone lost a lot of effort since:
-It is clearly stated that you can lose your work. In fact, it is a selling point for the game.
-A mechanic specifically to mitigate said loss exists. It is out of avarice that one does not take advantage of this.